Tidings Magazine

“I only have four days.” This is what was going through my mind as I touched down in Pescara on the east coast of central Italy. Though only two hours’ drive from Rome, Pescara and the rest of Abruzzo lies pleasantly ignored by the hordes of tourists busying themselves in Tuscany and Umbria. While visiting family and friends in the UK and France this spring, I had managed to set aside four days to hop over to this still undiscovered area in search of new flavours and recipe ideas.

By day, Elena Faita-Venditelli runs one of the most original hardware stores you’re likely to come across: the Quincaillerie Dante, a family-owned Montreal institution that caters to gourmands on one side of the shop and to tradition-minded hunters on the other. A place that harks back to a time when people still made food from scratch.

By night, Elena runs a traditional Italian cooking school. The formula is simple: “I give you some recipes, I teach you my way of food — that’s all I do.”

Its location on the western edge of the Iberian Peninsula, a weak economy in the early 1900s and a military dictatorship that lasted for almost forty years essentially put Portugal in self-imposed isolation for most of the twentieth century. Without outside intervention, vineyards were left to their own devices —at a time when other European countries were playing Twister to see who could plant the most international varietals.

This is not to say that Portuguese wines were completely forgotten. Port and Madeira continued to thrive. And the semi-sparkling pink wines known under the Mateus, Casal Mendes and Lancers labels — a great wine-marketing success story onto themselves — managed to flourish through the turbulent times.

Even today, now that it’s fully part of the European Union and has complete access to everything wine-and-grape fashionable, Portugal still embraces its heritage and concentrates on native grapes — at last count some 500 or so. For reds, the top dog is Touriga Nacional, the backbone of Port and of increasing amounts of powerful, dry reds. Tinta Roriz (aka Aragonez, aka Spain’s Tempranillo) works well on its own, but is often blended, providing a D. Wade touch to Touriga’s Shaq.

Flying winemakers, move over! There’s a new wine celebrity in town: the flying image-maker. His name is Bernie Hadley-Beauregard and he has an MBA in Marketing and International Business, a degree that’s taken him to Calona Wines, Purdy’s Chocolates and Starbucks Coffee, among others. In 2001, he started his own design and marketing company, Brandever Strategies. One of his first clients was a long-standing Okanagan winery with an unpronounceable name: Prpich Hills. The new owners had come to him for a makeover.

Hadley-Beauregard researched the history of the area and unearthed the following local lore. In 1929, an old wooden church had to be dismantled in its original mining encampment site in Fairview and reassembled in Okanagan Falls, thirty kilometres away. In order to loosen the wooden nails that held the rafters together, the miners used four sticks of dynamite. The parish priest was given the honour of lighting the fuse. The controlled blast loosened the nails but it also toppled the steeple.

A major international corporation known historically for the production of some of the world’s finest luxury goods is facing tough times. Its most visible and respected brand is losing favour both at home and abroad. The brand’s quality hasn’t wavered, however; in fact, it may be better than ever. Nevertheless, there suddenly seems to be a lot of it to go around, and fickle consumers, with fewer and fewer ties to tradition, are tossing their gaze (and their coin) at some of the giddy upstarts. What would you do if you were at the head of the company facing this dilemma?

Tod Stewart talks to Sven Bruchfeld, the young winemaker at the helm of Chile’s dynamic Viña Santa Carolina. Here is his conversation.

Can winemaking be considered an extreme sport? Both sets of activities entail a certain degree of risk taking, calculation and, at times, intuition. And while screwing up on the timing of your harvest may not have quite the same impact as screwing up on a harness, both can certainly be career ending. As it turns out, Sven Bruchfeld approaches winemaking and risky recreation with equal passion. Born in Chile, schooled at UC Davis and employed at one time or another in at least four different countries, Bruchfeld is now back on home turf. Tidings chatted with him about rumours, reality and his role in shaping the future direction of Santa Carolina.