The Bar Towel

markaberrant wrote:

Belgian wrote:

something else to spend my money on and get better value.

Wine. - it's a nice break from the usual.

I've tried getting into wines off and on over the years, it just seems like a pain in the ass to wade your way through the myriad of wineries and price ranges...

So yeah, screw wine. That being said, I'm still waiting for the day that a wine savy friend will come along and show me the way.

Haha, screw wine. How else would you open it. Funny, I find it very easy to hit the 'sweet spot' of value and quality with wines. There are good independent reviewers of LCBO vintages releases on the Web like grapeguy.

I guess I really enjoyed the learning process even before internet.'Wine for Dummies' (thank you ex-GF) is a fun book that has the perfect learning curve, and is recommended by experts. It actually makes regular people wine literate.

As I got into it the Andre Domine book Wine became and remains extremely useful - as deep as you wanna go. There are amazing deals if you know what to look for.

One more link on wines for drinking, not showing off to poseurs.

Belgian wrote:

markaberrant wrote:

Belgian wrote: Wine. - it's a nice break from the usual.

I've tried getting into wines off and on over the years, it just seems like a pain in the ass to wade your way through the myriad of wineries and price ranges...

So yeah, screw wine. That being said, I'm still waiting for the day that a wine savy friend will come along and show me the way.

Haha, screw wine. How else would you open it. Funny, I find it very easy to hit the 'sweet spot' of value and quality with wines. There are good independent reviewers of LCBO vintages releases on the Web like grapeguy.

I guess I really enjoyed the learning process even before internet.'Wine for Dummies' (thank you ex-GF) is a fun book that has the perfect learning curve, and is recommended by experts. It actually makes regular people wine literate.

As I got into it the Andre Domine book Wine became and remains extremely useful - as deep as you wanna go. There are amazing deals if you know what to look for.

One more link on wines for drinking, not showing off to poseurs.

Thanks, I'll check these out!

After reading the link shared by Cass and looking over some of the recent seasonal releases I see that some of the releases have a focus on price and some do not. When the price is mentioned in the submittal info the products that hit the shelves seem to reflect it and for some ( like this fall release ) where no pricing is mentioned in the submittals the prices are a lot higher. Between this revelation and the updated info on the upcoming tap takeover at Volo which seems to now have more value per token and more tokens included in the initial ticket price I will temper my outrage. It still seems like things are on the rise but all in all maybe it is not as bad as it seemed the other day when I was reading about a release and an event that were both beyond my budget.

Maybe it is just that I am killing the last few minutes of my last shift at work before a week off and I am in a much better frame of mind.

I would also offer that craft beer prices in Ontario have been, and still are, considerably cheaper than in the rest of Canada.

You can thank the LCBO's buying power for that.

Anyways, just another reason I smirk a bit everytime an Ontarian has a hissy fit on here about beer prices.

markaberrant wrote:...You can thank the LCBO's buying power for that.

Anyways, just another reason I smirk a bit everytime an Ontarian has a hissy fit on here about beer prices.

To indicate the obvious, the LCBO's 'buying power' and (sometimes) lower pricing comes at the cost of our having a self-empowered monopoly that has limited our freedom of choice.

Thankful? Hissy fit?? I just see it that they take full financial advantage of being our sole large buyer, owning an entire captive market and charging whatever suits them in the ruse of 'social responsibility' (artificial policies of minimum pricing.)

Don't mistake some favorable prices for generosity, this is not the case.

I am not sure my original post can be seen as having a hissy fit but everyone is open to their own interpretation.


edit... I wrote a bunch more but realized it sounded like a hissy fit so I deleted it. If Mark and I disagree then I would much rather discuss it at a pub over a couple beers than bicker on a chat forum. If you are ever in town, lets sit down and chat. Cheers

If you havent figured me out yet, i like to poke the bear now and again, and i like to use carefully chosen words for dramatic/ dry sarcastic effect.
Cheers,

^ no problem, the facts of the situation when merely stated always sound like bitter complaining and argument, which they are not necessarily. Onward, Comrades!