A Colorful Life

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In pickle green and retriever gold, a new house charms like an old. Design is what it’s all about and this stunning piece of property makes the sunshine get into it always. It’s a colorful life in this wonderfully designed house. The architecture is classically beautiful, the colors are thoughtful, and the setting is nothing less than stunning. It truly is a colorful life!

You’d expect the house of paint-store owners to be gloriously colored. The new home of Mary Hall and Ken Schuricht, proprietors of Winslow Paint Co. and Winslow Hardware and Mercantile, exceeds all expectations, with its brick-red and gold exterior trimmed in richest eggplant and radiant chartreuse.

Viewed from across the wild wetlands that stretch from house to Puget Sound, the silvery-metal peaked roof and multipaned façade look like a child’s drawing of an eccentric grandma’s house. Street-side, the wings of the house spread to embrace twin carports, each housing a matching Honda Element looking more like car-shaped cartoons than actual vehicles.

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Is there a Solution to Wine Bottle Closure?

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The cork dilemma all began at the end of the 1990s when the production of wine in the world blossomed in the “New World” countries of the US, Chile, Argentina, and Australia among others.

The demand for natural cork was high and the supply couldn’t meet the demand, likewise, many of the new wineries needed more economical cork solutions to enter into the market at affordable prices, this led to an expanded use of micro-agglomerated corks (natural cork glued together) and technical corks (not 100% natural cork).

You all know what happened next, around 10% of all bottles of wine were “corked” or tainted with cork smells. Many solutions have appeared on the market as alternatives to natural cork: screw caps, synthetic corks, Vinolok, and Nomacorc.

I had the privilege to meet the Nomacorc team at the annual Enomaq tradeshow in Zaragoza. They presented me with a Sommelier Challenge (kind of like the Pepsi Challenge), a tasting of the same white wine sealed with different models of Nomacorc with different amounts of “Nano-oxygenation”.

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Owning your own Wine Farm

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Owning a winery is the dream of many successful businessmen. In South Africa, quite a few wineries are privately owned and operated. Not only is the beauty of the Cape Winelands enticing, but what could be more seductive than the thought of serving a wine complete with your own family name and crest?

But winemaking is a capital-intensive project, and slow on returns. When he went into it almost 30 years ago, Tim Hamilton Russell estimated that it would take 10 years to see a return on capital.

The figure has not changed much since then especially now that imported equipment and wooden barrels have to be acquired with our weak rand. So it is rewarding to see South African money being invested in the Cape Winelands when it could so easily be exported for quicker and far better returns.

Relatively new to the industry is another IT man, Dave Lello. He brings a wealth of wine knowledge, having had a keen interest in the subject for most of his life. His enthusiasm for wine is matched by his love of Italy and Africa. And this shows in the name he has chosen for his wine venture, Stellakaya.

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Knipprath Cellars, Spokane

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Knipprath Cellars Is Doing It Right

I recently had the pleasure of visiting one of Spokane, Washington’s most unique wineries, Knipprath Cellars. The winery is located in an old schoolhouse. It’s very quaint, though a bit chilly the day I visited. I was greeted at the top of the stairs by Sinay, who was manning (or in this case, womaning) the tasting room this particular day.

I knew very little about Knipprath Cellars except that there WAS one, so I asked many questions and Sinay answered them one by one. I found out that Knipprath Cellars is a family-owned winery that just celebrated ten years of being a full-time winery. All in all, I tasted 13 different wines including Roussanne, Syrah, Tempranillo, Merlot, and a whole slew of dessert wines, which seems to be their niche.

Of the typical wines, I really liked the 2015 Tempranillo and the 2014 Merlot, and the Tempranillo was very good with some prune on the back of the tongue.

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