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Have I ever said how much I have come to enjoy Kurt Hain's Piesporter Goldentopfchen Riesling Spatlese. Well if you haven't heard me say it before, I am saying it now. The 2005 vintage of this delightful Riesling is so tasty. I tasted it first at Bin 104 a couple of months ago, and I was surprised and delighted to find a couple of cases of it in Lethbridge over the Easter weekend at Andrew Hiltons. I would tell you to rush out and buy some, but that would be wrong, as there is none left in the province. You see they don't make too much of it, and even less of this delightful wine makes it into the province. In fact, the wine is brought in exclusively by the Richmond Hill group of wine stores (I thing there are 5 of them). All I know is how much I love the balance of fruit, residual sugar, and the crisp acidity which gives it both sparkle and life. This is a wine to both drink right now, as I am doing as I write this post, and put down too, as I am also going to do, to see how it matures and develops in the bottle. Why am I writing about this wine, well in fact it reminds me a lot about great coffee. It is hard to find, and it doesn't show up just anywhere. Yes it is true, there is plenty of coffee lining our grocery store shelves, but the sad truth is that there isn't much good coffee there, and even less great coffee. Without a word of a lie, finding truly amazing coffee is a very hard thing to do, and it is something that we are working hard to do better each year.
What does all of this have to do with Condescending Boobs you ask? Well recently in the comment section of a blog I was referred to as a condescending boob, and further, Transcend Coffee and specifically its new coffee bar at Garneau was called nothing but hot air. Personally it doesn't matter what people think about me, but I take offence to my team at Transcend being maligned. You see, at the end of the day we are just excited about things like taste and quality, things which entice and intrigue the palate. We marvel at the amazing gifts of the earth, both in the form of coffee and wine, and we spend a lot of time trying to find the best that our earth has to offer. We work tirelessly at trying to excite others about our passion, and we also work hard at trying to mitigate the poor prices that coffee farmers receive for their hard work. I am the first to admit that Transcend is not perfect in its execution, and that it can improve in all areas, including customer service, drink preparation, roast development, education, coffee sourcing... the list goes on. But having said that, we (all of us) are committed to doing the very best that we can, on any given day, and we are equally committed to doing a better job tomorrow than we did today. We delight in life, and get excited about sharing our excitement with those who drop by to drink our coffee, or grab a bag to take and brew at home. So if being passionate, and dedicated to quality and a sustainable business model within the global specialty coffee industry makes me a condescending boob, then I will gladly wear that title with pride.
