Country 107.1

In the fall of 1992 I took a weekend trip to the Okanagan that very literally was to change the course of my life.  It was a restless and rainy October Saturday in Kelowna that prompted me to seek entertainment beyond the confines of the Lake Okanagan Resort and my hotel room.  I drove out to visit the wineries at Cedar Creek, Summerhill, and Calona.  Even though I didn’t know much about wine then beyond the Baby Duck my parents had provided and Le Piat D’or, I enjoyed the daytrip.  Each time I travelled to the Okanagan after that, I’d make sure to stop and visit some of the local wineries.

In 1999 I went to my first Rotary Wine Festival at Minter Gardens in Chilliwack.  What a lovely experience that was, to sip B.C. wines in an exquisite show garden as the sun went down.

My first wine gig started in August of 2000;  I became a sales clerk in a British Columbia VQA wine shop in Chilliwack where I learned all about what the various grapes tasted like once they were made into wine (daily in store tastings sure helped with that).  Eventually I became the favourite local wine consultant and had customers phoning to ask me if I could stay open just 15 minutes more so that they would be able to drive across town and have me pick out a bottle of wine to go with their dinner.  That was so much fun!  I started to arrange little wine teaching and tasting seminars for the public as well, and continued to expand my product knowledge.

My first food and wine pairing epiphany came when I served a B.C. Riesling with the lemon chicken I had made for some dinner guests.  I had put thought into which wine would go with dinner, but was amazed at how the two individual elements of food and wine really could come together to create something greater than the sum of the parts.  With that meal my food and wine pairing journey to enlightenment began!

When I first came to work at Whatcom Wine & Spirits in 2005 there was a definite uh-oh, what have I gotten myself into sort of feeling that came upon me when I looked around the store and acknowledged the bottles from Europe, the USA, Australia, South America, and South Africa.  My experience until then had been exclusively with wine from British Columbia and it looked to me like there was a lot of learning to be done about terroir, climate, winemaking, and even different grape varieties.  To add to the complexity, I had never been a beer drinker, and my experience with spirits was pretty much limited to a few random highballs during the B.C.I.T. years.  I had a lot to learn!  Sales representatives came to visit once the word got around about what we were doing at the Ramada Plaza, and appointments for wine tastings from every corner of the world followed.  Tastings of spirits and other beverages mingled with the wine sampling.  I bought and opened countless bottles of wine just to acquaint myself with what sort of wine a certain grape made, and what wines from different places tasted like.  I even ordered the odd beer in restaurants and sniffed the liqueur bottles on my friend’s bar to learn.

After only about eight months I was promoted to the Assistant Manager’s position, and eventually I became the store Manager.  We had already launched a Wine Club and I was putting together newsletters, organizing the educational wine tastings I’d dubbed Thursday Night Swirls, and arranging Winemaker’s Dinners.  Most recently, I have begun the Certified Specialist of Wine course offered through the Society of Wine Educators out of New York, so soon I will have some letters to put behind my name on the business cards!

I don’t know where my life’s journey will end up taking me next nor when, but right now I am deeply satisfied doing what I do and being allowed to express my creativity and passion at Whatcom Wine & Spirits.  I intend to keep on both tasting and drinking wine so that I can continue to guide my Fraser Valley followers to the very best bottles for their palates, tables, and budgets.  I find wine fascinating; I love the way it changes food and the social atmosphere so that each thing and each person becomes something and someone more somehow, by being together.  And as many awakening type of moments that I have experienced with wine (and there have been many over the years) I am always anticipating the next one, and there is always joy in sharing in the discoveries of others. 

So this is who I am, this is what I do, and you all are the reason why I do it.

Rose Siemens