When you think of the term “bike touring”, many picture motorcycles, leather jackets and chubby, tattooed, bearded guys on them. While it still may be true for the person on the bike (sometimes), we are talking here about travel on the humble bicycle, usually for long distances. This article is about an amazing mode of travel — bicycle touring.

JUST WHAT IS BICYCLE TOURING?

Simply said, bicycle touring is a type of adventure travel that mixes cycling with backpacking.

Unlike standard biking, where you ride for a few miles and go home later that day, bike touring enables you to travel from one place to another and set up camp for the night, until the next day and you repeat until you get to your ultimate destination. …

For us fruit winemakers, working with fruit is not always an easy endeavor. I would dare say that making fruit wine is more difficult and challenging than grape wine.

Despite the fact that all fruits will instinctively ferment to some degree under the right circumstances, there is a reason “fruit wine” really means “wine made from fruit other than grapes.” When asked why vitis vinifera won the world winemaking race, Dr. …

Haskap, also called honeyberry, is a super fruit now emerging in the marketplace and is starting to get known for its ability to make truly amazing fruit wines! This is an exciting development and wonderful for us fruit wine lovers.

Many home winemakers are discovering this fruit and some forward thinking and innovative commercial producers already have been selling haskap wines to discerning wine clientele.

Let’s learn a bit about this amazing fruit and why we should be thinking about making wines from it (or at least buying a few bottles from some producers).

What are haskaps?

Haskap (also called Honeyberry) is a member of the Honeysuckle family. It has a recent history of being commercially grown and was first introduced in Canada in the mid 1960’s. Originally, the berry comes from the Japanese island of Hokkaido and used to be named “hasukappu” by the local natives from that island. …

Looking outside my window as the train speeds by the Chinese countryside at over 300km/h, I am awed not by the engineering feat and technology that is taking me at this speed but by the incredible state of pollution that this and other advancements have helped create.

A depressing sight of a gray/brown sky, dead trees, plastic bags, depleted soils, countless ruined building and whole villages litter the land and sky. Millions breathing this foul, thick and strangely saccharine air. …

Surrounded by beauty but without you it’s all grey

The cuisine is exquisite but without you it's just food

Wine is fabulous but all alone, its just a drink

The sun is shining radiantly but without you, it's just light

I miss you, without you all is grey, not that great

The music is dull, food needs more salt, and the wine needs more age

You brighten up the sky, liven up a room, make a meal become a feast

With you, the flowers are more fragrant, the air is fresher

The music would be a bit louder and beats a little…

The pace of life, ever increasing in speed. The complexity of things and intricacies of often unimportant and mundane minutiae. Endless debates on politically fueled subjects.

Running to and fro after things that are not needed and worrying over other things we don’t have and events that have not happened. Countless other distractions eating up our precious, dwindling time, making us grow old before we have to and often not wiser.

Putting undue importance and reverence on vain pursuits down paths that do not lead anywhere. …