A Message from Tina Jones

Photo by Thomas Fricke

What a year this has been, and how developments have changed week by week! We do not even know what Winnipeg and Manitoba will look like when you read this or what our restaurant and hospitality scene will look like. There is so much that is uncertain. But what we do know is that working in wine is part of a culture of hope. Winegrowers tend vines and harvest fruit that will be enjoyed years in the future; winemakers make wines that will sometimes develop over a long time and then bring a special touch to an evening for people they will never meet. Wine merchants like us order wine a year in advance, hoping that wine lovers will love the wine we buy. The nature of hospitality brings together optimistic people. We want that to continue long into our future.

When we began to discuss what this issue of The Cellar Door might look like, we could not help but talk about the dominating news of the past year. We have all needed to pivot continually, with regulations, shut-downs, the second wave—restrictions and worries that never seemed to stop. This reality meant that we quickly abandoned our original plan for this issue and decided to focus on a part of our community that has been very hard hit: restaurants.

Please take some time to read every page of this issue. We look at the culture of restaurant hospitality with Sylvia Jansen, as well as the hard numbers about how they are affected and what each of us can do to support them. We shop local, taking a tour of Winnipeg restaurants, and see a sampling of the creativity by Winnipeg chefs with food and wine pairings by our wine team. Ricki-Lee Podolecki shows us how to venture into new wine territory, and Mike Muirhead offers pointers for building your wine collection. It has been challenging to put together a magazine when our talented photographer Ian McCausland, like so many other people in the creative community, has been deemed a “non-essential service” and is unable to work, even remotely. Thank you to our restaurants and customers who submitted photos to fill our pages!

As always, we are grateful for your support, and we value your feedback. When you come in, please say hello to the Jones & Company family. We are all living in these crazy circumstances, and we still love to see our friends!

To supporting our community!

Tina Jones

Everything good. Everything local.

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