A Message From Our President Dave Burt
Our annual wine judging competition and evening social was held yesterday at Beban Park Social Centre. Results have been posted on the BCAWA website (http://www.bcawa.ca/). In all, 133 wines were judged Saturday morning to early afternoon. Congratulations and a huge thanks to our Chief Steward, Doug Markin on a well run competition, and thanks also to all the volunteers – without you guys there would be not competition (judges, table stewards, data entry team, post judging bottle collation – 30 of us in all).
We are also appreciative of our data entry team, Vern Rogers and Mike Scott for timely entry of the judging results onto the BCAWA online system. As we sipped on those gorgeous best-of-class and gold medal wines last evening, we owe a big thanks to the post-judging crew, Don Graham, Doug Morrison, Carol Fornelli, George Beck, and Peter Huyghebaert, for their efforts in labelling, topping up, corking, boxing, etc. to get all those wines ready for the tasting tables and not-so-silent auction. Speaking of auctions, great job Jim Thorp in coaxing the timid, and not-so-timid, to raise their hands for the loud auction.
Now on to the silent auction. I have to say I was blown away by how you all came forward with so many and such a variety of silent auction donations. This speaks to your enthusiasm for the club, and is heartening to the organizers…that you are 100% behind their efforts. We can thank Cindy Scott, Jennifer Kelso, and Christa Fox for pulling together all the pieces of the silent auction and creating such a magnificent display. And did you notice the enticing graphics associated with some auction items…for sure you saw the poster on the easel at the entrance – all thanks to the graphic talents of our webmaster, David Holmes.
The one glitch in the evening was the failure of our Square to read credit cards. A big thanks to Jennifer and Cathy for persevering through the confusion.
Finally, due to issues with the card reader, I did not get to properly thank the key person behind such a successful evening, our Social Coordinator, Cindy Scott. For Cindy, the past 2 weeks has been a full time job as she tirelessly attended to all the details in putting the on event (I received many an email at 7:30 in the morning indicating she was already hard at it). Cindy prepared our lasagna judges lunch, was a main player in the silent auction, dealt with the insurance people and Beban Park staff, worked with the caterer on the appetizers selection…basically organized our whole evening so that we could sip away and enjoy each others company. When you next raise a glass, please send some thoughts of thanks to our Social Coordinator Extraordinaire!
It was wonderful to be in your company – thank you all!
-Dave
Our sincere thanks to all the companies, members and friends who so generously donated items:
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