So what began as a university hobby - drinking - translated into the part time job of selling wine to local restaurants and hotels in the Kingston area. That initial intrigue ended in one of Queen's University's few student wine cellars and a tireless passion. Four years, lots of international travel, hundreds of thousands of car miles, and a lot of wine later, I represent Lifford Wine Agency's portfolio of fine wine in the Nation's capital. We're Ontario's leading importer of private import wines, so I spend every day working with top restaurants all over Ottawa and Eastern Ontario, tasting wine, writing wine lists, educating service staff and planning events. Since my time in Ottawa I've noticed that, apart from a few notable exceptions, Ottawa doesn't really have any wine blogs...at least relative to the amount of all the great food blogs in the city. We have a vibrant foodie community with lots of great events, local producers and fantastic restaurants to write about, but unfortunately wine often gets only a passing mention. So my impetus behind starting Capital Wine is to spread the word of things happening in Ottawa's wine scene. Most wine events are attended by the same great repeat customers, but so many more people are interested but don't know where to look. This is aimed to be a resource to get linked into the Ottawa wine scene from an insiders perspective.

If you stick around I'll likely be posting about Ottawa area wine tastings, wine dinners, restaurants and wine lists, LCBO wine releases in Vintages and just my general musings on wine. Thanks for reading and feel free to get in touch! Twitter @AndrewRasta

[caption id="attachment_31" align="aligncenter" width="584" caption="Photo by Scott Adamson for Kingston Life Magazine"][/caption]