I have made a successful career out of my love of food and wine.

It has been deeply informed by my aesthete-tendencies.  

I am an accomplished chef having cooked with some of Canada’s best chefs in the 1990’s in Toronto and Montreal; a certified sommelier and have worked in Vancouver’s wine trade both on the international and domestic sides of the business. I am a writer and published author, with an academic background in philosophy and critical theory.  I am proud of the many beautiful things I have designed, created, and built over the past 20 years.

In 2002 I co-founded JoieFarm Winery in Naramata where my multi-faceted journey included running an on-farm cooking school and guesthouse in its early days.  I wrote and designed an award-winning book in 2007 about this journey.  Self-taught, I boldly made wine in earnest, planting, and running vineyards over a number of unique terrior and eventually created an 18,000-case winery which became a dynamic and resilient business over two decades.

I am deeply honoured to have helped create and define a culinary culture and culture of hospitality in the Okanagan Valley during that tenure, dynamically participating in a maturing West Coast cuisine. I continue to be smitten with the bounty of the British Columbia and its potential to be one of the most unique cuisines in the world.

My creativity during this time was not limited to cooking, farming and making wine.  Captivated by the gorgeous physical landscape of the Okanagan valley, but frustrated by its cultural landscape, my entrepreneurship included many design projects; including building winery buildings, vineyards, tasting rooms, homes and gardens. I invite you to explore them below.

I attempted successfully, I think, to leave a place better than I found it.  Certainly, I left little bits of beauty behind.

After all of this creative output, I am happy to have earned the time to reflect.   In 2021 I successfully transacted and creatively sold JoieFarm Winery to a private family trust, insuring its future successes.  I re-located myself back to the coast in mid-2022 to take a well-deserved and dedicated sabbatical to spend time with family, friends, and most importantly to travel cook and eat.   During this “season-of-rest” I am thrilled to have come back to place of deep appreciation and continued fascination with the cuisine of my province.  I am currently taking great pleasure returning to writing about food from a cultural point- of-view. 

“Good At Lunch” is my return to academic persuasions, a deep love of essay writing, and the art of poignant criticism.  

Indulgent? Yes.

Relevant? Certainly, to me.  

Timely, 100%. 

In this space I wish to preserve literary criticism beyond the world of memes and the witty quips of social media.  Mostly, I wish to share my love of eating, travel and beautiful things through the lens of a lifetime spent dedicated to the art of noticing.

  • I renovated (and eventually re-built) a 100-year old farmhouse several times over two decades. Each iteration rose like a phoenix, serving the business as it grew, morphed and changed.

    The iconic Joie Farmhouse grew from a culinary guesthouse & cooking school, to a family home. Its derelict orchard transitioned to an organic farm and eventually Joie’s own vineyard.

    The winery was built and the farmhouse became a warren of offices, my son’s nursery, staff accommodation, and eventually a pop-up tasting room, who’s cheerful barn-red colour became iconic of fun, European-inspired fun-times.

    I designed, built and spec-ed the equipment for the winery, upgraded septic systems, laid irrigation systems, planted 14 acres of vineyard (the first five by-hand in 2007) and generally learned how to deal with, and effectively communicate with every manner of trade and sub-trade teams, over two decades to execute these projects effectively on-time and on-budget.

    Eventually, in 2017, I replaced the original farmhouse with a stunning, multi-functional tasting room building- enduringly painted, its signature red.

  • Sworder House Link in here

  • Over twenty years I learned about permaculture, draught-tolerant local plants both as it related to viticulture but also to various landscaping projects accompanying the various projects and design builds. During the re-build of the Joie Farmhouse I was privileged to work with three local master gardeners to plant a stunning beneficial meadow at Joie, that still undulates in the persistent breeze of the Naramata Bench.

    In 2010-2013 I actively participated in a custom, award-winning architectural home with my best friend and went on to execute three other design/built projects with Ritchie Custom homes in Penticton as well as planting another undulating meadow and living stone wall at my last home.

  • Dale Nigel Goble was my friend and collaborator for 20 years. Dale was a graphic artist, digital pioneer in the early dot.com days and prolific creative genius.

    It was a privilege to work with him during his inexhaustible career. Dale’s aesthetic permeated everything I created at Joie and was instrumental in its branding from day one. His aesthetic deeply informed the way which I have publicly presented myself for two decades. He had a magical talent for taking my concepts and sketches (I used to “fax “him my poor drawings) or even a snippet of a conversation, and creating an image which projected the energy for what was needing to be communicated out into the world. Dale took the actual “esprit” of my creative joie de vivre and gave it a corporal form. We would finesse images and details until they were perfect projections of my vision.

    Dale passed away in December of 2019. May he have found deep peace. His art still graces the walls of my home, and his label art lives my cellar, the energy of which flies from the bottle when they opened. I have deep gratitude for his understanding my creative endeavors, his undying enthusiasm for my personal brand, his positivity and creative genius. I would like to share some of our work and favorite projects here.

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