Recent Articles from Cathie Beck
Ode to an opener
Last week, as a joke, I look up gadgets for wine drinkers and bikers. And guess what? Idiocy abounds and it’s all yours, so long as you have an American Express. There’ the little two-strappy thing that attaches to that bicycle bar between your legs to “help” you carry your wine bottle while toodl...
Rockin’ my wine world
Panzano’s Executive Chef, Elise Wiggins, and her Umbria, Italy-born colleague, Gennaro Villella, changed my wine-drinking life last week. Under nights filled with a full moon, deep and delicious vineyard wanderings, and Verona, Italy third-and fourth-generation winemakers, Elise and Gennaro introd...
Wine-ing on Facebook
Since I waste so much time on Facebook, the question popped up in my brain the other day: Is social media — Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn or Foursquare or Pinterest — making my wine life more enjoyable? Though one is free and the other costly, the fact is: They’re both addictive substances so sh...
Hooked on the good stuff
Today, I drink wines priced at about $20 or more a bottle. I know this because I’ve graduated to Argonaut Wine & Spirits’ “3rd Tier” shelf. Argonaut sells their wines (more or less) from four shelves: starting at the bottom shelf and working up to the fourth shelf, they are priced, respectively, a...
Executive edge: Gene Sobczak
Patterson, N.J.-born Gene Sobczak, Colorado Symphony Orchestra’s CEO, admits that his birthplace did not necessarily instill music and the arts into his DNA. Be that as it may, Sobczak says music, culture and the arts are organically and deeply embedded into his soul. "Patterson’s definitely not a...
Painting the town black
The thing to know about Colorado’s business and arts communities is that playing well together helps both thrive. Though media headlines scream daily of economic strife and record unemployment, mom-and-pop shops and corporations alike want their local arts communities to flourish, so much so, they...
Great ways to give back
So you’re a small to medium-sized business that’s chugging along, except you want to do more — more as in being more community enriching, more giving, more socially responsible. But short of buying two more cases of Girl Scout cookies, your ideas for contributing, for doing something meaningful as...
A brainy bad boy
I can’t help it: I cannot even watch Bill Burr walk onto a stage without beginning to chuckle beneath my breath. Burr is a guy’s comic, which explains nothing about why this writer (a woman) relates to, wants to personally know, and completely gets where Burr is continually coming from. Burr hints...
She drinks hard for the money
I've had a credo my entire adult life when it comes to mingling with work folks and drinking alcohol. It is this: I don't. Right or wrong, I made drinking with colleagues verboten because of New Orleans. In 1980s New Orleans, Louisiana, any event was a reason to drink. Schwegman's - as but one exa...
Argentina, here I come!
I’ve got this bad habit of only traveling when the trip looks “just so.” I won’t go on a cruise; I won’t sign up for any travel agency’s “group trip” – particularly, “specific” trips like “singles trips” or “short, dyed-blond-haired people” trips. Really, I don’t travel unless it’s grassroots R[...]
Get it right: Rieslings ain’t so sweet
I have nothing either good or bad to say about Rieslings — that very German, sweet white that I’ve really only tried in Germany — and which I completely and quickly forgot about. I mean, really. If I want an interesting white, give me a Sauvignon Blanc or even a white Bordeaux. But ignoring the […]
The Ka-ching of culture
When Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper opened the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts breakfast in November, he jumped straight to the largest number arrived at in the CBCA’s 2008 Economic Study: $1.691 billion. That’s right — nine zeroes.