How American Businesses Are Leveraging AI for Wealth Creation

This has not only resulted in a more competitive party system, but will lay the groundwork for one in the future. It means that immediate elections will be close: the UCP will control rural areas, the NDP will control urban areas, and the winner will be decided in the suburbs. It is also possible that, while appealing to Western alienation may survive among certain conservative voters, it will become less effective at mobilizing support among more moderate or undecided people in the future.And it could lead to increased polarization along partisan and geographical lines, as it has in the rest of Canada. Alberta's legend as the "last best west" has been supplanted by a rapidly expanding city. When you're in the thick of things, it's easy to forget that traveling is a privilege. It's especially easy when the lady at the airline customer service desk at Frankfurt Airport tells you that you're about to have the luxury of an unscheduled overnight layover in Eddersheim rather than a night of negroni hopping in Turin, where the hotel room you've already paid for awaits you.However, it is a privilege, and one of its invaluable lessons is to learn to accept what it provides you, make the most of it, and try to have fun because you are paying for it anyhow. The schnitzel and beer in Eddersheim are satisfactory.

This week, I've been traveling with my young adult son

who is between terms at university and working for the summer. His mother's side of our family is trans-Atlantic, and after seeing relations in the United Kingdom, we have abandoned the rest of our nuclear family and traveled to Piedmont in Northern Italy to become and reacquainted with the wine and food culture there. It has worked out well, despite or perhaps because of certain re-adjustments.We scheduled three winery excursions in the steep Barolo and Barbaresco districts surrounding the medieval cathedral town of Alba, southeast of Turin. Only one of them actually happened. This was owing in part to our German delay, but it was also the result of life getting in the way of the best of plans.In any case, the one we made it to was outstanding, and it will deserve its own column (coming soon). The other two will happen someday (hopefully), but not during this trip I enjoy visiting vineyards. Seeing how and where fine wine is made only adds to its appeal. Meeting and observing people who survive in their natural environment is also beneficial. Sometimes it's a multimillion-dollar cathedral dedicated to Dionysus, and other times it's a simple converted barn or garden shed.One of the things wine writers check for when visiting vineyards is the cleanliness of the business, which can have an impact on the wine's quality. Another consideration is the type, shape, and size of the containers in which wine is fermented and stored. A visit can rapidly reveal many of these visible indications of winemaking.

I'd like to make a more esoteric observation 

in the form of a question: Would I wish to work here? Happy people create happy wine. Or so I'd like to believe.Visiting a winery is usually enjoyable. The best winemakers are usually natural hosts, though this is not always the case. I joke that I am a professional houseguest, and I freely acknowledge that enjoying generous hospitality is a requirement of this career, which I sorely missed during the pandemic's lockdowns. Of course, wineries are also where the wine is stored, so if you want to taste as much as possible, here is the place to go.Inside stories, information that does not appear on the website, and technical sheets with test findings are also available at the winery. This wine was made from vineyards planted by a grandpa following the war. Alternatively, as a young woman, the winemaker was dubbed "the crazy lady of the village" because she refused to put pesticides on her family's vineyards.But this week, we're not really on a wine tour, but rather going through wine country, which provides a unique type of education in and of itself. North Americans will probably never drink wine like the French, Italians, Argentines, or anybody. So, what? We don't drive like the Germans or Japanese.Seeing and tasting wine in its natural setting allows you to grasp why it is made, in addition to the mechanics of how. Over the last decade or so, I've traveled to Italy more than anywhere else, and it's amazing to watch the small changes in wine culture.

It's a little point, but I've noticed that the average wine 

order at dinner is one bottle, almost always red. It's one bottle regardless of whether the table seats two, three, or four. I'm not sure if it's magic or a really well-coordinated effort between servers and the kitchen, but the meal arrives and is consumed almost exactly at the same time as the bottle is finished. When the final plate is emptied, it's time to order coffee (or grappa, or both).A wine that can carry an entire dinner must be versatile. A wine that bears the menu choices of more than one person must be considerably more adaptable. So, the wines I see most frequently on other people's dinner tables in Piedmont are less likely to be the region's well-known wines, such as Barolo or Barbera, and more likely to be lesser-known lighter reds such as Dolcetto, Freisa, or Pelaverga. (All three are difficult—though not impossible—to find in Canada, for reasons detailed in my previous column.)