Friend of the Industry: Jurgen Gothe

Jurgen Gothe is one of Canada's most widely heard, read-and watched-media personalities, as well as one of the country's foremost commentators on food and drink. He explores wine and spirits, food and restaurants, music and leisure in all major media-locally, nationally and internationally.

He is best known to a vast number of Canadians (plus even more American listeners who tune in regularly, along the 49th Parallel) for his award-winning afternoon drive-home program, DiscDrive, now in its 20th consecutive year, on CBC Radio Two. DiscDrive is heard coast to coast every weekday, from 15:06 to 18:00 EST, and is carried by various Public Broadcasting Networks in the U.S.

He has just won his third Gold Medal (Best Network Radio Personality) at the New York International Radio Festival, making him the Network's only three-time gold medal winning host, and the only broadcaster in the history of the New York International Radio Festival to take the hat trick.

He has spent three full seasons as co-host of Serdy Video's national food and wine television show, Simply Wine & Cheese. In the fall of 1999 he became the food consultant and co-host for a new series, A Taste of Home, seen on CTV and Global TV in all major Canadian cities. His challenge was to create original recipes in each episode, based on regional cooking styles and ingredients.

He then wrote the first season of 13 episodes of the new Alliance Atlantis/Food Network production, "New Classics" with chef Rob Feenie which aired to national acclaim.

Jurgen Gothe has been frequently featured in Western Living Magazine (where his recent creation, The True North Chili has sparked a chili cook-off as part of Eat! Vancouver, in the spring of 2003.) For Western Living he continues to provide an annual round-up of gift-set CDs each December.

Carte Blanche was the name of his popular weekly column in The Vancouver Sun, which ran for eight years before he resigned from it to contribute a regular West Coast restaurant column to The Globe & Mail.

More recently, he has taken on the challenges of Food & Wine Editor for Canada's "coffee table" magazine, NUVO; having appeared in every issue since its inception, recently with a 10-page photo-story on his cooking experiences in Tuscany, a major feature on ushering in the new millennium, with six vintages of Roederer Champagne, on the beach in Tahiti, and exploring breakfasts in Hong Kong. He continues to profile leading Canadian chefs in his column The Chef's Table.

Other recent NUVO features have included a look at the first legally available Absinthe in Canada, and "a dozen great little London restaurants none of your friends know about..!"; North America's first all-native winery, Nk'Mip, and the fabulous Pullman Gallery of art deco cocktail collectibles in London.

His Traveling Appetites column most recently explored the first all-Arctic foods restaurant in Copenhagen, Jamie Oliver's new "Fifteen" in London and Gabriele Ferron's "all-risotto" restaurant near Verona.

Jurgen Gothe is the wine columnist for Vancouver's Entertainment weekly, The Georgia Straight, where his irreverent views on demystifying wine appear in weekly columns that are frequently syndicated to other Canadian cities. That beat has been expanded to include new beers (Brew of the Week). He is regularly featured in numerous other journals, commenting on his favorite subjects.

He can also be heard twice daily, seven days a week, on CKBD 600AM, with his lifestyle capsules Vancouver Flavors.

As well as writing on wine he enjoys exploring the world of spirits and liqueurs so it was virtually inevitable he would join Canada's largest-circulation consumer beverage journal, Wine Access Magazine, where his column Dispatches from the Spirit World began appearing regularly with the first issue of 2003.

He is one of the original founding members of Cuisine Canada, the Canadian Culinary Alliance, and a member of IACP, the International Association of Culinary Professionals, with which organization he became, in 2000, the first Canadian journalist to judge in the prestigious Julia Child Cookbook Awards competition.

He has judged food and wine at all levels, all over the world: from the Saanich Country Fair to the Hong Kong International Food Competition; from the Canadian Wine Selection Competition for External Affairs in Ottawa, to the American Cabernet Sauvignon Finals in New York; from the Quady Dessert Competition in Vancouver to the International Restaurant Association's Sangiovese competition in Chicago.

In the summer of 2001, he established a new creative/production group, QGITV, based in Vancouver and affiliated with two production companies, in Montreal and Los Angeles. QGITV's first series, all about aphrodisiac cookery is presently under option by a leading US network. QGITV's next project is all about country cooking and country music and could see a major superstar back on series television soon.

For many years, he has hosted a May cooking class at the Villa Delia School in Tuscany. A forced hiatus, due to health problems, saw him sit several sessions out, but he returns there in to explore the world of the super Tuscans, wine and food, in May 2006.

He makes regular guest appearances---as host, commentator and sometimes charity auctioneer. Past appearances have included the Vancouver Symphony, Victoria Symphony, Toronto Symphony (5-week Beethoven series), Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Manitoba Opera Company, Winnipeg Symphony, Banff Writers' Festival, Vancouver Writers' & Readers' Festival, Sechelt Festival of the Written Arts etc. He enjoys addressing groups that range from the University of Toronto Law Faculty graduates, to the B.C. Surgical Society, to the International Mach Shock-wave Symposium, on his favorite subjects: food, wine and music.

Jurgen Gothe finds his writings frequently anthologized; among the books is The Complete Cat Catalog (Workman, New York); The Canadian Book of Humor (Toronto); and the just-released The Cats of our Lives (Secaucus, NJ); and Reader's Digest's Canada Coast to Coast (Montreal). He has just joined the writers' line-up at Whitecap Books of Vancouver and Toronto, to deliver several new titles including a humorous wine 'dictionary', and an "all butter, all cream, all sugar" Politically Incorrect Cookbook.

His first new book in the Whitecap catalog is The DiscDrive 20th Anniversary Cookbook which appears in October 2005.

In conjunction with several leading corporate sponsors, as well as NUVO Magazine he is at work on the definitive, totally subjective Vancouver restaurant guide, scheduled for publication in September 2006.

Under his own name he has published four previous books, released four DiscDrive CDs including the 2-CD set DiscDrive 20th Anniversary CD which was just released in June, 2005) and six video productions. He has recently been profiled in a documentary for Troika Productions of Vancouver, as part of the award winning Pacific Profiles series, and was featured in the millennium issue of Chatelaine Magazine, as one of 12 influential Canadians involved with food, making predictions for the future.

He will be appearing in the role of The Journalist (originally played by Richard Burton in the London production) of Jeff Wayne's musical; The War of the Worlds, at the H.R. McMillan Planetarium in Vancouver, during October and November 2005.

On the corporate front he is CEO of Quincy Gothe Inc. a corporate communi-cations consultancy, President of Craigdarloch Importing, a company currently focusing on interesting food and drink products from around the world, an a principal in Ocean's 3, a new venture producing and marketing organic sea salt products from Canada's Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

He divides his time between Vancouver and Mayne Island, B.C.; Ripoli di Lari, Italy and any other place where there are good things to eat, drink and hear.

More information, samples of audio or video work, as well as copies of books and CDs may be obtained from (604) 681-9601.