RKS 2026 British Columbia Wine: 2021 Volcanic Hills Magma Red from British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley

Volcanic Hills Winery is located on the Southeast slope of Boucherie Mountain a 60-million-year-old dormant volcano.

It is a blend of Pinot Noir (51.4%). Marechal Foch (14.3%), Gamay Noir ( 7.4%),  Merlot (21.4%) and Cabernet Franc (5.5%). Each varietal was fermented and barrel aged in French and American oak for 14 months then blended.

Aroma: Black cherry, raspberry, red plum, chocolate covered cherry bon bons. Definite oak influence; perhaps too much

Palate: Firm. Lean.Tannic with controlled acidity. Very little fruit: perhaps faint raspberry therefore lacking much of any telltale Okanagan Valley character. Tannic finish.

Personality: Bland, unimpressive especially when expecting excellence one might expect from Okanagan Valley red wines.

Cellarbility: Drink now.

Food Match: A “Friday night wine”.

Price: $30 CDN.

RKS 2026 British Columbia Wine Rating: 79/100.

(Volcanic Hills 2021 Magma Red, Okanagan Valley, BC VQA, Volcanic Hills Winery, West Kelowna, British Columbia, 750 mL, 14%).

RKS Literature: Letter from Leopold Mozart to His Son 24November1777, Salzburg: No Money Then No Friends and No Credit

“A journey like this is no joke, you’ve no experience of this sort of thing, you need to have more important things on your mind than foolish games. You have to try and anticipate a hundred different things, otherwise you’ll suddenly find yourself in the shit without any money-and where you have no money you’ll have no friends either, even if you give a hundred lessons for nothing, and even if you write sonatas and spend every night fooling around from 10 till 12 instead of devoting your self to more important matters .”

“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: WHAT’S IN A NAME!

WHAT’S IN A NAME!

My name is Rory Dylan Stephen.

On my Canadian Kennel Club Certificate of Registration my name is Rory of Arendale 2ND.

My father is Kozo’s Gunther.

My mother’s name is Ardendale’s Scottish Lass.

When I am serious trouble my name is RORY.

When I am in very serious trouble my name is RORY DYLAN STEPHEN!!!

Yet I have many other names some being;

Sweetie

Pumpkin

Poopy

Dylan (by mistake)

Snookums

The White Rocket

The White Terror

Naughty Puppy!

Ror

Big guy

I know these names are intended for me by the tone they are delivered. They are terms of endearment (even Rory Dylan Stephen) and that is good with me.

RKS Poetry Anthology: “Beat up a poet today”

Beat up a poet today

Butterflies embrace the sky

A God given sunny day and the soul flies high

If this grade 5 rhyme is poetry then certainly something has gone awry

Liquidate this trivial optimism

Viewed through a socially irrelevant mindless prism

Quash this verse

Place it in the next outgoing hearse

Revel in the grandmothers who sigh at the mention of shit and sewer

No reason to put the poet on a skewer

Instead, bombast the demeaning jingoism of the brewer

You complain that poetry is over the head of the masses

You are wrong it is meaningless and beneath them when always enveloped in a rosy hue

Why is there no discussion of sniffing glue or the paying of class dues

Beat up

And thrash the poets of the ivory tower

It’s time they awoke with a cold shower

With the millions that suffer waiting to see the way

While poets ignore the every day

Then let us level them to the floors

These vocabularian whores

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Literature: Letter from Mozart to Father 17October1777, Augsburg: How Mozart Deals with an Arrogant Ass

“A certain Pater Aemilian, an arrogant ass and a simpleton of his profession, was in an especially hearty mood. He kept on wanting to joke with my cousin, but she just made fun of him-finally when he was drunk (which didn’t take long), he started to talk about music. He sang a canon and I said never in my whole life heard a finer one. I said I’m sorry, I can’t join in as I’ve had no natural gift for intoning. That doesn’t matter he said. He started. I was the third voice, but I made up some very different words, for example. O you prick, lick my arse. He said to me: if only we could have spent longer together. I’d like to discuss the art of composition with you. Then the discussion would soon be over, I said Get lost.

RKS Literature: Letter from Leopold Mozart to His Son 14November1777, Salzburg: What’s Necessary in Paris

“You can’t spend the whole winter travelling; and if you plan to stay anywhere, it should be in  large town with lots of people where there are hopes and opportunities of earning some money: and where is such a place to be found in the whole of this region?-apart from Paris- but life in Paris requires a completely different attitude to life, a different way of thinking, you have to be attentive and every day think of ways of earning money and exercise extreme politeness in order to ingratiate yourself with people of standing.”

RKS Literature: Lording it Like a Real Gentleman (Gogol)

“By and large he lorded it like a real gentleman, as they say in the provinces, married a pretty girl with a dowry of two hundred serfs and several thousand in cash. These funds were immediately lavished on a team of six truly excellent horses, gilt locks for the doors, a tame monkey for the house and a French butler. The young lady’s serfs together with two hundred of his own, were mortgaged for some business transaction. In brief, he was an exemplary landowner, a real paragon.”

Nikolai Gogol, “The Carriage”, 1836.

RKS Literature: Did I Really Lose My Nose (Gogol)

“My God, my God. What have I done to deserve this? If I’d lost an arm or a leg it wouldn’t be so bad. Even without ears things wouldn’t be pleasant, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. A man without a nose, though, is God knows what, neither fish nor fowl. Just something to be thrown out of the window. If my nose had been lopped off during the war, a duel, at least I might have had some say in the matter. But to lose it for no reason at all and with nothing to show for it, not even a copeck. No, it’s absolutely impossible…it couldn’t have gone just like that! Never. Must have been a dream, or perhaps I drank some of that vodka I use for rubbing down my beard after shaving instead of water….”

Nikolai Gogol, “The Nose”, 1836.

RKS Literature: The Hurons’ Anger Breaks Montcalm’s Promise of Safe Passage for the Surrendering British

“More than two thousand raving savages broke from the forest at the signal and threw themselves across the fatal plain with instinctive alacrity. We shall not dwell on the revolting horrors that succeeded. Death was everywhere, and in his most terrific and disgusting aspects. Resistance only seemed to inflame the murderers, who inflicted their furious blows long after their victims were beyond the power of their resentment. The flow of blood might be likened to the outbreaking of a torrent; and as the natives became heated and maddened by the sight, many of them even kneeled to the earth, and drank freely, exultingly, hellishly of the crimson tide.”

James Fenimore Cooper, “The Last of the Mohicans”, 1826.

“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: THEY STOLE MY STEPS AND MADE ME NUTSO

THEY STOLE MY STEPS AND MADE ME NUTSO

It is all this neutering that is causing interminable problems for everyone!

I can’t enjoy my long walks. We are averaging 8,000 steps a day. I can’t meet my friends both humans and dogs. I can’t puppy fight.

I can’t tear around the snow-covered backyard. That is about 2,000 steps a day. Avoid busting open the stitches.

Can’t get the underbelly wet as may create infection risk.

Where can my puppy energy be expended?

Running around the house and creating more trouble than usual.

Bob says I am temporarily nutso!