Wine and Glasses - a unique wine pairing event

To celebrate our third birthday we decided to throw a unique party, where we explored wines paired to our glasses collections.  Sommelier Shelley Joyce did a great selecting different wines to compliment the different collections that we have at Ocean, here's the journey we went on.

To start the evening, the first wine was from local vineyard Petite Riviere (http://www.petiterivierevineyards.ca/).  BonBon is a sparkling fruit wine with NY Muscat blended with apple and cranberry wine.  This is a fun, light, bubbly wine and paired perfectly with Kirk & Kirk's Kaleidoscope collection.

 

For our second wine, we headed over to Europe and enjoyed a German Riesling, paired with ic! berlin.  Moselland Ars Vitis has a crisp, clean taste, precise in its structure with almost mineral or industrial flavour notes to it.  What a great match for the stainless sheet metal that is ic! berlin.

 

Heading slightly further south, we next enjoyed our first red of the evening and the first offering from France - Montmija Le Bistro Rouge.  This blend of Merlot, Carignan and Syrah parallels beautifully with TD Tom Davies.  With TD Tom Davies we can blend different colours and shapes together to make unique made to measure eyewear.

We continued to travel south through Europe on our winery tour, this time heading to Spain.  This was actually going to be our last wine of the evening, and was our second red.  Shelley had wanted to choose something particular to pair well with the natural material eyewear that Rolf Spectacles creates, so she choose a biodynamic wine from Priorat, Maquinon.  Garnacha grapes create a beautiful wine which is aged in oak barrels and has a distinctive intense cherry colour, almost violet in fact.  Considering the time, dedication and precision that goes in to every pair of Rolf Spectacles, this wine is a wonderful pairing.

 

The evening was well rounded off with a beautiful vintage Cognac Château de Montifaud VSOP.  This fruity cognac which is naturally coloured through aging alone, comes from the Petite Champagne growing region.  Luxurious, fashionable, classical, glamorous, cognac pairs beautifully with Oliver Goldsmith Sunglasses.  Just like the cognac, Oliver Goldsmith Sunglasses are iconic with a heritage which is second to none, worn by celebrities from the 60's onward OG is the stylish choice of the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Princess Grace de Monaco, Michael Caine, Peter Sellers to name but a few.

What a great fun evening and a fabulous way to celebrate this milestone in Ocean's journey.  We are very grateful to Shelley for taking us on this journey and for picking a wonderful collection of wines to enjoy alongside our unique eyewear collections.  If you'd like to get in touch with Shelley she can be reached on Twitter @wileywordsmyth.

Some more pictures from the evening:

Shelley Joyce - our fabulous Sommelier 

What a year, 2015! (Part 2)

2015 was a year filled with just so much awesomeness that we had to split the review in to two parts, madness I hear you cry, but that's just how it is!

July

So for some if you've read the first part of the review (and it would be rude to get to this stage and to

not have done so!), you're probably thinking, "Wait a minute, they've missed out something kind of important ... Alicia!".  You're right, Licensed Optician Alicia Austin joined the merry crew of Ocean Optometry in May.

Alicia came to us with years of experience as an optician, however, the range of unique, handmade products that we have was new to her.  Really loving the challenge, Alicia has been very quick to learn the intricacies of all of the ranges and the special details which make them unique.  It seemed like no time at all, for example, before Alicia was creating tailor made eyewear with the TD Tom Davies range.  It's an incredible experience to receive a pair of glasses which have been made to measure specifically to fit you, crafted with the unique colour palette that you desire; as an eyegeek, there is nothing quite like helping someone through that process and seeing the end creation of all your work being worn by someone!

Come in, say Hi! to Alicia, check out her level of eye-geekiness and see if she can stand up to the challenge!  At the same time she can't help sort out some fabulous eywear for you.

September

This was an incredible month for us, which really set Ocean Optometry apart on the world stage.  We knew that Kirk & Kirk were launching a new collection in the Fall of 2015 and these launches coincide with the eyewear exhibitions at Paris, Vegas or Hong Kong (Spring is Milan or New York).  Just how excited were we, then, to have Jason & Karen Kirk with us as the first optical business in the world to see and show the collection!  Very!

Kaleidoscope is a unique collection of handmade frames, colourful and like they have the appearance of almost being made of glass.  These frames are made from a unique Italian acrylic which makes them lightweight and comfortable to wear.

Jason & Karen Kirk - Designers / Owners of Kirk & Kirk

To be the first location to show off these beautiful creations three weeks before the industry first got to view them was an incredible honour.  Jason & Karen were here to answer questions and chat with people about their amazing eyewear, including the Vivarium and Solarium collections and the new Kaleidoscope range.  They were definitely a hit with Halifax as we had orders for new frames even before the were being hand made in France!

Come and check out the collection for yourself.

November

Just when you think things are going to be plain sailing, another idea pops up and you're off on adventure again!  After all of the excitement of having Kirk & Kirk with us, we'd enjoyed being part of the City Harvest and Nocturne events again and our thoughts were turning to the coming Winter and Festive Season.  

One thing that we always enjoy throughout the year is the space that our window provides for some fun displays, don't forget to check them out if you're walking along Blowers Street!  Here's our pretty winter scene to finish off the year!

Many thanks to everyone who made 2015 such a fabulous year!

New frame range arrives @ Ocean Optometry

Kirk & Kirk - Vivarium

This may not come as a surprise to you, but we really do love our eyewear ranges here at Ocean!  We travel to the best international exhibits to meet with the finest creators of eyewear in the world.  At that point we then individually select the frames to bring back to Halifax for you to enjoy!

That may sound like quite the process, however, it makes a world of difference for our office!  It means that we don't just have generically styled and humdrum collections for you to choose from.

The arrival of a completely new collection is always an exciting event, and recently we had the great pleasure of opening up quite a special box from Kirk & Kirk.  Launched in September 2014 at Silmo, in Paris, these were a must have for us as soon as we saw them.

Kirk Brothers

Heritage

Jason and Karen Kirk have quite the pedigree as eyewear designers, so when they announced their
new venture, we knew it was going to be special.

Sidney and Percy Kirk first opened their workshop creating eyewear in 1919 in London, UK.  Renowned for their innovation and style, the Kirk Brothers soon became a benchmark to be compared against.  Three generations later, Jason and Karen Kirk are doing it all again!

One thing that we become quite nerdilly obsessed about, attention to detail - Kirk & Kirk has this in bucket loads!

Their inaugural ophthalmic collection is called Vivarium.  Vivarium is inspired by the Victorian obsession with science and nature, each frame is named after a famous scientist of that era - models include such great names as Curie, Fleming, Darwin and Carson.

Hand Crafted

Beautifully handmade in France, the frames balance a strong look, with contemporary styles and fashion leading shapes.  Kirk & Kirk have sourced an exceptional Italian acrylic material to create the frames with, allowing for a unique colour palette.  The metallic finish to the colours gives a warmth and depth which just isn't available in any other material.

The collection features blue, bordeaux, anthracite, brown, green and silver colours.  Describing them does not really do them justice, though, you need to try them on and see how the colour subtly alters as you move your head.  In some ways it almost seems like the frame is alive!

The idea of life is brought out in another unique feature that the collection has - decorative pins.  Each frame features two pins made in either 925 sterling silver or 9 carat gold, crafted with incredible detail by artisan jewellers in England.  Studying the workmanship that the pins features really highlights the attention to detail that Kirk & Kirk have used when creating this collection.

Intricate and whimsical, delicate and yet bold all at the same time you can be sure that you will be in touch with your inner Victorian Dandy when you choose Kirk & Kirk Vivarium!

Silmo 2013 - Part 1

Dr John Wilson and Dr Euan McGinty headed to Paris at the end of September to visit the Silmo 2013 exhibition.  Silmo is one of the eye events in the calendar each year and is a real destination event, alongside Mido in Milan and Vision Expo East in New York.  It was a big commitment to decide to take the time out of our diary to go and not something that John or Euan decided to do lightly, so, was it worth it?

While it might sound glamorous to say that we head to these shows, unfortunately the truth is quite different.  Travelling east to Europe invariably involves an overnight flight and our routing was even more frustrating as we had to first travel west for a couple of hours to connect via the big TO!  We were on our way, though!

On our way to Paris!

The morning that we arrived, we quickly cleared through French customs and immigration and headed directly to the show from the plane, there really is no time to lose.  Thankfully we had decided to keep our appointments to the minimum for the very first day, using the time to get our bearings and get adjust for the time zone.

In saying that we were looking at a range of beautiful hand crafted Japanese frames within forty minutes of arriving!  Choosing the eyewear ranges that we stock is a bit of a strange blend of business sense, science in manufacture, the art of the frame design and I guess it would only be right to say je ne sais quoi!  These frames weren't for us.

Jason & Karen Kirk

We continued to explore the exhibition halls, looking at frame collections, examining instrument and
technology developments and immersing ourselves in an atmosphere which is definitely an eye geek's heaven.  With great delight on the first day we also met with Jason and Karen Kirk who have moved on from twenty years of Kirk Originals to create Kirk & Kirk.  This definitely looks to be an exciting development by these eyewear innovators and something we are going to be keeping a very keen eye on.

With day one done, we were both flagging and it was time to find our hotel!  We both felt that the first day had been a great way to start our visit, we had discovered some exhibitors that we knew we wanted to re-visit and were excited for our upcoming appointments.

Tonight's dinner was in an Indian restaurant!

Day two started bright and early, well set up by a lovely French breakfast we ventured on to the Paris light rail system and navigated our way to the show.  Our first appointment was not until 11 am, so with a couple of hours to spare we set about exploring an area of the halls that we didn't get to the day before.  It may sound strange but with almost a thousand exhibitors in 80,000 square metres of floor space, this is quite the show.

Bernhard - Rolf Eyewear

The appointed hour came and we met with Bernhard from Rolf Eyewear.  We are incredibly excited to be working with Rolf Eyewear.  They are the masters of eyewear made from natural products and there is quite simply nothing that comes close to their frames.  We had ordered frames from Rolf when we met with them in March in New York (honestly, it only sounds glamorous!) and as of yet we had not received a single item from them.  So why were we meeting with them?

The initial frames we are stocking are made completely from wood, including the spring joint!  Manufacturing the frames is a lengthy process and this was something we were aware of from the outset.  So we had arranged our meeting with a view to finding out what was also available, what was in development and also to look at ordering stock for the following six months.  We were not disappointed!  Rolf has mastered the art of eyewear in materials not just including wood, but also stone and buffalo horn.  While there may be other buffalo horn and wooden frame ranges available (one of our other favourites is Drift Eyewear) there simply is nothing like Rolf Eyewear's take on it.  You'll be amazed when you see them!

That took us through to beyond mid-day on the second day, so that's a perfect place to stop.  Find out more in Part 2!