by: Tim Schooley
Pittsburgh Business Times

The North Hills has a new hotel open and operating.
A Fairfield Inn & Suites opened Tuesday at McCandless Crossing, the mixed-use development along McKnight Road in McCandless Township.

The new 109-room hotel is six floors and includes a range of amenities such as flexible workspaces, a fully equipped fitness center, a business center and a complimentary breakfast.
The new hotel hopes to generate business and leisure guests from a nearby community that includes the rest of the McCandless Crossing facility, La Roche College and UPMC Passavant, among others.

View the original article here.

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We're so excited to announce that the Fairfield Inn & Suites will open next Tuesday, May 16! 

Shippenville, PA - Rhonda and Denis Brooks’ love of the land their family has farmed for five generations is exceeded only by their faith and love of people. Visitors to the winery and tasting rooms will now get to experience a revolutionary and intimate approach to the enjoyment of wine with their adoption of the Vinotype™ approach to determining personal wine preferences.
 
The new program was unveiled May 1st, 2017, at the winery and four tasting rooms after an intensive training program for their entire staff and makeover for wine presentations and signage that helps wine lovers understand more about how their unique sensory sensitivities dictate how they perceive wine flavors then guide them to the Deer Creek wines they will love the most.  
 
The Vinotype™ system is the brainchild of Tim Hanni, Master of Wine, and based on decades of research on the factors that influence personal wine preferences. It begins with a simple set of non-wine questions, such as how you take your coffee and how much salt you like on your food, that relate to your sensitivities and tolerances for bitterness, sweetness and alcohol levels in wine. You then find out if you are a Sweet, Hypersensitive, Sensitive or Tolerant Vinotype and which of the range of Deer Creek wines you are most likely to fall in love with. Hanni is also a professionally trained chef that is trying to revise the entire idea of pairing wine and food, promoting the concept of “matching the wine to the diner, not the dinner.” This consumer-centric approach is based on principles of Flavor Balancing and now adopted by wine educational organizations and great chefs around the world.
 
According to Rhonda Brooks, “We attended the keynote seminar presented by Tim at the Eastern Winery Expo in March that really touched on our own values for honoring and respecting personal preferences. We are proud to be the first winery in Pennsylvania to formally adopt this approach. Our team is really enjoying the new information we are learning not only about Vinotypes™ but also how much misinformation is being disseminated about wine history, traditions and the enjoyment of wine in general.”
 
You can learn about your own Vinotype™ at the Deer Creek Winery website: http://www.deercreekwine.com and clicking on the “Find your Vinotype” button on the right hand side of the page. Or stop by the winery or one of the tasting room locations to experience the program first hand over a glass of delicious wine matched to your specific preferences.
 
About Deer Creek Winery
Located in Shippenville, PA, our land has been enjoyed by our family for 5 generations – the youngest is just starting to walk. Our winery opened in September 2009, specializing in raspberry wines and has been expanded to include a complete range of wine styles and now classic grape varieties like Chardonnay and Cabernet Franc. In addition to the main winery, Inn B&B, and events center their wines can also be sampled and purchased at their satellite tasting room in the Butler Clearview Mall, the Mall at Robinson, Hermitage Kohl’s Plaza, and McCandless Crossing.
 
Contact: Rhonda Brooks, Deer Creek Winery, 814-354-7392
  
About myVinotype and eCode.me
Launched in 2011 as a tool for consumers to learn more about their own preferences, and a smart wine recommendation platform for wine-related businesses, myVinotype assesses individual taste sensitivities and tolerances, then introduces them to wines that will appeal to their unique, personal combination of sensitivities and values. Co-founder Tim Hanni MW is an internationally renowned ‘flavor maven’ and dubbed the ‘wine anti-snob’ by the Wall Street Journal. A professionally-trained chef, he is one of the first two resident Americans to successfully complete the examination and earn the title Master of Wine. He is a Certified Wine Educator accredited by the Society of Wine Educators. He has been involved with wine- and food-related businesses, education and research for over thirty-five years.
 
Contact: Tim Hanni MW, tim@timhanni.com
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