[Jesse Joe]

T&T: You being a Hollywood movie star and all you'd probably wind up in some horrible scandal anyway.
DA: You wouldn't find much there! It's been pretty clean except for the ignominous demise of my partner John (Belushi). You know, 4,000 people die in emergency rooms across the United States directly due to drug overdose and I've lost a lot of friends to the powder and the pills, River Phoenix and guys like that. It has a way of creeping into the will of human beings.
But I come to town with my bottle of wine and a clear conscience because after all, the Ford Mustang Bullet can do 180 but people don't drive it like that because they choose to obey the law, and there are laws of moderation for consuming alcohol too.
So I'm bringing a spirit of good times to the Maritimes and I know Canadians like to have a drink and so do New Brunswickers. I've seen your warehouse!
T&T: How did you get into the wine business?
DA: I know, it's not like I'm not busy enough, but celebrity is only good for certain things; charities, getting off on a speeding ticket on a remote highway or a table in a crowded restaurant, but it turns out celebrity-hood makes a good marriage with wine.I've bought a piece of the Patron distributor and I pay shares in Diamond Estates I can't wait to get my own operation going!
(EDITOR'S NOTE: Diamond Estates is the Niagara Peninsula winery that produces the Aykroyd Chardonnay and Cabernet-Merlot blend he's been selling here, and he's opening his own winery in the Niagara in the new year).
T&T: Is Aykroyd wine now available everywhere in New Brunswick?
DA: It will be in your entire system soon and at $17.95 it's a great buy! A comparable Napa (California's Napa Valley) would go for $30, you can't go wrong.
T&T: And what sort of Maritime fare would fit with, oh, I don't know, a bottle of ridiculously reasonably priced Aykroyd Chardonnay?
DA: Oh, well certainly the lobster salad we had at Brubaker's in Fredericton, or oysters, or scallops or hey, a nice hammered veal or veal lyonnaise, or a chicken paiella or pesto. Or mussels! Very good with mussels.
T&T: And yet -- and I say this with all due respect, Mr. Aykroyd -- the family name seems to suggest an over-the-counter medicine for certain ailments that don't bear description. Surely Diamond Estates must have had some concerns about marketing!
DA: Well! I should think after a career as long as mine my name is known worldwide, I've got great penetration and there's no problem with people associating my name with... hey, wait a minute, maybe you're on to something here.
Yeah, patent medicines... maybe something involving Ganong chickenbones and Patron Tequila!
That's a puzzling little confection you've got there.
I've been trying to make a candy sculpture with them all day but I haven't dared eat one of them. They're like those hard little humbugs Granny had. I think they should be the mascot candy of the Point Lepreau nuclear reactor.
T&T: Mr. Aykroyd! Are you dissing our chickenbones?
DA: No, no, I'm just saying they've got that nice satiny finish, like humbugs. The truth is I have been sucking on one of them. I hear you get to the chocolate... eventually.
T&T: Hmmm... we're told your tequila is doing very well but Maritimers, particularly my editor, wonder whether you've considered a line of rums.
DA: I have a rum! Patron makes 'Pyrate' rum, which comes in a great little pistol-shaped bottle. We'll talk to your system (NB Liquor) and if they want to take rum we would love to give it to them.
But when it comes to rum, I think of Nova Scotia. Every single liquor store they've got has a whole wall of rum. The Nova Scotians do rum like the Mexicans do tequila!
Ah, Nova Scotia, Land of a Thousand Rums.
I wouldn't mind a little snap right now...
T&T: Never mind the Nova Scotians. Have you travelled in New Brunswick before?
DA: Yes; vomited the entire time.
We drove through here in a 1955 Ford Crestline, Mom and Dad in the front and my brother and I in the back, it was a hot summer, it was a coupe, the windows were usually rolled up and well, you know. We were on our way to P.E.I., of course.
T&T: Gasp!.. splutter...
DA: We did a lot of traveling in Canada; my dad (Samuel Aykroyd was a senior policy advisor to the late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau) was instrumental in the Canadian Centennial celebrations back in '67. He commissioned the Bobby Gimby song (Ca-na-da, one little, two little, three Canadians) and helped developed the 'triangles' logo and commissioned those Centennial projects all over Canada, including Confederation Park near the family farm in Kingston; the one with the concrete spanning the wading pool... boy, it's ugly.
T&T: Picked up any French during your stay here?
(EDITOR'S NOTE: our subject then informs us of his facility in French with a rapid-fire demonstration. Like many New Brunswickers, he is born with one English-speaking parent and one French-speaking).
T&T: Well done, sir. Can New Brunswick produce good wine grapes despite our northern climate?
DA: It could for ice wine! But seriously, with global warming you could see longer growing seasons in parts of Canada, but there will I think always be a time in January and February in this country when tires are breaking and people are aggravating and it's bleak and it's bad, which is why half of southern Florida is now owned by Canadians.
T&T: Ever been anywhere colder than New Brunswick?
DA: Well, I was in Antarctica last February, and no, it wasn't as cold as it's been here this week. Of course, February is summer in Antarctica.
T&T: Ha! Dan, it's been a pleasure. I hope, if I am able to worm and weasel my way into Dieppe's fabulous NB Liquor outlet on Paul Street, home incidentally of the largest and finest wine store in all of Atlantic Canada, that you will sign my stocking-stuffer bottle of Aykroyd.
DA: Of course.