Coming soon: the return of the cheap wine blog - version 2.0 hello LCBO.

2004 Trio Red - Spain meets twist on French varieties

This little $13 bottle of wine is a definite winner in it's price category. I opened it up yesterday evening to make a little red wine sauce for my steak and then proceeded to drink the rest of the bottle along with my dinner guest. The blend of Syrah-Tempranillo-Cabernet Sauvignon gives this wine enough structure to hold it's own even with a meat based dinner but at the same time, it isn't a wine that is too demanding on the palate as far as complexity is concerned. Despite this, I did enjoy it's straightforward fruit, slight hints of leather and game, decent medium tannin, and low-medium body. It is a great easy drinking and enjoyable wine if being enjoyed by the glass. Even after using just over a glass for the sauce, we had a hard time enjoying the entirety of the bottle between two of us.
The wonderful thing about this wine, and Spanish wine in general, is the age. The legal ageing system in Spain means that it is easy for producers to hold on to their wines a little longer to give them that little something extra. The other great thing about that is that you end up with a decent wine with age on it for a really great price! As a comparison, most 2004 French wines, even the most basic, would likely be priced far above this little trio. I have seen some 10 year old Spanish wines of great quality and complexity coming onto the market at around $40. Unheard of from most other countries! Spain is a great region to keep in mind if looking for a wine with a bit of age but without the price tag imposed by most other countries.

This wine isn't a bad wine by any means, and especially for the price it gives a lot of itself. It is the perfect wine if you'll only be having a glass or two or to serve either at the beginning as a food friendly starter wine.
Price meets value and quality rating: this wine gets a solid B from me.

Portugal; tasting room searches out great values

Today at the metropolitan hotel in Vancouver, a few of the largest wineries in Portugal decided to come together to present some of their values and stars to see if BC consumers would be interested in seeing some of them on the shelves of some of our favorite stores. With many crowd pleasing wines in attendance, I'm sure we'll all start seeing a few more Portuguese wines creeping onto shelves as well as wine lists around the city.

Portugal has always been an area of extreme interest to me partly because we don't see or hear much about it here in the North American wine world and when we do, it's usually bulked in with Spain, as in the BCLDB catalogue.  Since I love learning about and discovering rare and out of the way things, it's no wonder that I had such a great time trying wines today.  Another nice thing about today was that because the tasting was so small, with only 7 tables, I had a chance to speak to many of the people directly associated with the wineries in Portugal including several wine makers.  I always enjoy it when the people who directly put their love and passion for wine into a bottle want to talk to me about what they made, how and why.  It makes the point that every bottle, even from the very beginning has a story to tell about it's terroir and it's maker.

Portugal as a wine making region should be on every value conscience wine consumers radar.  Because of it's status as small and little known, as well as usually clumped in with Spain, the prices for even the top wines is more than reasonable and within even the most modest budget.  Some of the best values of the year I'm sure will come from this area.
Only a few of the wines I tried today broke the $25 barrier and a good 1/2 of them were under $20.  Sadly however, most are still not available in BC, but since many are available in both Ontario and Quebec I'm quite confident we will be seeing at least a few of them fairly soon.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the wines I tried today and while I'd love to tell you about all of them, I will unfortunately have to limit myself to the weird, the cool and the best of the show.
I'll start with the weird and cool:
First on the list is the Lancers FREE White and Rose, cool because they are both non-alcoholic wines.  They start out as an alcoholic beverage and then through chemical as well as I'm sure a few other scientific processes that I really don't understand, they take away the alcohol from the wine.  A great option for the market especially with stricter laws on drinking and driving coming into effect here in BC.  The white tasted very similar to it's alcoholic parent but with more fruit coming through.  While the fruit was similar, the non-alcoholic version tasted more like juice than wine.  The rose however was quite surprisingly close to the alcoholic version.  I could smell the difference in volatile alcohol but the flavour profile was largely the same.  Very cool idea though.

Next cool item in the show was the series of wines from Bacalhoa.  I'll speak more about the quality of the wines later but it was the bottles that caught my attention at first because they all have braille on the label in addition to the visual words and designs.  It wasn't something I had seen before and I thought it was pretty cool.

Now onto my favorite white wine of the show; the Periquita White 2009, sadly not yet on the market here in BC but if it was, it would be around $11.  Since the Periquita red is currently available, I'm hoping the white isn't too far away!  It was light and fruity on the nose and incredibly food friendly and easy to drink.  Still light enough to be a summer wine but also more than appropriate in the winter months for lighter fare.

Casal Garcia DOC Vinho Verde, $10.99 BC Liquor Stores.  Out of all the Vinho Verde's I tried today, this was my favorite.  Maybe it's because I'm girly sometimes and like fruit in my wine but I'm going to say it's more because out of all of them, this was the one that tasted the most like what I expect a Vinho Verde to taste like.  I tried a couple of the single vintages and while good, they weren't the light, fruity and refreshing summer drinks I have learned to love from this area.  The Casal Garcia was exactly that with a ripe almost tropical fruit nose and refreshingly crisp on the palate.

I also really liked the Casal Garcia Rose from the DOC of Vinho Verde.  Off dry with an alcohol percentage of 10.5, it was aromatic and floral on the nose and not coyingly fruity.   A lot of the fruit came through on the palate but there was also a savory component which I quite enjoyed.  I'd love to try this wine out with a variety of foods.  This wine is not yet available in BC as far as I know, but I hope it is in time for next summer.

The red wines were a truly educational experience for me.  I had a chance to try a lot of different grape varieties that I hadn't encountered much in my wine adventures so far and many of the wines I tried today came from very different areas of Portugal with different cultures and climates.  I'm still not great with Portuguese geography but I'm starting to taste the differences in the wine and I think that's pretty cool!

The star of the show for me was the Quinta da Bacalhoa 2008 from the Peninsula de Setubal, along the coast in the southern part of the country.  Surprisingly, this wine wasn't made with traditional Portuguese grape varieties but instead with French grapes, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, and made in a Bordeaux style by blending the two grape varieties.  It was love at first taste and as good as some fine Bordeaux's I have had a chance to try.  I expected to be told that this wine would retail around $80 and was pleasantly surprised when I was told that it would probably be in the range of $35.  This wine sees 14 months of oak and has beautiful soft berries on the nose and palate with great balance and nice softly structured tannins.  A joy to drink and I'm sure it would also be a joy with dinner!

Another good one was the Quinta da Garrida 2007, spec item, approx $18.  This wine comes from DOC Dao so in the mid-northernish region of portugal and further inland.  The local varieties of Touriga Nacional and Tinta Roriz make up this wine.  I really enjoyed it for it's fruity tones with some hints of leather.  It was fresher than I expected it to be on the palate which made it fairly refreshing but it still had great fruit that held through and it was a nicely structured wine.  Not too 'in your face' but very nice and pleasant.

Other reds that I enjoyed were:
Follies Cabernet Sauvignon/Touriga Nacional 2008: Great fruit with nice spice, both carrying well onto the palate along with mild tannins.  Hopefully coming into our market at $16.
Quinta de Terrugem 2006: Alicante Bouschet, Aragonez and Trincadeira Preta are the varieties.  I liked it for its countryside feel and pleasant barnyard aromas.  Very light with solid fruit coming through.  A nice easy drinking wine.
Vista Tinta Roriz 2008 (with some Touriga Nacional): I really liked this wine for its fresh fruit which almost seemed candied on the nose.  Came through nicely without being too fruity on the palate with enough other stuff like tannin and spices to hold it up.
Vista Touriga Nacional 2008:  Similar to the Tinta Roriz but richer and a little jammier.  Had great structure and maintained its really nice rich fruits.

Now for the piece de resistance!!  Desert wines:
1999 Moscatel de Setubal:  Fantastic fruity aromas from the muscat grape, fortified and aged in old barrels to give it complexity and colour.   The alcohol is balanced so nicely with the acid in the grape that it's like drinking muscat syrup.  I hope to see this in our market soon and I hope my work place will carry it!

And there we have it, a brief overview of my day trying wines from Portugal.  It is such a great area for finding excellent wines at a relatively low price point that it's worth checking out what your local liquor store carries.  The quality over the past few years of Portuguese wines has increased so dramatically that knowledgeable consumers can find excellent quality wines for a fraction of the price you'd expect to pay for something of that caliber.  I highly recommend seeing what you can find and giving a few of these European gems a try sometime soon!  Enjoy :D

the shame of restaurant markups - but I guess they've got to pay the rent somehow...

I'm very proud of the fact that I try to focus on wines that are a great value and quality for under $20 and that everyone in any budget can have a cool and tasty wine for any occasion.....except maybe when you go out to a restaurant and are looking to enjoy a bottle of wine at the establishment. Most people are aware that restaurants generally mark up the price of wine by a little bit (or a lot) and most people are pretty accepting of it as a small sacrifice to be made if you want to enjoy wine with dinner in a restaurant. I still find it incredibly annoying however. Today for example I had an excellent opportunity to try a white blend of Viognier and Marsanne called Mon Ami Rascal. It caught my attention a while ago as something that might be worth trying since it retails at around $11. At first this wine kind of scared me partly because of my reservations towards trying anything with a funky name or label and also because I knew it was a blend made especially for the Earls restaurant chain by the Perrin Family in the Rhone Valley, making both a red and a white in a Southern Rhone style. Eventually I decided that since the Perrin Family is pretty reputable and Earls does generally have a reputation for good value, the wine might not be half bad and that I should at least give it a try before I judge. Anyway, it's $11 in stores so there wasn't much lost if I thought it was crap. Well, today I had my opportunity to try it but not from the store, instead I had the privilege of paying $27 a bottle at Earls restaurant on Robson. I could buy 2 bottles at that price in the store! Man, these restaurant mark ups really piss me off sometimes.
Anyway, my conclusion is that overall it's a pretty good wine. Easy to drink, fruity but not overly so and while there is some acid, it's not too overpowering which allows this wine to be extremely food friendly. A great wine to have available as a house wine (well done Earls). Definitely a great value for $11. Paying $27 for this bottle of wine however is a little annoying but still a decent value especially considering how much a bottle of wine generally goes for in restaurants.

IVSA Vancouver

About 4 times a year, the IVSA (Import Vinters and Spirits Association) put on a giant fair for buyers and sellers of wine, spirits and beer. Most of the hundreds of beverages on display are wine but it's not uncommon to find some unique spirits or cool beers being poured for the adventurous tasters.
I love going to the IVSA tasting because it gives me an opportunity to try about 100 wines in a 2-3 hour span, many of them products that I wouldn't seek out on my own. I usually keep an eye out for the weirdest and coolest new things on the market but I also like trying what's popular so that I'm up to date with consumer trends.
Yesterday was the fantastic fall IVSA and there were some pretty interesting drinks available to taste.
Below are a few of the products that I thought were worthy of mentioning, and worthy of checking out if you happen to come across them in the store.

Marani whites and reds from Georgia: This series of wines won my top award because of both their quality and their uniqueness in our market. All of the wines in this series except for one come in at just under $20, well within my blog range, and the quality is exceptional. This is yet another fine example of how high quality wines entering our market from places not usually associated with wine can be a fantastic value.
For the white wines, the first was the 2009 Mtsvane at $19.90. Fully dry yet refreshingly fruity on the nose and crisp on the palate. Interesting and almost reminiscent of Sauvignon Blanc. This wine gets a solid 'A' from me!
2009 Tbilisuri; a semi-dry wine balanced with lots of acid. It had great floral and ripe fruit notes and was a joy to try. I gave it an 'A+', one of the two I gave all day.
2008 Tvishi; this was the one wine from Marani that was over the $20 mark but considering the extra effort taken to make it semi-sweet, the price increase is justified. This wine also got a solid 'A' from me for it's sweet dried fruit and honey notes. What was especially nice about this wine was that it was still very acidic and wasn't too syrupy like some semi-sweet wines can be.
There were also 2 red wines.
2008 Saperavi; I thought that this wine was the most common out of the flight. It was still good but it didn't stand out like the others. It had notes of dark fruit and its full-bodied charm made it a delightful drink especially at under $20 but it wasn't anything really special.
2008 Pirosmani; another solid 'A' wine and a really interesting wine in that it is a semi-dry red. It's full-bodied with lots of rich ripe red fruits and really good. It doesn't come off as semi-dry but the extra sugar adds a really nice balance to final product.
Who knew that wines like this could come from the interior of Georgia. Apparently the area of Kakheti, where these wines are made, has a peculiar micro-climate making it ideal for grape growing. I'm really excited to try these wines again!

Heitz Cellars 2008 Sauvignon Blanc: This is my other 'A+' rated wine and while I don't know the price range, I'm guessing it's a lot over $20. Heitz Cellars makes some great stuff and I always like to try their wines when I have a chance. They had their Cabernet Sauvignon as well as their Sauvignon Blanc available to try and while their Cab is great and worth the premium prices charged for it, I was more impressed with the quality and tone of their Sauvignon Blanc. It was crisp and full of great citrus, mineral and gooseberry flavours; typical of sauvignon blanc in general but there was something about the balance in the acidity and body in this wine that made it truly spectacular.

Camelback Shiraz Viognier from Australia: This wine gets a solid 'A' for its great flavours and structure and the uniqueness of the product being made. Adding Viognier to a wine is an age-old tradition in certain areas of the world, including in the Southern Rhone Valley where Viognier is often blended with Grenache, Syrah and several other grape varieties to add colour, body and aromas. Camelback has taken this basic idea and made it their own, and I think it works wonderfully. This wine is bright, not too heavy and really nice notes of pepper, spice and red fruits like cherries and some raspberries. Great to drink on it's own for it's depth and silkiness but also a great for pairing with a variety of different foods and meats.

Blackbird Vineyard Arise: Blackbird vineyards is another one of those amazing Californian producers that commands premium prices for it's fantastically concentrated and artistically crafted wines. Once a wine hits the premium price point, I often find that the product inside is rather disappointing considering the cost. At $84 a bottle, this is NOT one of those wines. In fact, it's worth every penny. A solid 'A' rating, it's rich but soft with notes of berries and pepper. A joy to drink.

Chateau D'Orignac: This is a really cool concept for a wine that is apparently very popular in France but has yet to make inroads in the North America market. It is a wine that is fortified with VSOP Cognac, giving a really nice complexity of flavour to this really nice but not too sweet fortified wine. In France, because this wine isn't too rich or sweet, it's often served as an aperitif instead of after dinner which is how we tend to do things in Canada. Under $40 in our market and worth investing in a bottle if you're looking to impress some future dinner guests.

Gran Feudo Edicion: 100% Tempranillo from Spain. It's easy to savour with it's light notes of dark fruit and peppery tones. It's not too full bodied and not too watery but it strikes a very nice balance in the middle ground. At $15, it's a bargain.

Other notable mentions go to:
Fetzer 2009 Gewurztraminer, California: easy to drink, off dry, yummy fruit and not too demanding.
Cannonball Cabernet Sauvignon, California: Very rich and big, full of fruit and pepper. It is extremely typical of californian Cabs and is still only around $30. Great value for the quality and typicity it brings forth.
Heavyweight Red, California Cabernet Sauvignon: Really nice wine but the name is rather misleading. Much more approachable and much less 'heavy' than I thought it would be. There is a small percentage of Zinfindel which adds a lot of really nice and soft flavours to the mix. Not typical of a Californian Cabernet Sauvignon but still a really nice and kind of different wine.

Oregon Pinot Noir Tasting - in Vancouver

Pinot Noir grapes make some of my absolutely favorite wines in the world but as I was saying in my last post the difficulties associated with growing the grapes means the wines can unfortunately be pretty expensive. I'm always on the look out for great value and good quality Pinot Noir's for under $20 but out of all the different kind of wines out there, it's one of the hardest to find.
I'm telling you today about my love for Pinot Noir's and how sad I am that they have such a high price point because I had a great opportunity today to attend a fantastic tasting of Oregon Pinot Noir's, some that are available in our market and some that will be if there is enough interest from buyers. Oregon's coastal climate creates ideal conditions for growing Pinot Noir grapes. It's a little cooler, which the early ripening pinot likes, and the wines that come out of the region are full of flavour with great acidity and for the most part good body as well. Wine makers have the opportunity in this part of the world to experiment with vineyard conditions and wine making techniques that aren't available to many of the legally bound producers in France which means that a lot of the wines coming out of Oregon are unique and interesting, with a focus on making wines for the future instead of wines that represent the past.

Most Oregon Pinot's on our market at the moment are either 2006 or 2007, with the 2008's coming up within the next two months.
Most 2006's I tried today are ageing nicely and still show a lot of rich ripe fruit developing complexity and depth as they age. The good wines out of this year are, and will continue to be great for many years.
2007 was a tough vintage for Oregon growers as it was rainy and extremely wet during the harvest season. Many picked early and the resulting wines show tons of greenness. While many like the light style of wine produced in this year by most wine makers, I found most of them to be rather watery.
As for 2008, I'm really looking forward to drinking many more Oregon Pinot Noir's from that year. There's body, fruit, richness and many have a nice spiciness to them as well. Overall I enjoyed this vintage the most, a vintage in which the best wine makers will make legendary wines and the not so good wine makers will still make some pretty awesome stuff.

Here are a few wines I tried today that I thought were especially note-worthy:
Andrew Rich wines - I tried both their small production wine as well as their lower level 'cuvee B'. Both were quite good and they were both some of the best '07's I tried at this tasting.
Trisae '08 - I gave this one an all around A+ for quality, style and taste. The rich, ripe and almost candied fruit is extremely well balanced with the spicy pepperness and green notes in this wine. It was also delightfully full-bodied.
Trisaetum 'o7 - A solid 'A'. Another of hte good '07's in the room. It was light and vegetal like the others but the difference was that the Trisaetum didn't make it seem like a fault. It pulled the flavours and characteristics together like an elegant dancer.
Erath Winery:
Erath Pinot Noir Oregon - the most basic of their wines at this tasting and an A- wine from me. Typical '08 profile of fresh berries but with comparatively light body. Still a complex and structured wine especially at the $30 price point.
Erath Leland Pinot Noir 2006 - Did I mention I loved the 2006 Pinot's that were being poured at this tasting? This is no exception and is in fact probably one of my favorites. My tasting note for this wine is simply "oh wow" followed by a star and a clear A+ grade.

These wines are the ones that really stood out for me but as with any tasting, someone else I talk to will be wowed by completely different wines. Rarely is there a consensus of what the 'best' wine of the show was. Such is the human palate I suppose. I really enjoyed the '08 Vintage but I gave most of the '07's grades between B and A- for the very best. As always however, I met a few people whose favorite wines of the show were some of the 07's that I thought tasted too green and watery. As for the '06's the general consensus seemed to be that they are showing well and are a testament to the quality of wines being produced in such places as Oregon.

Red Burgundy - Sometimes a special event calls for a special wine

It's time to finally come back to writing this blog. I'm sorry I've been a little MIA for the past 2 or so months. I guess summer made time go by so quickly that I didn't fully realize how much I had been neglecting my posts. Well I'm back and I'm going to write about a wine that I wouldn't normally write about in this blog, a wine that is a little more expensive than my usual under $20 picks. I chose this specific wine because I feel that today, my first post in 2 months, qualifies as a special occasion so I splurged a little. Let's call this under $30 wine a "special occasions pick". For this special occasion I thought a nice little wine from Burgundy might be nice so I chose the 2006 Reserve De la Chevre Noire, Bourgogne AOC, Pinot Noir. Wines from the Pinot Noir grapes are generally pretty expensive and rarely can you find one of quality under $20. They are definitely out there and I'm always on the search for a quality Pinot under 20 but the truth is that thanks to how finicky the grape is to grow, it just doesn't come cheap. Anyway, this basic Burgundy AOC wine is a really enjoyable wine for this evening with it's fresh cherries, reminding me almost of candied fruit and green notes on the nose, light, fruity with sour cherries on the palate. Not too complex a wine but still not overly simple, a nice down the middle wine. In the mouth, it's light and fresh and not too tannic.
It's a great wine to drink on it's own, as most Pinot Noir's are, but it has enough complexity of flavour to stand up to light fare or chicken.
A great pick for a celebration wine and I'd definitely consider getting it again. For $30, I give this wine a solid A-. A great show for a basic Burgundy AOC.