Time for summer Reds.

With the sun finally shining in Vancouver and the forecast calling for temperatures in the 30's for the next few days, it's time to think refreshing. Finding a red wine for this heat can be a bit of a challenge because it would be too much to drink something heavily tannic and full bodied when it's so hot that you barely want to move away from the lawn chair or in my case, the beach. So what to do? Well, lucky for us, wines come in many different styles and there's a wine out there for every occasion.
One wine I would definitely recommend in this heat is the hobnob Pinot Noir from southern France (reviewed a couple months ago). While fruity, it's not cloying and the mouth feel is so delicate as to make it refreshing, on it's own or with light foods.

Another wine worth trying on a summer's eve would be the Rolling Hills Shiraz from Australia. This wine is so light that when I first tried it at the store, I wasn't sure it could hold up to much in terms of food and I must say, the tannins also had a weird feel when tried on it's own. My manager suggested that it might surprise us with food especially because of it's fairly simple fruit taste and apparent tannins. So I tried an experiment; I paired this wine with a medley of foods and had my friend comment on how things meshed together. We had everything from mozzarella and tomato salad with balsamic vinegar and olive oil to seared ahi tuna in a Thai ginger sesame marinade. All kinds of different taste profiles and textures were available to see how this wine held up when faced with food.
I was pleasantly surprised when this wine retained it's pleasant yet simple fruit with so many of the different food items available. In fact, the only item it didn't go with was the tomatoes, but even then it wasn't bad. It went best with my steamed asparagus and prosciutto dish. It remained simple and refreshing and sometimes that's all you need to make your evening that much better.

Available at various specialty wine stores across Vancouver for under $20, as well as at a few BC liquor stores for $17. Unfortunately for those readers from Ontario, this wine isn't available to you.

Overall a very satisfactory wine great for certain occasions.