My favorite BC wines from the past few months

The province of British Columbia, especially around the area of the Okanagan Valley, has a few truly extraordinary wine makers who are making some amazing products. The quality of some of this wines is world class and I believe that this region of Canada could compete on equal footing with the some of the best wines in the world, for both red and white wines. Local demand for these wines however is so high that they rarely make their way out of the province and when they do, they sell for high or even premium prices. Even in BC, it is tricky to find quality local wines at under $20 which is why I so rarely blog about them.
I want to take this opportunity to tell you today about wines from my own backyard because over the summer I realized how unique and exciting these wines are. Coming from Ontario I only had an idea about BC wines and I only knew of a couple producers. I thought the wines were pretty lame and I had no idea of the scope of production and the influence of small wineries in the movement to make quality wine here in BC. It was exciting to learn about all the producers and the different regions in the Okanagan and learn about some of the really cool and interesting ideas that are being tried out on this new terrain.
Production in BC is still really small and local demand is really high so it will be a while before the rest of the world realizes the gem that is the Okanagan Valley but until then, we can enjoy quality, world class BC wines and revel in the fact that they are made only a few hours away from a fine city like Vancouver that loves fine food and wine.

BC wine makers and growers are still largely figuring out what grows best where and what kind of vinification methods contribute to making the best wines so we find a wide range of grape varieties, both red and white, in a wide range of style. I'm a fan of the aromatic white wines like Gerwurztraminer, Riesling, Pinot Gris as I think these wines show really well in the cool continental climate of the Okanagan, but there are also many producers who are making undeniably fantastic and even age worthy red wines.

Since I tend to say that BC does Gewurztraminers the best I'll start here with some of my favorites.
Blasted Church 2009 Gewurztraminer:
Fantastic and under under $20!! (although just barely). It's fruity, yet crisp and dry on the finish. It is easy to drink on it's own but is also food friendly. This is probably one of my favorite wines, and was a classic go-to wine for me over this past summer. I hope their next vintage is just as awesome! I have been known to drink this wine out of a travel coffee mug on the bus on a way to a party. Believe it or not, when I tell that to customers who are looking for an easy drinking white wine, they'll usually buy it. Who knew that my ridiculous antics could work as a selling point!

Averill Creek 2009 Gewurztraminer:
This wine's unique selling point is that it comes from Vancouver Island. That and the fact that it's a surprisingly fantastic wine. I say surprising only because most people don't think of Vancouver island as an ideal climate for grape growing. This wine however is very crisp and soft with some lovely riper fruit that continues along the finish. It is still dry and fairly easy to pair with food. At just over $20, it was a nice summer sipper over the last few months.

other whites:
Kettle Valley 2009 Chardonnay:
Previous vintages of the Kettle Valley Chardonnay have been good but they haven't stood out of the crowd like their 2009. This latest vintage was exceptional for them. The oak was better integrated and while still creamy with light oak flavours, more of the fruit was allowed to show through for a delightful and rich Chardonnay. A truly powerful and beautiful wine for under $25. One of my top selling Chardonnays over the summer because of it's refreshing fruit but it has enough body and roundness to be enjoyed throughout the winter. Since it is not too oaked, it pairs well with a variety of foods and can be enjoyed in any weather.

Kettle Valley 2009 Pinot Gris:
This is not your average Pinot Gris. The juice is kept in contact with the skins for a short period of time giving it a slight pinky hue. While this unfortunately turns off some wine drinkers, the more adventurous will be rewarded with a fantastic and unique wine. The skin contact helps give the wine a bit more structure while still allowing it to be full of great citrus and stone fruits which Pinot Gris is so famous for. This wine I find to be especially great with foods such as salmon and other rich seafood's because of the extra body given to the wine by the skins.

Joie Farm:
I have been very happy with the white wines I've tried from Joie. I especially love their Riesling because of it's dry, crisp and fantastic ripe fruit. Like all their wines, it is a product of passion and the love of wine making and this dedication shines through in every glass.
The Joie Noble Blend is an extremely popular wine among connoisseurs in the Vancouver area and that's no surprise as this dry wine is full of great fruit and refreshing minerality. A blend inspired by the noble varieties of Alsace as well as other Germanic varieties which do so well in this particular climate, the 2009 vintage shows off the talents of Gewürztraminer, Pinot Gris, Pinot Auxerrois, and Riesling.
The Joie Rose has entered into a league of it's own in the BC rose market. Easily one of the top selling BC rose wines over the past summer, this wine has a cult following and for good reason. Nothing comes close to being able to compare to this not overly fruity, refreshing, dry, slightly frizzante and food friendly wine.
Joie also has a few Red wines on the BC market and although I find them interesting, I'd rather stick to their whites.

Black Widow:
Another winery with a portfolio worth writing about. This winery is located in the same area of the Okanagan as JoieFarm and as far as I'm concerned, does best with their white wines rather than their reds.
The oasis is a blend of aromatic grape varieties with Schonburger (a variety with characteristics similar to the Muscat grape) leading and Gewurztraminer in the background. Intensely fruity, refreshing and the perfect drink in the summer heat.
The Black Widow Pinot Gris is crisp, full of lemon and lime with bold minerality and acidic enough to be perfectly suited to patio's and BBQ's during the summer months.
Both wines were top choice of wine drinkers in Vancouver over the past summer. I :look forward to the next vintage of both the Oasis and the Pinot Gris. These wines are great buys at just over $20.

Now onto the reds
Herder Meritage:
A perfect Summer BBQ red that will bring you right into fall for Thanksgiving dinner. Don't forget to then put a couple bottles aside for the Christmas Holidays. At $22 a bottle, I cannot sing it's praise enough. I absolutely adore this wine. It has complexity, depth, fruit, it's round and bold and incredibly versatile with food. It is Merlot based with Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec rounding it off and adding the finishing touches.
My top selling red of the summer and also the wine I bring as a gift whenever I go anywhere.

Church and State Quintessential:
This rich and bold wine is filled with Red and Black fruits as well as the complex aromas and flavours imparted by time spent in oak. I looked all over the church and state website but I couldn't find any specs on this wine like how much time it spent in oak, whether the oak was American, French or a mix and what the grape varieties are and in what proportion. Regardless of this lack of information, this wine is yumminess all over and what I would gladly call 'elegance in a glass'. At $50 a bottle, the price is a little hefty but it could prove to be the magical touch to a special evening.

kettle valley Malbec:
I'd love to try this wine in a blind taste taste against other Malbecs to see if it can hold it's own. It was an absolutely excellent example of this grape with great fruit and firm body but I don't know if I felt that it was great because of how it was actually made or because it was from BC and any success with a Malbec seems so unusual. This wine definitely has something going for it, I just wish it was more available in our market for me to have it again and try it against some of it's Argentinian counterparts. Worthy on uniqueness points if nothing else. A cool wine on all counts!

Well, there you have it. This summer was a great learning experience for me in terms of trying and understanding the complexities behind the BC wines and the market where we can find them. There are so many local wines to try and with new and innovative producers willing to try new things and take some risks, I look forward to some exiting wines in the future.

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.

Estampa Malbec/Petit Sirah 2008

At $17 my first impression was that I had spent a little too much on this bottle of wine. I found the acidity in this wine to be a little off balance with very little other characteristics to counter the acid and make this wine palatable. Over the next 30 minutes or so of exposure to air I noticed a marked change in this wine. The acid became more integrated and the previously harsh powdery tannins smoothed right out. On the nose, the black fruit still held strong with some nice savoury spices and herbaceousness coming through. On the palate, after the overpowering acidity faded away, I found that black fruit and spice made this wine fairly enjoyable. Others said they liked this wine because of it's full body and spiciness.
Overall, not a bad wine and definitely a good choice to bring along to a dinner party. I think this wine shows itself best when paired with food, especially meats. It would also probably show really well at a BBQ.

This wine is pretty interesting in that Malbec is so rarely seen in Chilean wines but the grape does well in the Colchagua Valley of Chile and this area is gaining reputation as a producer of top world class wines. I expect we'll be seeing a lot more wines like this in the future here in the northern hemisphere.

This wine is available for $17.00 at Marquis Wine Cellars on Davie St. in Vancouver.

Awesome label and it's actually a good wine

Usually I'm scared off by labels that are flashy and cool but this wine was given to my manager as a blind taste and he thought it was a much higher end wine than it's actually classified as so I decided to give it a shot. After giving it a try, I have to agree! Even if you never try this wine, and you really souled since it's $15, check out this winery's website. It ROCKS! The wine is made by 2 girls out in California and what I love most about their philosophy towards wine is that it's best enjoyed when the pretentiousness is taken out of the mix. This allows them to make something fun and adventurous and when you consider that in this bottle you can find a mix of 5 grapes, one of which I've never even heard of before, fun and adventurous is definitely what you get.

This red wine has a very bright, dark, purplish but mostly brick red complexion. At first sniff, I found that the dark Merlot fruits had a dominant role to play in this blend of Petit Sirah, Zinfandel, Merlot, Tempranillo and Alicante Bouschet, a unique and increasingly rare grape variety that has Grenache as one of it's parents. On the nose I got a lot of berries, both black and red and also some blueberries thrown in the mix. I also smelled and tasted grape and to be honest, despite the fact that wine is made from grapes, I've never gotten grapes out of red wine. There's really a lot going on in this glass. Some chocolate powder, some pepper which is classic of Californian wine, especially Zinfandel's, some cedar-like woody smells. The layers just keep going. On the palate, this wine is berry filled and grapey, with chocolate making a proud showing. The tannins are a little rough around the edges at first but tone down with air and food. It has a medium mouthfeel that picks up around the finish and isn't as jammy as most Californian basic reds. Definitely a unique blend that changes and evolves in the glass giving the observant drinker a party for the senses. Overall, it has great fruit, great complexity, nice finish, balanced acidity and is well worth every penny of the $15 I paid for it. Something I will start recommending as an entry level Cali red.

I'll hobnob this wine anyday!

From Dictionary.com: hobnob\HAHB-nahb\ , intransitive verb;
1.To associate familiarly

And this Pinot Noir presents itself with familiarity right from the start. With it's bright brick red colour and clean, black cherry, red fruit and cedar nose and onto a red fruit filled palate it's elegance and charm makes you want to be friends with this wine from the very first sip. It's tannins are strong enough to hold up to many foods but it is so well integrated into the wine that it has the potential for great gastronomic versatility. It went surprisingly well with my avocado, jalapeno and Monterrey jack omelet sandwich. It had a lot more fresh fruit than what I'd have generally expected from something coming out of southern France but I'm really happy about that. It also opens up to more really nice red fruits if given a few extra minutes. The only thing that was a little disappointing in this wine was the first part of the mouthfeel that was almost watery. The wine picked up near the middle and finished off very nicely but just that first moment when it hit the tongue lacked a bit of weight. With food however, or even after the first few sips, this feeling starts to fade and this wine becomes an easy drinking, Sunday afternoon pleasure wine.

Light, easy drinking, versatile, elegant and under $20 bucks. Definitely a wine to go on the do not forget about me list.

Southern France has been coming out with some really great stuff over the past little while, partly due to a huge market, in France and world wide, for French wines that are more than your basic table wines and partly due to lots of investments and improvements in the wine making of the area. This wine promotes itself as a Vin de Pays d'Oc which means that it's slightly above the most basic of French wines (the table wine) and is therefore allowed to mark down the grape varieties in the bottle. Pinot Noir in this case. This region encompasses a good chunk of southern France around the Mediterranean coast from just west of Marseille through to to the Spanish border. The grapes can essentially come from anywhere in this area and what probably happened with this wine is that someone bought a bunch of grapes or grape juice and bottled it under their name, so really as a consumer we don't know exactly where the grapes came from in this vast area. However the juice got in the bottle, something right was done and we ended up with a product that I'd most definitely recommend and drink again.

$17 at a BC Liquor Store near you and $19.35 at my store if you feel like coming to visit! Worth checking out for your next dinner party or your next regular ol' get together.

Carchelo 2008, round 2

Originally I told you all that I really didn't enjoy this wine. I found it manufactured and fake and overly fruity and oaky and over all really unbalanced. Well, that's still true, but I always like to give wine (and winemakers) the benefit of the doubt and try wines again a day or two after to see how they've opened up. This one was just as bad the second time around as it was the first time I tried it. I was talking to a friend of mine on the phone when I tried it this second time and he suggested that since it tasted so manufactured, it might go well with manufactured food....so, at 11pm I decided to take a little walk to my local McDonalds's for a cheeseburger. I would be hard pressed if I had to come up with any food that's more manufactured than good ol' MikeyD's. Now the problem with going to mcd's at 11pm in North Vancouver is that the walk in part is closed...which means I'm left with the drive thru. I don't have a car because I just don't need one and it would seem that for some reason they don't allow walk-thru's in the drive-thru. I even had the window shut on me when I tried to reason!! Thankfully my lucky car arrived after not too long a wait to save me from the non-walk-thru McDonalds and was kind enough to procure this food item for my experiment. So thank you kind samaritan! Your good deed helped to forward progress in the food and wine world and for that we will be eternally grateful :D
Sadly, however the burger and the wine formed a deplorable pair and I'll have to be reminded to only try this experiment again under controlled circumstances. It made the wine somewhat more palatable but it just wasn't strong enough to hold it's own against it. Maybe a thick rare steak with no extra marinade flavours might have worked, but even with that, I can think of a lot of other wines to pair with that dish that would make it way more enjoyable.

This wine still fails is my conclusion.

The Pinotage

Pinotage is an intersting grape variety in that it's exclusive to South Africa and was created for growing and making wine specifically in South Africa and as such is not found anywhere but here. It was bred as a cross between Pinot Noir, which is an extremely tricky grape to grow, and Cinsault (which is knows as Hermitage in South Africa), thus giving the grape the name of Pinotage and somehow this cross makes it ideal for the growing conditions i South Africa. I have only tried 2 Pinotages in my life, and both of them have been over the past month and while I thoroughly enjoy the gamy, leathery components of this grape variety, it really doesn't seem to sit well with a lot of other people. I brought it with me to a dinner party and while the other winos at the table thought it was fascinating no one really wanted to drink more than a glass, which means I had the whole bottle to myself! One of the vegitarians at the table said that all she could taste was leather in this wine. I thought it went pretty good with the steak we had for dinner but even with this meat, it was bordering on being too overpowering for something like Beef. Maybe it would go better with a heavier, thicker, richer meat of some sort, Giraffe was one of the suggested pairings from those at the dinner table. I've never had Giraffe and as far as I know neither has anyone I tried this wine with so this pairing is only speculation. All I know is that this wine really isn't for everyone and with it's meaty, earthy tones and leathery notes, I'm not surprised the vegitarian didn't enjoy this wine. It's uniqueness is essentially the reason I like it so much and the fact that the specific flavour combination don't exist in wines from any other regions makes it absolutely fascinating for me. Worth a try if you're into being adventurous with your wine but be forewarned of what to expect and you might just be plesantly surprised like I was!

What I also like about this wine is that just about any pinotage you see here in Canada is under $20. Plus what I like is that unlike some more popular varieties (like Australian Shiraz that differs so much from bottle to bottle) you can expect similar flavours and characteristics from most Pinotages in the store.

The bottle I had was the Beyerskloof Pinotage 2007 from Sellenbosch South Africa, 14%abv. The 05 and 06 vintages are available for $12.00 at BC Liquor stores and since this wine is supposed to age well, I might just head out and try an older vintage to see if it maybe soften's up enough to hold it's own against my steak.

Carchelo 2008, Jumilla Spain (#8)

Well, it seems we've reached a benchmark here today; I have a wine with me that I don't like. It's from Spain, which makes me think I'd like it, but it has a cool bottle and for me that's always a red flag telling me that some marketing genius is trying to sell these wines to unassuming consumers and what's in the bottle may not be great. Now we get the question of what is a good wine and the answer varies for absolutely everyone. I enjoy wines that express terroir, the sense of the place and really show me what the grape is made of but not everyone does and this wine, like many other that I don't like have been known to be extremely popular with people in general. So if you like this type of wine, big fruit filled with new oak, then this wine is for you. I find it's fairly reminiscent of Big Australian Reds.

Jumilla is an interesting area in Spain because it resisted the phylloxera outbreak that devastated vineyards all over Europe in the 19th century. It continued to make it's traditional wines under traditional circumstances until it was unexpectedly hit by the bug in 1989. While replanting it's vines on grafted American root stock, many wine makers in the area used this opportunity to update their machinery and wine making techniques. Hence, now most of the area's wineries are fully modernized and have adopted many of the new world techniques which some critics say takes away from the terroir of the wine.

The Bodegas Carchelo 'Carchelo' 2008 from Jumilla, Spain
40% Monastrell (also known as Mourvedre), 40% Tempranillo, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon.
To be honest, I really taste the Cab here. I'm getting deep red fruits and red berries (cherries, raspberries) on the nose with some hints of oak like vanilla and some coffee. This wine has apparently only spent 2 months aging in new french oak barrels but I'm guessing it comes out more strongly because of the warmer climate.

I taste some summer berries and a lot of oak. The tannins to be seem somewhat off balance but they aren't too strong which is nice. My friend and colleague likened the taste to grape jolly ranchers (with oak and cedar) and this wine definitely has that fake candied sweetness to it. I also feel like the acid is somewhat off, as if it's been toyed with in the winery. But again, that's just my view and as I said earlier, it reminds me a lot of big Australian reds so if those are the wines you like then you might just enjoy this one.

This wine however, as far as I know is not available in Ontario, and is not available in BC Liquor stores. Marquis Wine Cellars have it for $18.00 a bottle and I found out today that they only have a few cases left. To this information I say good riddance. I'm happy to see you out the door Bodegas Carchelo 2008 and you've almost scared me away from trying other Jumilla wines. Luckily for Jumilla I'll try just about anything so they stand a chance and if there's something good in the region, I hope to find it!

Adios!

A visit to Batasiolo in Piedmonte Italy; one red, one white! (#5)

I really don't know how but even though Italian wines are as Famous as French ones, Italy definately surpases France in making some of the greatest inexpensive wines from local and international varieties. When I think Italian wines I always think about how great a nice crisp and refreshing Italian Pinot Grigio can be on a hot summer's day when you're just enjoying the weather and sitting on a patio. Of course there's also Valpolicella, one of the most famous and widely drunk reds among my peers. Refreshing and inexpensive, it's a great wine for almost every occasion. And of course we can't forget Chianti. While some of these wines tend to run a little out of my budget, Chianti makes some awesome stuff that sells for under $20 here in Canada.

Today however I won't be talking about any of these wines. Instead we'll be visiting another area of Italy; Piedmonte in the northwest part of the country, nicely located at the foot of the Alps. This area is quite well known for it's wines. From here you can find Asti (Muscat wines like the sparkling wine I reviewed in my last post) or the prestigious Barolo and Barbaresco wines.

My first wine is the 2008 Sunsi, Langhe doc Bianco by Beni di Batasiolo. This Chardonnay Sauvignon Blanc blend has grapes coming from vineyards located in the Langhe Albese which is situated at something like 300m altitude. This inevitably is going to give this wine some crisp super acidic awesome 'summer wine' qualities.
At first sniff I got some great minerality off this wine. Very mountainous and stony with flavours of peach and other stone fruits, some sweetness like honey and some nice crisp green apple-citrus acidity. This wine also had a fantastic straw yellow colour to it.
On the palate I was struck by the acidity right off the bat. The citrus and green apple stood out as the stars of this wine. It had a bit more of a 'buttery/creamy' mouthfeel than I'd expect in a wine this refreshing so I'd say definitely more of a patio food wine than a patio sipper. The finish was medium as was the body but overall it was just really clean, crisp and refreshing, which is how I love my white wines. At under $16.00, definitely a wine I will be looking for come patio time!

In reds I'm looking at the 2008 Dolcetto d'Alba, also by Beni di Batasiolo. On the nose I was immediately impressed by the notes of cherry and ripe dark fruits. The wine was crisp and fresh and light on the nose with a bit of earth and green characters. I noticed some fresh fruits on the palate and even though I was looking for ripeness and cherries I couldn't help but notice the blueberries and not really the ripeness. There was admittedly a bit of cherries but it didn't dominate. It's a light and crisp wine with medium body and nice, round soft tannins. You can definitely feel the altitude and the climate of the hills around Alba in this wine. At $16.00 this wine does a lot for me. Great for pairing with lighter fares and wonderfully easy to drink.

As far as I know, both of these wines are available in Vancouver only at Marquis wine Cellars on Davie St. and they are not available at all, as far as I know, in Ontario and Quebec even though both provinces carry other Batasiolo wines. Since I'm lucky enough to be in Vancouver, I think I might just have to pick up a bottle of these wines in anticipation of some summer fun. Even if you can't get these wines specifically, check out wines from Piemonte. Great deals for excellent wines. I looked at the Dolcetto grape variety today and while the Batasiolo brand may not be widely available, every provincial liquor store carries a few Dolcetto's and they worth checking out, especially with their price tags!
Piemonte is definitely a wine producing area to keep your eye on for the wine quality and the price and I hope I will have a chance to share some other wines from this area with you very soon.

Ciao Bella!