There are some wines that just work well on their own. Wine writers and sales people sometimes call them “patio sippers” which isn’t really something I’ve latched onto to be perfectly honest. Most any wine can be a “patio sipper” and it depends entirely on what you like about a wine.

Another wine term (let’s start calling them cliché’s) that I’m not fond of is “easy drinking”. Are some wines really difficult to drink? Do you really have to work harder to swallow some wines rather than others? What makes a wine easier to drink than others?

Perhaps why these expressions have been created is to explain a wine that doesn’t require a lot of preparation. There might be occasions when you just don’t have the time, energy, location, or resources to prepare oysters on the half shell every time you want to sip Chablis. Want to have meritage every night but can’t be bothered to have huge lamb and meat dishes each day? Relax, there are some wines that don’t need specific food pairings to fully appreciate what they have to offer.

(Yes, I am one of those people who tries to pair wines appropriately with food. I get more enjoyment from both the food and the wine that way. If you want to drink Pinot Blanc with your rack of lamb because it’s your choice, go for it. I’m not going to stop you from missing out on something.)

The Intrigue Gewürztraminer is one of those wines that really doesn’t need food to make it tasty. It’s totally tasty on its own, and it knows it. It’s got tons of flavour and some sweetness which makes it a great candidate for drinking with spicy foods. But even without any food, it’s great to have as a drink to sip on its own.

You know, like when you’re sitting on a deck. Or maybe an enclosed deck-like location behind your house.

Cheers from wine country!

~Luke

I can have problems tasting wine sometimes. It’s always with a similar style of wine – aromatic wines. I am particularly weak around Rieslings and Gewurztraminers but Ortegas, Siegerrebes, Bacchuses, and Ehrenfelsers are also in that category too. I just love how uniquely scented they are. When it’s done right, there is a lot of complex aromas to pick up on and I have been known to take up to 15 minutes just smelling a wine before even taking the first sip.

It is with this attitude that I approached the Arrowleaf Gewürztraminer 2010. It had a great nose of flowers and perfume with a hint of Fruit Loops. (Honestly, the repertoire of proper aromatic descriptors is seriously lacking in our culture.)

The palate was slightly off-dry with a little acidity to keep it from getting flabby. Flavours were the same as on the nose – more flowers and perfumey and then… It was like it had stopped in mid-sentence. The wine disappeared. I took another sip and tasted the lovely flavours again and then it was gone. The finish was annoyingly quick. The nose of this wine was writing cheques that the palate couldn’t cash.

Still when it was there, it was beautiful and reminded me of my love of Gewürztraminer from BC.

Cheers from wine country!

~Luke

Similkameen, Similkameen

How long has it really been?

To taste your grapes and drink your wine

Is getting to be quite divine.

Bad poetry, great wine. I’m not a poet and I’m quite sure that everyone knows it. At least now they do.

What I’d like to know is how many people have tried wine from the Similkameen Valley lately? If you haven’t yet, you are truly missing out. There are some solidly built wines coming from the Similkameen these days. Considering that even 5 years ago there were almost no wines from this valley making it to store shelves, this is probably one of the fastest growing wine regions in BC.

There are lots of vineyards and orchards in “the Sim”. It is a very rural valley with lots of farms of all kinds. There is a noticeable lack of civilization there – no big urban areas, no strip malls, no large parking lots and no traffic lights until Princeton, possibly, although I’m not even sure Princeton has one either.

It from here that Robin Ridge’s Chardonnay comes. For as relaxed a pace as the Similkameen offers, this wine delivers and intensity that almost belies it’s provenance.

I will go on record here to say that I like Chardonnay and always have. It never went out of fashion for me. I like them both oaked and unoaked and love that it can be a lot of different things. Yes, for a while there was a fashion that made some chards into a big bottle of buttered popcorn and that got out of hand but thankfully, we’ve come away from that here in BC at least.

The Robin Ridge Chardonnay still points in that direction with a subtle oak treatment which only intensifies its complexity. It is everything that I look for in a chardonnay.

But wait, there’s more.

It has something different that many BC chardonnay’s don’t have. If you taste it at just the right temperature, it has a mineral note that hides until the finish and writes a little name in scribbled handwriting, as if the Similkameen were adding its signature to the wine’s flavour profile. It’s a signature that’s written on a lot of wines coming out of the Similkameen and it makes wines there distinct, even in these early days of BC wine.

It isn’t only Chardonnay that Robin Ridge makes well. The Robin Ridge Gamay accompanied the turkey-based entrée created by Chris VanHooydonk, executive chef at the Sonora Room at Burrowing Owl, as he won top spot at the Similkameen Barbecue Championship in July 2011. Pinot Noir and Merlot are other wines to try from this winery as well, if you can find them!

Cheers from wine country!

~Luke

I recently returned from the Wine and Jazz Festival at the Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, as the guests of the fabulous management team. It was a blast! Three days of events centered around the wines of the U.S. (well, mostly California & Oregon).

When I think about the California and Oregon wine industries, I can’t help but think in terms of large, corporate entities, like Gallo or Mondavi. It is so great to get the opportunity to see some of the smaller production wineries up close and personal. Of course, it is Vegas, so during the consumer tasting, you have to talk to the winery reps through a “model”, which can be both frustrating and entertaining at the same time.

On the first night, we enjoyed some excellent live jazz and tasted the sparkling wine lineup from Domaine Carneros by Tattinger, among others.  The 2007 Domaine Carneros was crisp and dry with fine bubbles and refreshing flavours of green apples and citrus and a comforting yeasty note on the finish.  Their rose bubbly (a blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes) was a tad lush, with berry notes and fine tannins on the finish.

On the second night, I felt like a kid in a candy store.  It was consumer tasting time in the Grand Ballroom.  Wines from Caymus and Seghesio Family Vineyards tickled my palate, to name a few.  The Caymus Conundrum will always be a favorite of mine, with it’s juicy, rich, round palate and it’s silky, honeyed finish.  The Select Cabernet Sauvignon from Caymus was delightful as well with it’s ripe berries, spice and hints of tobacco.

On Sunday morning, I got up early (11am is early for Vegas!) to enjoy the Champagne and Jazz Brunch.  The food was an amazing cross cultural array, but the music was even better.  Everything ground to an absolute halt though when the vocalist on stage began his rendition of What a Wonderful World.  He sounded precisely like Louis Armstrong and it was mind blowing!  It was worthy of the standing ovation that it garnered.

The highlight of the weekend was the poolside wine tasting known as the “Winedown with the Winemakers”.  The sun was shining, and the water was warm, which made the wine taste even better.  I have never spent a wine tasting supine, but it turned out to be the way that things ought to be.  Five hours and a slight sunburn later, I had tasted my way through several lovely California Sauvignon Blancs and was much the better for the experience.

If you’re interested in trying something new next year, check out the link below:

http://www.goldennugget.com/LasVegas/springwinefest.asp

I highly recommend it.  In order to appreciate what we have to offer the world here in our little corner of it, it’s important to step outside our boundaries once in a while.  Now if I can just find a way to head farther south and taste a bunch of really great tequilas!

There are times when you set out to do something, and you don’t wind up with what you expected at all. I set out to satisfy a craving for German food and wound up achieving something completely different.

I threw a bottle of Young & Wyse Amber in the fridge and set to work making hunter schnitzel and a fresh batch of spaetzle.  I thought that the Amber would be a rich and complex counterpart for the creamy mushroom sauce and all that butter.  I’d tried the wine before, and I was sure it would be the perfect sidekick.  Along the way, I learned that there is more to the journey than the intended destination.

My 8 year old son was very excited by the prospect of learning to make schnitzel and spaetzle.  After washing his hands thoroughly, of course, he joined me in the kitchen.  He is going to make some woman very happy one day.  He was so careful pounding out the pork cutlets, and very proud of himself.

Alastair carefully (although not at all neatly) floured each cutlet, dipped it in an egg wash and then made sure that every inch of it was covered in just the right amount of breading.  When his sisters came and asked if they could help too, he solemnly told them no, he was making his “special” schnitzel for dinner because Uncle Allan was coming and needed space to work.

We made the spaetzle dough together….

I showed him how to mix flour, eggs, a little nutmeg, some milk and salt to make the dough.  We put a buttered bowl in the oven and brought our water to a boil.  When we started putting the dough balls into the boiling water, I got to teach Alastair that part of cooking is using all of your senses.  You can tell the dough is right when it feels soft and slightly elastic.  And the spaetzle are ready to come out of the water and go into the bowl when they bob to the surface.

Alastair and I had a great time making dinner together (although we had less fun cleaning up the enormous mess).  The best part was listening to him telling Uncle Allan all about the dinner he made, and the look on his face when we told him how good it was.

On a less positive note, although the wine was every bit as delicious as I remembered, it turned out I was not at all right about it being a good match with the meal.  The ripe roundness of the palate was a little too fruity for what was essentially an earthy, creamy dish.  However, if I hadn’t set out to make this train wreck of a wine pairing, I would never have had such a delightful afternoon learning with my son in the kitchen.  My palate will live to pair again, and I can be proud of the fact that I have imparted some life skills to my son that will lead him one step further away from the processed food aisles in the grocery store of life.

Quinta Ferriera’s Syrah is a minor legend in the south Okanagan. It has won awards. It is sought out by people who know. It is prized by people who actually manage to get their hands on it. It is becoming an institution in its own right. And here’s why.

It’s like tasting a fortress. This wine is an impenetrable, fortified, armour-plated, bunker that will not let you in unless you know the correct password combination.

The secret to getting in is to wait it out. Let the fortress-dwellers think that you really don’t have an interest in getting inside, or that it matters that much. Play it cool. Don’t jump at the first taste. There’s plenty of time, why hurry?

Waiting this wine out a little pays dividends. I will see how a wine will age by keeping an open bottle in my little bar sealed only with a silicone stopper. No gas. No pump. No fridge. Nothing to protect it at all. Hefty wines can usually make it about a week this way if they have enough tannins and acidity to backstop it. It won’t taste the same as it did when it was first opened and I never expect it to. What I’m looking for is how long it takes to get dismantled. When will the oxygen finally rip into the wine, making it taste off and send it on its way down the path towards salad dressing?

This is where a wine’s quality will shine. Generally, in my own completely un-scientific tests, any wine under $10 that is mass-produced will get turfed within a couple of days and have noticeable off-tastes very quickly, sometimes within hours. Wines that have been ‘handled’ less will be much more resistant to this kind of thing.

It is important to mention the use of the silicone stopper. If you missed that part a couple of paragraphs ago, I suggest going back to it. The stopper must be airtight. Resealing a bottle with the cork won’t do it. The vacuum pumps, which I used for years, actualy seem to suck out some of the aromatics. The gas canisters do the same thing although did a better job of keeping the wine fresh. It was a famous wine writer who convinced me that a simple airtight stopper worked the best for resealing quality wines.

Meanwhile, back on the Quinta, I tasted the Syrah without food as part of a set of wines that I had decided to taste that night. I rarely do that kind of tasting for this blog because I don’t think that most people generally drink their wines with such clinical evaluations in mind. In this case, I wanted to get a proper starting point established and see where it went from there. Here are some of my thoughts on the first glass poured from this Syrah:

Dark purple color. Very dark. Can’t see through the wine kind of dark.

Initially the nose wasn’t offering very much. Some serious swirling brought out hints of its potential: dark, smoky cherries and plums. Similar flavors were found on the palate but were hidden by a “brick wall of alcohol”. I noted that it was incredibly focused, but that it was focused on some point in the future.

So I left it alone for a while with only a short glass of wine missing from it and topped with a silicone stopper. 4 days later, a dinner seemed entirely appropriate for Syrah so I brought it out and poured out 2 glasses. Same thing happened a few days after that. Going on around 8 days opened there was only a single glass left in the bottom. I decided to try it but didn’t get around to until a couple of days after that. 10 days out from the initial opening and it was still good to go. I ran out of wine before it could get to that ‘off’ stage.

So how did it change? For me, the fruit really opened up. At that first dinner after 4 days, the fruit became much more apparent. Big dark plums and and dark cherries came out to play. At the second dinner, the smoke and peppery notes started to show up. The final tasting brought out the meaty characteristics. It was a very interesting journey in how flavors change over time and I’m sad that the wine ran out.

Of course, I probably could have poured less each time. But then where would the fun have been?

So give that a try with a red wine of your choice. See how it progresses over time and let it go for a week or more. See how long your favourite wines can go before they turn into salad dressing. Let me know what you think. Until then…

Cheers from wine country!

~Luke

As the name and the label suggest, Tortured Grapes are the image for this white blend from Thornhaven in Summerland. To be perfectly honest, the label doesn’t grab me. Maybe it’s just my sense of humour or maybe I’m just not fun, but even the name puts me off a little.

For me however, it’s what’s in the glass that counts, try as I may to not be swayed by anyone’s label, good, bad or otherwise.

The nose gives me quite a bit to go on. There is a dusty chalk aroma going on, with lemon gum drop and bubble gum wrapper scents as well. There’s also a bit of a musky hint and it’s got a little amonia-like streak happening somewhere. However odd the combination, it is remarkably complex and that is always a plus for me.

The wine on the palate is light, low acid with a touch of sweetness. There’s a lemon – citrus vibe happening here but none of that complexity that had been advertised to me by the nose. From there, it kind of drops off as though the flavours had been scared away somehow. Perhaps torturing the grapes may not have been the best idea.

All in all, it’s an ok wine that will have lots of people talking about the label as they sip, for which I think is what this wine is most suited.

Cheers from wine country!

~Luke