Jun 20 2012

The Great Tinhorn Surprise

Category: Wine tasting — winepost @ 4:29 am

20120619-212941.jpgOk, let me just start out by stating a couple of things:

1 – Merlot, on it’s own, from anywhere in the world, has never really excited me.
2 – I tend to avoid wines with a high stated alcohol by volume (ABV). I drink wine with food and my food doesn’t really like highly alcoholic wines.

Enter this week’s wine from Tinhorn Creek – the Merlot 2009. If my neighbours would be so kind as to take down their house, I would have a great view of this winery. (I mentioned that once about my other neighbour’s trees which blocked our southern view and then 6 months later after a wind storm, he cut them all down except one. Now we have a great view.)

Check out that ABV – 14.8% – Yikes! What was going to happen with my spicy BBQ pork steaks? I know this wine may have been slightly mismatched. But as a wine-guy and not a traditional ‘foodie’, when matching wines I try to err on the side of the wine. This means that even if the food isn’t as good as I’d hoped, the wine will still shine through above it.

The whole issue of high alcohol was put to rest with the first comment from my wife when she tasted the wine: “Wow, is this low alcohol?”

Hmmm…

20120619-212949.jpgSo here’s the deal. This wine’s stated ABV is high.

And it’s a Merlot.

But this wine is balanced – so well that the alcohol doesn’t even stick out. It’s got fruit (tons, not jammy or baked), oak (hints, very well proportioned) and acidity ( very well balanced), and the burn I was expecting from the high alcohol just wasn’t there. Just a long finish of plums, savoury spices, and cocoa. Wonderful stuff it was, and all things that I look for in a wine of any kind.

So, based on this wine, I will re-evaluate my avoidance of high alcohol wines but with some trepidation. Tinhorn Creek has been around for a while and they know how to deal with ‘challenging’ vintages and weird weather. I will likely be more willing to accept a higher alcohol wine from a vineyard of pedigree like that than a newer winery who has only been in business for a few years (i.e. less than a decade). Tinhorn Creek is more than capable of navigating these waters and with product like this humble Merlot, which retails for about $18, they can clearly walk the walk and talk the talk.

And I’ll be listening from now on.

Cheers from wine country!
~Luke

Tags: , , , , , ,

Jun 12 2012

Rustic Roots Peach Nectarine 2010

Category: Podcast — winepost @ 3:10 pm

OWFS Podcast 7

Stepping outside of the box can be really rewarding.  It used to be that when I thought of fruit wines, it brought to mind my parents’ disastrous flirtation with winemaking when I was a child.  They decided that they would make a batch of cherry wine.  The memory that lingers is the smell and as a result, I resisted venturing into fruit wine territory.  Thanks to wineries like Forbidden Fruit and Rustic Roots in recent years, those traumatic memories have been replaced by much more pleasant sensory experiences.

Luke and I tasted the 2010 Rustic Roots Peach Nectarine table wine together.  Oh the places this wine could go!  I love it when I taste a wine and the culinary possibilities that leap to mind are not limited to one culture or food group.  It was so hard to figure out what I was going to make to go along with this one, simply because I can’t choose.  The nose on this wine is divine; all sunshiny and golden.  ( I realize that those descriptors are not officially smells, but that’s the only way I can really express how it made me feel and after all, wine is an evocative sensory experience!)  The palate was packed with honey and a very distinctly ripe apricot flavor.  It wasn’t sweet though, which is what makes this such a divine wealth of dining options!

After much thought and consideration, I realized that the simplest answer is probably the best.

Our recipe for this delightful wine is a baked brie with a twist.  Since summer is now upon us, we’re going to bake our brie on the bbq!  The list of ingredients is as follows:

  • 1 Wheel of Brie (you might want a big one)
  • A handful of dried apricots
  • Honey
  • Chili flakes
  • Walnut pieces
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • Prosciutto
  • A knob of butter
  • An open bottle of the Rustic Roots Peach Nectarine

In a small saucepan, melt the butter.  Add the chopped apricots, honey, chili flakes (we’re going for a bite here, not a searing heat), walnut pieces, salt & pepper.  Cook slowly, creating a candied, chunky, awesome smelling flavor combination.  As you’re cooking, add a little wine from time to time to keep the consistency like that of loose relish.  Once the nuts have toasted a bit, the apricots have absorbed some of the moisture and the wine has reduced a tad, remove the mixture from the heat and pile it on your wheel of brie.

I bet you were wondering what we were going to do with the prosciutto.  All will be revealed!  Separate your slices of prosciutto and use them to wrap your topped brie up like a tasty and exciting present.  Your bbq should be preheated, but make sure it’s not too hot.  We want the prosciutto to be crisp, not burned.  Place your cheesy package on the grill away from direct heat.  Grill until the prosciutto achieves the aforementioned crispness and the cheese has reached that magical temperature of runny goodness.  Remove it before the rind of the cheese bursts though, because it’s a sad thing when the cheese escapes into the bbq burners.

Serve with a selection of crackers & crusty bread and another bottle of the 2010 Peach Nectarine and enjoy thoroughly.  Don’t think about the fat when you’re eating this.  Think about all the calcium you’re getting.

 

Jun 08 2012

Painted Rock Merlot 2008

Category: Wine tasting — winepost @ 5:01 am

I have to admit something right out front. I’ve been a huge fan of this winery since a trade tasting introduced me to their products in the fall of 2009. A co-worker and I had tasted through a hotel ballroom-full of white wines and then went into the second smaller room to see some of the other wineries there.

20120607-220137.jpgThat’s when a woman walked up to us and said, “Here, try our Chardonnay!” She poured wine in our glasses and we asked her which winery she was from. She said, “We are Painted Rock Estate winery near Penticton and wah wah wah wahwah…” As soon as we took a first whiff of the wine, we completely tuned her out and I remember nothing of what she said. I’m sure she was doing her job fabulously but the wine was speaking louder than she was and nothing she said registered. The chardonnay was amazing.

She offered us other wines that she had but we declined because we still had more whites to try and we wanted to taste through some of the reds before trying the ones from Painted Rock. We wanted to see if they could stand out among the reds the way the Chardonnay stood out. We continued on and progressed to reds before returning to her booth to eagerly try the Painted Rock Merlot, Syrah, and Red Icon, all from the 2007. They, too, stood out among their peers for us that day.

Fast-forward a few years (through buying the first vintage of Merlot, interviewing winery owner John Skinner for my podcast, going to their wine shop when it first opened, trying their wines throughout the summer and again later at other trade tastings) to a recent dinner party with a bottle of their Merlot 2008. At almost 4 years old, this wine still needs more time in the cellar or a group extremely patient dinner guests. The tannins have smoothed out a little and the bouquet has opened up slightly. It is no longer hiding quite so effectively as it once was but it still isn’t offering up the whole deal.

To me, this wine is like looking at a mountain. From my back yard, the mountain I can see to the west doesn’t look very large. It looks like a medium size mountain at best. But if I drive to the east side of town, the perspective changes and it looks way bigger than it seems from my back yard. When I lived in North Vancouver, The 3 north shore mountains didn’t look as impressive from my apartment as they did from downtown Vancouver.

This is how I think my impressions of the Painted Rock Merlot will change. As we get farther away from the vintage, the Merlot will reveal the full altitude of its flavours. That requires a little bit of patience, or at least some degree of forgetfulness so that you don’t remember that such a towering BC wine is in your cellar.

For my money, Painted Rock represents a true and noble Grand Cru of BC wine and one that I will happily be purchasing each and every vintage for years to come. While I enjoyed this Merlot 2008 now, I would have loved to have tasted it in another 5 years. But, sometimes dinner guests aren’t that patient.

Sometimes, I’m not either.

Cheers from wine country!

~Luke