May 29 2012

Desert Hills Mirage – A Classic BC Meritage

Category: Wine tasting — winepost @ 4:56 pm

Note: I wrote this 2 weeks ago and was about to press the “Publish” button when I noticed that Courtney had just written about the Desert Hills Cab Franc. It might look like all we’ve been drinking is Desert Hills wines this month but I assure you, we have been tasting other wines as well. More wines still to come…

Consistency is the mark of any established winery. A winery that has been through good vintages and bad. Ones that have the ability to sway when the wind blows rather than break. Perhaps that describes the brothers Toor who have taken Desert Hills from a humble vineyard supplying grapes to other wineries (notably the yummy Gamay from Domain de Chaberton) to a winery with a reputation for robustly flavoured reds.

20120529-095639.jpg(When I was tasting my way through BC Gamays a few years ago, the single-most drool-inducing wine that people advised me to try was the Desert Hills Gamay. But that’s another blog post…)

Enter the Mirage 2007 – one of the richest, New-World style, Meritages that BC has produced. I’ve tried vintages on this in the past and am most familiar with the 2005 – rich, velvety, decadently-layered Meritage worthy of Washington state or even California. The 2007 vintage, a hot year and one of the last ‘normal’ growing seasons we’ve had in BC, is dangerously close to the 2005.

I decanted this wine an hour before dinner with friends and visiting family. It was one of 3 wines that evening and was one that I was eager to try. It totally delivered in many ways with a smoothness and complexity that can hold my attention throughout the meal. It was not the only wine at the table that evening, but it was a standout in terms of taste.

My only reservation is it’s acidity, which isn’t so much a comment on the wine making at Desert Hills, as it is on the lineage of the wine’s New-World, fruit-forward style. The ageability of this style is always a big question mark. At almost 5 years old now, it showed well after decanting and in the glass but there was no real noticeable improvement or drastic change to the aromas or flavours. Whereas another wine at the table, only one vintage younger, continued to change, evolve, and get ‘open up’ over the same time period.

Stability of that sorts can be beneficial and in this case, the Mirage ’07 acted as my barometer for the other wines and the food at the meal. To me, consistency of that sort is important enough to call the Desert Hills Mirage out as a true classic BC wine.

Cheers from wine country!

~Luke

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Jul 24 2010

secrets of great summer wine-ing: part I

Category: Wine tasting — winepost @ 3:53 pm

 

It’s easy to have a good time in the Okanagan, especially when it’s summer. I should know – I live here. Go ahead, be jealous. It’s okay. After all, living in vacationland could have the same tag line as that credit card commercial: membership has its privileges.

But in the summer, anyone can be a member of the Okanagan and we like it that way. This is what summer vacations are made of: floating along the channel in Penticton, renting a boat and ripping it up wake-board-style in Osoyoos, golfing at one of the dozens of greenways.

And, of course – there’s wine touring. You wouldn’t be here (I mean here, on this site) if it wasn’t for your love of Okanagan wine. Good for you.

I already said it’s easy to have a good time here, and it’s true. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have our secrets, tips and tricksto make summer wine touring – and Okanagan visiting – even better. You can get a ton of information from the Tourism BC website to help navigate your way from Salmon Arm to Osoyoos, but we all know what the real secret to great travel is: getting the goods from a local.

I’m a local. Okay – so I haven’t lived here my whole life and by small town rules that means I’m not a local yet. But I’ll bet I drink way more wine than many of the locals do, so if you’re in for a wine-ing good time, then I’m your gal to listen to.

There’s too much information to give to you in just one post, so this will be spread out a bit. Consider it my gift to you – it’s the stuff I wish I knew heading in to this wine-touring gig years ago. You might know some (or all) of this already; if so, think of it as a summer-school refresher course. A really, really fun one.

wine touring 101

Bring snacks. It sounds silly, and something your mom might have said before you went off to your first day-trip without her, but it’s vital for surviving wine touring and tasting. Sure, tasting rooms might have little palate cleansers – even a bit of cheese, perhaps. That just won’t cut it. Grab a baguette – or two – and some of our great local cheeses to munch on as you go about your day.

Hydrate yourself. Whether you’re wakeboarding, sunbathing, golfing or wine-touring, you’ll need H2O. It’s a freakin’ desert, people. Dryness like you may not have experienced before. Water. Lots of it.

Book ahead. Accommodations get snapped up in a jiffy around these parts come summer, even tenting. Do the online reservation thing or pick up the phone. That works for a few of our wineries, too, which leads us into…

Do your research. If you have a favourite winery you want to visit, be sure to check out their website or give them a call before you make the trek from wherever you’re from. A few spots require an appointment, usually to give you extra-special attention while you’re visiting them. Love the Carmenere by Black Hills? Call ‘em up ahead of time and book a seat for their ultra-lounge wine tasting uber-experience. Got a weakness for Blue Mountain bubble? You’re not alone – but get in touch with them early so they can make an appointment for a tasting.

Take the road less travelled. This might seem to fly in the face of the recommendation above, but no – quite the opposite. It’s by going down the road you didn’t know was there that you can often find that little gem buried in the wilderness – or just along a side street. That’s how I first found Blue Mountain. No, we didn’t get in for a tasting that day…but I found them, which I think is the bigger gain.

Try something new. You’re doing wine tasting, after all. Don’t just stick with the “I-like-big-reds-so-just-pour-me-the-cab-sauv-and-if-you-don’t-have-any-of-that-then-I’ll-wait-outside” line. You’re in a tasting room. Only drink aromatic whites? Who cares! Try that pinot noir you’ve heard about. Isn’t tasting exactly why you’re here? Live a little. You might surprise yourself.

Mix it up. Just because you’re wine touring doesn’t mean you can’t take in a festival or event while you’re in the area – and stumble upon it. Houseboating in the Shuswap? Get thee to a winery, like Granite Creek (their fortified merlot is dee-lish). These things don’t need to be mutually exclusive. Have fun. You’re on vacation.

We’re just scratching the surface of what can help take your Okanagan summer from great to fantabulous. This is the entry-level stuff, a kind of introductory course for those unfamiliar with our area – or an easy refresher for those seasoned Okanagan travel veterans.  Stay tuned for more, including some secrets that only locals know about and share with good friends. You’re our good friend, right?

Happy summer, wherever you are. It’s a great time to un*wine*d with a bottle of BC wine. Get over here and get some.

Cheers!

Jeannette

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Mar 23 2010

cotton candy, deep hole earth & a rainy day

Category: Wine tasting — admin @ 5:59 pm

Appies, dinner & dessert – a fairly standard order. There’s also a “recommended” wine tasting order: whites before reds, lighter before fuller-bodied and sweeter dessert or late harvest wines last. Makes sense, right? Sure – but that doesn’t mean it has to happen that way. As for talking about wine, well, I’m going to make you wait until the end of the blog-meal before I serve up the (lighter) special treat. Because I can.

Wine tasting is something I recommend you do with a buddy, friend or random stranger you meet outside the tasting room. You know what I’m talking about: you’re on the tasting circuit and realize you’re following or being followed by that sylish couple with the cool glasses or the gentleman that likes to talk to himself. It’s inevitable.

Where was I? Right – tasting with friends.

My fella likes to dip into the wine with me, but sometimes I like to bring along a friend who has a) different knowledge than me, b) a few spare hours and c) a good sense of humour because my descriptors aren’t standard WSET lingo (as you might have guessed by now). One of the friends I like to taste wines with is Luke, the empire builder from an earlier wineopoly post.

Luke joined me for some tasting the other night; here’s an sample of how it went.

Me: Deep hole earth.

Luke: Hmmm, really?

Me: It’s like I’m in a big hole and it smells like earth from deep down.

Luke: That’s interesting.

See what I mean? There was some cursing involved (in a good way – sometimes descriptors need a bit of oomph), discussion about cropping and yield per acre (on Luke’s part – I sat and listened) and talk of good barnyard smell versus bad barnyard smell. On the whole, I learned (as usual) a bit from Luke and he (I’m sure) got a good laugh. Deep hole earth says it all.

I tried my first BC Zweigelt, from Arrowleaf in Lake Country. A long, deep inhale on this baby took me to carnivals and cotton candy. That’s right – cotton candy. But it’s a spicy little grape, and on shorter sniffs I could have been walking past the spice aisle in a grocery store. I fell in love with zweigelt (say it like svy-gelt) in Ontario’s Niagara Region, and I’m happy that BC wineries are producing it too. This one’s a bit more cherryish than peppery, and it looks like purple, velvet curtains. Very cool.

On the docket was a Merlot from Twisted Tree in Osoyoos – and damn it’s a nice looking bottle! Seriously folks, the bottle itself has presence, and is pretty sexy. When I think BC merlot, I think dark and sexy. This is the wine that made me think deep hole earth. It also made me think of rich liquors and cassis, and blackberry porter (yes, I drink beer too). Get your hands on a bucket of overripe blackberries and some deep hole earth and you’ve got this merlot. I warned you that I wouldn’t use wine-speak.

It’s time for dessert. Not that this wine tasted like dessert – it’s just that it’s the bomb, the bee’s knees, the freakin’ stellar event of our wine tasting night. It’s the Pinot Noir from Howling Bluff on the Naramata bench. Two words: rainy day. A whiff of this little gem was like walking on a sidewalk after a summer rain, when the stones and ground are still wet and everything’s got that clean-rain-smell. The more we sniffed and slurped, the more we oohed and aahed over it. Simple tasting, like chocolate and cherries and summer, but with that fantastic rainy day smell. Perfect.

It’s nice to enjoy a glass (or two) of wine by yourself – I’ve been known to do that myself on occasion. Don’t look in our recycle bin. But it’s way more fun when you’ve got some friends with you and you’re just drinking and chatting. That’s when things like deep hole earth happen. And there’s nothing more un*wine*d than that.

Cheers!

Jeannette

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