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With Sommelier Lisa Haley, Sorting The Cellar At Boulevard Kitchen & Oyster Bar

Lisa-Wine-Barrels

    by Treve Ring | In a wine savvy, sommelier-saturated town like Vancouver, we drink well in our uniquely collaborative Cascadian wine culture and we know it. So when sommelier Lisa Haley arrived to the coast with her Montreal state of mind and Francophile palate (not to mention her amour for natural wines), it was like a breath of fresh air.

    From the wine program at Montreal’s Wienstein & Gavino’s and Manager/Sommelier at Tuck Shop Restaurant, she headed west, making her first imprint in Vancouver at Burdock & Co. before joining the opening team at Boulevard. Her list favours grapes grown organically and biodynamically, fermented with wild yeast and without heavy winemaker intervention – basically, wines with an absence of fuckery. I recently chatted her about what she has LISTED.

    How many wines on your list? There are approximately 430 wines on our list right now and over 35 by the glass. I add around a dozen labels per week, so it’s growing daily and there’s always something new to discover.

    How is your list organized? By region first, and varietal second. I list the varietal for every wine on the list, so even though it is organized geographically, it is easy to find a wine if you were thinking ‘grape’ first.

    What one wine are you most excited about right now on your list? Pares Balta Rosa Cusine — a cava made from 100% grenache that can stand up to many Champagnes. It’s more grey than rosé in colour, and has a delicate nose, but with enough body to make it a great food wine. Hardly any of it makes its way into B.C. but I managed to get a little at Boulevard and I can’t wait to share it.

    What’s the top selling wine on your list? We sell so much Chablis! Even as winter has descended, I am still battling to keep it on the shelves. It goes so well with Chef Alex Chen’s cuisine, and we do have an oyster bar after all. What’s fun about Chablis is that I can persuade people to try smaller, lesser-known producers because they trust the appellation.

    What’s the newest arrival on your list? I just received all the VQA pairings for our Dine Out Vancouver menu. I am really excited about Arrowleaf Zweigelt — there’s not a whole lot of that varietal being grown in British Columbia!

    The one product you will never list? I will never list anything I wouldn’t feel comfortable recommending. Sometimes even when demand is there, you have to recognize that a wine just isn’t a right fit – be it for the cuisine, the philosophy behind the list, or the setting.

    Money/availability is no option. What one wine would you list? I would love to be able to list Pierre Overnoy’s Arbois Pupillin Red. He’s a small producer in the Jura making some of the freshest wines I’ve ever tried and his Poulsard is why I love natural wines. Even with a few years of bottle age, they still taste like they are fresh from the barrel! Unfortunately he just doesn’t make enough wine to go around — I know of some B.C. importers who have been trying to bring his wines here, but he doesn’t have any to sell.

    Your fave food/beverage pairing currently in your restaurant? Oysters are a big focus at Boulevard, so I have been trying everything I can get my hands on with oysters since we opened. I tasted some fino sherry with east coast oysters a few weeks ago and loved it. I just received 2012 Falernia Pedro Ximenez from the Elqui Valley in Chile, a completely dry wine made from the same grape as many sherries. Because it’s not fortified like sherry, it’s much lighter and has great minerality and a salinity on the finish that is killer with fruitier west coast oysters. It’s also priced extremely reasonably, so it’s a no-risk experiment at the oyster bar.

    Your insider top food/wine pairing tip? At this point, I think it’s safe to assume that everyone knows that Champagne pairs with just about everything, but it’s still my favourite. Otherwise, my best restaurant tip is to ask your sommelier for their recommendation. They have an intimate knowledge of the wines on the list and will know some of the surprising matches. For example, I have a Spanish verdejo from Bodegas Naia by the glass that most guests overlook. It’s super lush with notes of tropical fruit which makes it an exciting pairing for our sablefish dish with coconut rice, whereas most people would choose our by the glass Chablis.

    Favourite wine list in Vancouver, other than your own? It’s far from the largest list in town, but one of my go-to places to grab a glass of wine is Upstairs at Campagnolo. Peter Van de Reep has an extremely concise (about ten wines!) but very fun and mostly natural wine list at his bar. He appears to be having the same love affair as me with gamay, and because he orders in such small quantities, it’s a fresh, new list every time I visit.

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