The New Siblings Of Mission Hill’s Oculus

Mission Hill winery has been busy lately lauching its new range of wines to wine lovers across the country and I just finished a mini-tasting of them. The Legacy Series sees two new labels joining Oculus on the MH’s most premium series. The new siblings are Perpetua and Quatrain, and they are both quite impressive.

The first of these wines, 2006 Perpetua, is a single-vineyard Chardonnay from Osoyoos. It is perhaps a bit of a surprise for Mission Hill to produce a single-vineyard wine. In the past they have been proponents of blending from a number of sites for the sake of consistency. A few years ago when I asked the winemaker, John Simes, if he would be making more single-vineyard wines I think his answer was “I hope not”.

Although the vineyard name isn’t featured on the label, it does appear in the marketing materials. I’m curious as to whether or not we’ll see the Perpetua coming only from this one site year after year. There is definitely a growing trend towards exploring terroir, and it will be interesting to see if Mission Hill, with their expanded Small Lots Program, starts to produce more of these wines – a Pinot Noir or Syrah perhaps? Or maybe something from their new organically farmed vineyard in the south of the valley?

So what does it taste like? It’s another luxury Chardonnay, given all the royal treatment from vineyard to bottle. In fact, the bottle itself is fantastic, with the front label a glued-on piece of tin with the wine name stamped into it. As for what’s in it, the wine is ripe and fruit forward with lots of (good quality) oak, stone fruit and custard. It shows good texture, intensity and length with some nice lemon and minerality. It finishes a touch hot, even though it’s only 13% alcohol. The oak is nicely done, well integrated and adds some interesting toasty-nutty flavours. Bottom line: this is a pretty serious Chardonnay, one comparable to many California big wigs around the same price of $35.

The 2005 Quatrain is not too different from the Oculus with the notable exception of a chunk of Syrah added to the blend. The goal is for it to be ready for consumption earlier than the Oculus, so as to give you something to drink while you wait for the big “O” to mature for 5 or 10 years (side note: we recently tried both the ’97 and ’98 vintages and both were still drinking very well).

The Quatrain seems to achieve this goal well with lots of soft, ripe plum, Christmas cake and spice, quite a full body and a nice kick of peppery Syrah flavour to give it some complexity. The blend is dominated by 57% Merlot and 28% Syrah, and these varietals dominate. Overall: good quality. The price is $48.

The 2005 Oculus has also recently hit the shelves and I think this could be the best vintage yet. It was from about this vintage that the quality initiatives Mission Hill was putting into place really started to show their impact. Low yields in the vineyards, sorting the fruit and oak fermentation vats have all amped up the quality of these red wines. The ’05 combines the usual Cabernet and Merlot flavours with much more texture and weight than in past vintages. It still has the structure to age, but will probably taste pretty nice along the way if you can’t wait for 10 years in the cellar. Price is $70.

Regardless of whether or not this is a good time to be releasing a new high-end series, kudos to Mission Hill for the commitment to quality from vineyard to cellar. The big guys like Mission Hill and Vincor often get the short end of the stick when it comes to recognition for wine quality, but they are doing as much, if not more, than anyone else to do everything they can to make the best wines possible.

It is also great to see more single-vineyard wines from the big wineries (Vincor also has some excellent Jackson-Triggs and Inniskillin single-vineyard wines) hitting the market. As wine drinkers, we can now really start to explore the BC terroir.

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Rhys Pender is a wine educator, freelance wine writer, wine judge and consultant to the industry. Visit his company Wine Plus+ online at www.wineplus.ca.

The Boozeless Cleanse Of A Wine Pro

The beginning of a new year is a sad time. After a couple of weeks of eating and drinking far too much and barely lifting a finger in exercise it is suddenly back to normal, back to work. It is when you finally sit back down at the desk that you contemplate where that extra rubber around the midriff came from.

Personally I have been a firm disbeliever when it comes to cleansing, diets and other short-sighted means to keep looking trim and terrific. A good, balanced approach to food, avoiding fast food and overly processed crap and a bit of exercise is all that should be necessary.

It was with dismay that I discovered that some of my best friends, most ardent eaters and drinkers that they are, had fallen to the dreaded lure of the cleanse. A couple of friends go off alcohol for a few weeks every once in a while just to prove to themselves that they are not alcoholics. Alas, it was even enough to convince my wife and I to try something, to see what on earth had led them down this stray path.

The first part of a cleanse has to be figuring out the rules of the game. This is surprisingly hard. Give up cheese, wine, red meats, bread? How can you avoid these staples of life? After shedding tears and sobbing with horror we decided on the following: no alcohol for 10 days, no caffeine, no cheese and no red meat. This would be supplemented with plenty of exercise. It’s a strong test of one’s character, I thought.

The day before we started this cleanse was very difficult. We started longing for the things we had put in the ‘no go’ basket. We wanted to grab the bottle and drink heartily, gorge on cheese, fat, and meat, all in obscene quantities.

Day 1 started out okay, but the house was in a somber mood. The cheese drawer beckoned every time the fridge was opened. The empties on the counter from the good old days called out with their aromas and flavours and every book or magazine seemed to involve endless, gluttonous feasts. But we made it.

Day 2 we both woke with headaches. I thought you were supposed to get a headache when you did drink? The idea was starting to wear thin. By mid-afternoon, my wife gave in and headed for the cheese drawer (we must have had 10 different cheeses in there, just beckoning). She started trying to convince me that we needed wine, that a cleanse was a stupid idea. I was weakening, but I survived day two.

Day 3 was when it finally fell apart. We gave in and changed the rules. In fact we abandoned the rules but went back to the old adage - everything good but in moderation. This is a better game and more in tune with our philosophy. But we did learn something.

Just two days of restraint gave us so much appreciation for the flavours, aromas and textures that we had taken for granted. Wine aromas have never smelled so clear, so focused, or so tantalising. Cheese would melt in your mouth, exploding with flavour, every bite savoured because, now, we couldn’t just plough through a couple of hundred grams of the stuff.

So our cleanse (if it warrants such a title) has renewed our appreciation for food and wine and made both taste better than ever. For that it was worthwhile. As for the extra rubber around the mid-riff, that will have to be dealt with the old fashioned way – more exercise and restraint – because some things are just too enjoyable to pass up and life is not long enough to go without.

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Rhys Pender is a wine educator, freelance wine writer, wine judge and consultant to the industry. Visit his company Wine Plus+ online at www.wineplus.ca.

Obama Will Have A Better Wine Cellar Than Bush

Slate’s Mike Steinberger thinks the Obamas will take the wine cellar of the White House a lot more seriously than the Bushes:

With the bitter taste of Shafer-gate lingering in the mouths of many Americans, Obama has a chance to take the White House wine program in a new direction. The need for a change of course was made shockingly clear in a recent interview that Daniel Shanks, who handles wine duties at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., gave to Bloomberg’s Elin McCoy. According to Shanks, the White House currently stocks around 500-600 bottles. That is pathetic and another example of how America’s infrastructure has been allowed to deteriorate. During his eight years in office, Thomas Jefferson amassed a 20,000-bottle collection, which he kept in a cellar that he had built under what is now the West Wing. Two centuries later, that space is being used for other purposes, and the president of the United States has less wine in his basement than I have in mine.

Even more dismaying, though, was what Shanks revealed about the process of choosing wines for state dinners. He told McCoy that because only 55 minutes are allotted for the actual meal, it is essential that the wines served on these august occasions “have presence.” And what did he mean by “presence”? “A perfectly aged cabernet may be great in the glass,” he explained, “but it can’t stand up to the intense atmosphere of a White House state dinner. You have to have something with youth and vigor.” Delicate wines will be overlooked; only strapping, assertive ones have what it takes to be “noticed in the context of the White House experience,” as Shanks put it. In other words, the desired effect is shock and awe, achieved not with cruise missiles but fruit bombs.

That sounds about right, and it brings to mind something former US ambassador to the UN (under Kennedy) Adlai E. Stevenson once said: “A diplomat’s life is made up of three ingredients: protocol, Geritol and alcohol”. True that. You’d probably want to slide some old Romanée-Conti in there, Barack. You’re going to win the electoral votes of California, Oregon, and Washington in 2012, so don’t sweat the locals.

He’s keeping Bush’s chef, though. What a bridge builder. Know hope.

The Difference A Decade Makes To 24 BC Wines

The following is a summary of the two tastings conducted by Wine Plus+ on November 30^th and December 7^th. This was a benchmark tasting of Okanagan wines with a dozen wines at each tasting and all at least a decade old.

It was with curious interest that the idea for these tastings emerged. Through negligent cellar management by myself and friends, I have had the opportunity to try a number of decade old Okanagan wines over recent years. Curiously, they all tasted remarkably better than I had expected. At the same time it occurred to me that there is little benchmarking for how well Okanagan wines age. The time seemed right to organize a tasting to bring clarity to this topic.

So digging into my own cellar and calling on friends and contacts at some of the 30 odd wineries that existed 10 years ago, an exciting range of wines was unearthed. The list of wines for each tasting can be found on my site here.

I have to admit that I thought some of these wines would be absolutely dead. I by no means expected such an overall accomplished performance. Fellow panelists were Mike Bartier – winemaker at Road 13 Vineyards (Kelowna & Penticton tastings), Mark Filatow – chef & sommelier at Waterfront Wines (Kelowna) and Kenji Hodgson – wine writer & winemaker at Joie (Penticton). The panelists, as well as the nearly 40 guests at the tastings, were all surprised with the quality after more than a decade of maturation.

Two important things should be mentioned. 1) Bottle variation from one tasting to the next was distinct, proving the old adage that there are not good old wines just good old bottles. 2) You have to appreciate the flavours of mature wine to grasp the subtleties and nuances that wine can gain with age.

Below is a brief discussion of the findings by grape variety.

Sparkling

Both bubblies we tasted were young beyond their 11 years. The Sumac Ridge was incredibly toasty, the bread, brioche and yeasty flavours and aromas enhanced by the extended maturation. It can last for another decade easily. The Lake Breeze Zephyr was a much crisper, fresher wine with obviously shorter lees contact but still clean, fresh and zippy and also still youthful in appearance and taste.

Riesling

Riesling is famed for its longevity and we really stretched the limits with a 21 year-old version from Gray Monk. We had a mixed bag in terms of Riesling styles with different levels of alcohol, acidity, sweetness and maybe even the influence of botrytis in some wines. The Hainle wine, true to its style, was incredibly high in acid but remarkably fresh yet complex at the same time (the second bottle was more oxidized and less enjoyable). The Wild Goose wines showed much softer characteristics, still some sweetness and still plenty of life. The 1987 Gray Monk had fantastic complexity. While quite developed, it still had a long finish and showed developed fruit and spice. Overall, BC Riesling should age well but the styles vary too much to make any solid conclusions.

Chardonnay

The quality of the two Chardonnays after 16 and 14 years respectively is an amazing testament to the BC terroir. Only Burgundy has proven any ability to create Chardonnay that is still drinkable after this length of time, but this level of quality shows a unique capacity of BC’s terroir. Most of the world’s Chardonnay has completely fallen apart after 5 or so years. This longevity shows an exciting future for complex, matured BC Chardonnay. But one should note the alcohol content of just 12.5% on the Mission Hill Chardonnay, something you never see today. Are we going to be missing something with today’s 14.5% alcohol wines when we open them in a few years?

Pinot Noir

The second tasting was to include Pinot Noir, but a Quails’ Gate Family Reserve 1998 was scratched late due to cork taint. Tasted a few weeks previously this wine was holding up well and showing the potential for longevity in Pinot Noir. The Summerhill wine showed fantastic complexity on the nose with classic aged earth, spice, orange zest and still some fruits, however the palate had gone a little flat.

Cabernet & Merlot

A number of wines were included combining these two varieties and virtually all showed good potential for ageing. Many of the wines had developed remarkable elegance and complexity and the developed notes of burlap, tobacco and spice were just starting to emerge to compliment the red and dark fruits that were still evident. It appears that many of these wines will peak between 10-14 years but a few particularly concentrated wines should last 20 years. The Burrowing Owl 1998 Cabernet Sauvignon was practically a baby showing no signs yet of ageing in colour, aroma or flavour. These wines show clear potential for cellaring.

Summary

This was a fascinating exercise. The quality of the wines was excellent and I hope will get some consumers to look at BC wine differently – as something cellar worthy and age worthy. To my estimate, little of the wine produced in BC is cellared longer than a few years. The wines being produced at the quality levels of today have serious ageing ability and I believe this can add an exciting new dimension to what our wineries are producing. It is time to start buying BC wine by the case rather than just the bottle.

Thanks to the wineries Sumac Ridge, Wild Goose, Gray Monk, Mission Hill, Quails’ Gate, Kettle Valley, Poplar Grove, Lake Breeze, La Frenze and Burrowing Owl for releasing precious wines from the library for this tasting.

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Rhys Pender is a wine educator, freelance wine writer, wine judge and consultant to the industry. Visit his company Wine Plus+ online at www.wineplus.ca.

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Xmas Wine: Santa Hates Pussies

Who needs to win friends and influence people when you can have more fun insulting them instead? Head to your next house party, favourite vintage in hand, all wrapped up in a clever bottle label. California card company Cerebral Itch is behind the snarky wine labels, which are easily removed once you’ve landed a few guffaws. All you cork dorks out there will be happy to hand over a bottle that reads “Don’t waste this wine on the uncultured palates of the other guests.” My favourite is a play on a classic Christmas Carol (pictured above). The front of the label says “You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not shout I’m telling you why…” while the back reads “Santa hates pussies. Merry Christmas.”

Check them out at www.cerebralitch.com, and find them locally at Moulé and Paper-Ya.

Au Petit Chavignol Scores GM

From the mailbox this afternoon:

Annette Rawlinson has joined Au Petit Chavignol as General Manager. Annette brings with her extensive years of experience in managing service-oriented restaurants in Vancouver, such as C, Diva, 900 West and Bacchus. Annette has been awarded Vancouver Magazine’s “Premier Crew Award” for outstanding service. She was also part of the team at C when it was awarded Where Magazine’s “Birks Silver Spoon Award” for cuisine, service and ambiance. Annette brings her hands on approach, honesty and genuine passion to Au Petit Chavignol.

Congrats to Au Petit Chavignol for the good pick up. The new wine and cheese bar from the folks at Les Amis Du Fromage opens at 845 East Hastings in early 2009.

Enjoying Beaujolais Nouveau

It is very nearly the time of year when the much maligned, often shunned and increasingly under-appreciated Beaujolais Nouveau is released.

Beaujolais Nouveau is typically the first wine release of the new vintage. From the Beaujolais region in Burgundy, France, they take the Gamay grape, ferment it by a method known as carbonic maceration (basically it ferments without crushing the berries making a very juicy, aromatic wine), clean it up, bottle it and somehow have it shipped around the world ready for release on the third Thursday of November.

I feel this wine is not well understood by consumers. It was dreamed up as a marketing scheme by the folks from Beaujolais and once upon a time incredibly successful, not now it’s star is waning. Why? Because we take it too bloody seriously. Is it not enough that there is some reason to celebrate something in mid-November? Is it not enough that you can buy a bunch of bottles for about $15 each, invite over a bunch of friends and drink a juicy, light wine and solve the world’s problems without thinking too much about it? That is plenty enough reasoning for me.

Personally, I have always embraced this little wine celebration. In fact, my wife and I have created an annual event around its release. 2008 will be our 10th edition of our little Beaujolais Nouveau and Choucroute Garni feast.

Choucroute is an Alsatian dish and is fantastic with Riesling but it is also perfect with the tart, juicy, young Beaujolais. It’s basically every cut and type of pork you can imagine from smoked hock to sausage cooked under a blanket of sauerkraut and white wine. This year we are lucky enough to have some of the fantastic Crannog Ales and pig bacon made by Cam & Dana of Joy Road Catering. What could be better than pigs fed on organic beer scraps and then made into bacon? Slap some of the fantastic Naramustard on the table, put out the tumblers (no fancy stemware allowed) and this one-pot wonder pleases all palates. It has even been known to tempt vegetarians.

So mark Nov 20th in your calendar, run down to your local liquor store and get your share of the Beaujolais Nouveau. Invite some friends and celebrate the day because someone deemed it was a worthy enough event for a celebration and that should be all the encouragement we need.

(AFP photo: Tokyo wine lovers – and children? – bathe in Beaujolais Nouveau for kicks)

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Rhys Pender is a wine educator, freelance wine writer, wine judge and consultant to the industry. Visit his company Wine Plus+ online at

www.wineplus.ca.

Wine And Painting In Yaletown

a painting in my house by Sandra Harris

As noted in our Tablespotting forum today, Raw Canvas has opened in Yaletown. Never saw it or its concept coming. I think I love whichever liquor inspector gave it the go ahead.

From their website:

Welcome to Raw Canvas. We are a gathering point for life-loving humans (artists and non-artists alike) to express themselves freely within the creative process. We are a soul-driven community that supports the cultivation and realization of the artist within, while building community and celebrating life in all of its diversity.

Raw Canvas is an extraordinary social destination built on a vision of unbounded beauty in this world. Driven by the belief in the power of every individual’s unique creative expression, we are a community who gather to share ideas and sentiment in order to deepen individual expression and amplify collective ideals.

We are the renaissance; café, art studio, music venue, social space… many things to many people. Raw Canvas will revolutionize the way you socialize.

[snip]

At the core of every human being is the soul of an artist. Each of us has inherent within us a unique creative ability which, despite our beliefs, is waiting to be unleashed. Beyond being a café where you can have a great coffee and do your work (yes, we have Wi-Fi!), and beyond being a lounge where you can have a glass of wine and get social, Raw Canvas is a full service paint-on-canvas art studio. Come in and buy a canvas. We will provide paints, brushes, and all the supplies you will need to free your inner artist. Our gang, together with our resident artists, will provide encouragement, insight and inspiration to aide you throughout your creative journey.

Raw Canvas was founded for those of us who have an interest in exploring our creative sides, but may not have a space or the time to invest in one.

How cool is that? You just sit there, paint, and drink. That’s awesome. I want one just like it but for cartographers. I could just sit there with a bottle of Merlot, some smuggled-in cheese and my Swiss Army knife from Cub Scouts, totally getting my Magellan on like the world is absent all its borders. But to trouble your oxipetal for ten seconds: how will it fly with the whole poodle-in-a-handbag Zara refugee set?

10 Years of Okanagan Wine

We live in a fledgling wine community here in BC. The wines are developing rapidly in quality although we have little history or pedigree on which to base our decisions. Even though I am a relative newbie to Canada (I have lived here 11.5 years), I feel like I have experienced a large chunk of the growth and development in the BC wine industry. So I decided to throw a tasting.

My first job in an Okanagan winery was in 1999, a point when the industry was just starting to expand. That same year saw a rapid expansion to 4200 acres, from just 2100 in 1994. This year we hit 9100. It seems that the toasty 1998 vintage was the first time people, both customers and consumers, decided that, yes, BC could make a decent red wine. My first couple of years in the industry were spent trying to convince punters that there were, in fact, decent BC red wines. Soon things changed and it was the punters telling me that BC was making some pretty damn good red wines.

Anyway, it seems that 1998 might have been the turning point. It was around this time that there were finally enough quality focused wineries making product BC could be proud of. Hence this tasting I have decided to throw. I feel that from the 1998 vintage on that we finally have a significant enough quantity of quality wine that we can sit down with, taste, analyze, and discuss. This tasting will take a look at something few have thought about or actually analyzed, and that is how well BC wines age. For this tasting I have put together 12 wines from BC, all at least 10 years old and many older. There will be a small panel of wine geeks and it will take the format of both a tasting and discussion. There have already been requests to host a Vancouver version so stay tuned if all goes well. Let’s see what BC wine is capable of.

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Rhys Pender is a wine educator, freelance wine writer, wine judge and consultant to the industry. Visit his company Wine Plus+ online at www.wineplus.ca.

Tasting Notes: Plastic Fantastic

It is hard to escape the oddly shaped and decidedly smaller looking bottles that are starting to appear in the liquor stores. These plastic bottles are obviously a good move for the environment (being much lighter for transport and cheaper to make) but the wine has to be bloody cheap for us to forgive this complete lack of packaging class. I tasted two of these wines last week, a semi-local Painted Turtle Cabernet-Shiraz and the Australian Little Penguin Cabernet-Merlot. Both of these wines are cheap and not surprisingly neither blew me away with intensity or complexity. Still, the Painted Turtle was by far the better wine. The reason? It was actually dry. The Little Penguin, on the other hand, was quite sweet – sweet, ripe fruit backed up by nothing else. I poured this wine blind for my Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) Intermediate class last week and they were shocked, and to their credit they all picked out the subterfuge.

The moral of the story: don’t be fooled by that bit of sweetness. Look for some substance beyond, some length of flavour and a bit of character.

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Rhys Pender is a wine educator, freelance wine writer, wine judge and consultant to the industry. Visit his company Wine Plus+ online at www.wineplus.ca.

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