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Testing Tantalus Vineyards’ Experimental “Riesling Lab” 2013

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by Treve Ring | Here’s how wine geeks think: “Lessee what would happen if I took all my grape pressings leftover from the entire Riesling vintage and squeezed them together really hard to capture all the juice and good bits and then fermented it entirely with wild yeast…”

Tantalus Vineyards Riesling Lab 2013 | Kelowna, Okanagan Valley, BC | $19

Kiwi-Canadian wine geek and Tantalus winemaker David Paterson isn’t afraid to push – or in this case press – the envelope of experimentation. With Riesling Lab, the atypical results have proven so consistently interesting that the winery decided to slap labels on the bottles and sell them. The first Lab experiment (2011 vintage, #1) was tiny – just a handful of cases were produced. 2012’s Lab #2 was more of a purpose-driven exercise, with production bumped up to 70 cases or so. And last year, proven in method, Paterson produced 155 cases of Lab #3, sold solely out of their East Kelowna tasting room (also to a very few restaurants in Vancouver).

The playfully nerdy label is a clear departure from the norm (an indication that this ain’t your typical Tantalus wine), but the #03 Lab Results: Riesling is nevertheless a firm handshake. Pink and orange flowers, ripe peach and pear, apricot pit and a broad, solid, textured palate, amped up further through fermentation in old chardonnay-use barrels. Not shy on sugar, acidity or alcohol, the trio striking a chord that sounds like more, please. Especially at the price ($19!). Intrigued, I put the following 5 questions to Paterson…

Straight up – why did you make this wine? I originally created this wine in 2011, which was a cold growing season. I felt that the Riesling (Our biggest sku) would need some weight in a cold year and I did not want to use manufactured products to do so. I pressed all the Riesling really hard after making my original cut and took the resulting phenolic brown juice and fermented it wild in barrels. I did this to naturally oxidize out the phenolics. When it came time to put the 2011 wines together this new piece of the puzzle just didn’t fit but was really interesting and textural on its own…. so we bottled it. Since then we have made it every year and has been a really successful little wine in our tasting room with the general public and also with wine geeks because it has that different

Where are the grapes from? All the wines made under the Tantalus label come from our own 75 acre estate in SE Kelowna.

Your ideal pairing with this wines would be…? This wine is very versatile to pair with but I would say that something with sweetness and a little heat from the huge world of Asian food would go down pretty well. A classic Alsatian bacon and caramelized onion tart would be mighty fine, too.

What do you drink when you’re not drinking BC wine? When I’m not making wine, I’m golfing in the summer and skiing in the winter, so I’m drinking German and Burgundian wines.

Favourite BC wine, other than yours? Blue Mountain stripe label Pinot Noir or any of their vintage bubbly wines. They are always consistently excellent from vintage to vintage and their pricing has remained low compared to the demand for their product. They are the benchmark that the rest of the Okanagan should look too when deciding pricing and quality parameters.

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