Podcast 98 – Soaring Eagle’s Return

Happy New Year!

We’re starting off the year by welcoming back an old friend. Soaring Eagle returned last fall with a small lineup of wines and Nick and I tasted one of them recently. Here’s what happened…

Podcast #44 – New Okanagan Wine Map

Finally! There is now a map that has wineries, golf courses, as well as streets and roads on it. The wineries, which are all clearly named, are shown on the very side of the road where they actually exist!

It’s truly amazing that we’ve all gotten along fine with rough schematics and cartoon maps that sort of show where each winery is roughly located. What where they thinking? “Mistral and Stonehill are close enough to downtown Penticton, so why not put their little dot right near downtown Penticton on the map. Then when people are looking for them, they’ll go to downtown Penticton and find that the wineries are in fact a couple clicks outside of town up on the bench land to the east by following the wine route signs. And since there are a lot of wineries around there, let’s put their names on the other side of the lake and then draw a little line to their dot to be more clear.”

Bunk. I’ve given directions to wineries to enough people to know that cartoons and schematics don’t cut it when they are planning a wine tour.

Enter A.J. (Drew) Makepeace of Environ Geomatics - a Penticton-based company that does “cartography and geospatial data processing” – who in 2004 created the Ironman map which traces the complete route of Penticton’s famous Ironman triathalon. His website offers pictures of the new wine map as well as the Ironman route map and a ‘fly-through’ of the whole route which is quite spectacular.

PLUS…

For the first time ever, we are having a special give away. Listen carefully at the end of the podcast to hear how you can win a copy of this amazing new winery map by Drew Makepeace at Environ Geomatics. How well do you know wine country?

Haynes Barn (Actually, it was probably his house since barns usually have bigger doors. The real Haynes barn is on the other side of the street.)

Podcast #8 – Special Harvest Podcast and Jackpot Chard from Rd. 13

The grapes have been harvested for the season and the winemakers and cellar staff are busy pressing and fermenting. We talk about what goes on in the wineries at harvest time and how those grapes make it into your bottle. Join us with a great bottle of Road 13′s Jackpot Chardonnay!

Jackpot Chardonnay 2007 from Road 13

Podcast #4 – Judging Award-Winning Wines & Thornhaven’s Gewurz

In this week’s podcast, we talk about the value of awards in wine competitions. Do the best wines always win? What does it matter? Join us in tasting an award winning wine – the Thornhaven Gewurztraminer 2008,  the Best in Category at the Okanagan Spring Wine Festival 2009.

Thornhaven's Gewurztraminer 2008

Podcast #3 – Black Sages, Golden Miles, and Quinta Syrah ’07

In our third installment, we talk about the two sides of the valley just south of Oliver, the Wine Capitol of Canada. On the west side, the Golden Mile with its history and diversity, and on the east side – the Black Sage bench, with its distinctive terroir. Join us for a tasting of Quinta Ferreira’s Syrah 2007 that you won’t want to miss.

Syrah 2007 by Quinta Ferreira

Podcasts, reviews, and opinions from the wine glass

… are all being worked on as we speak. We will be recording the pilot of our podcast soon and will be starting with more reviews and opinions on all things related to the BC wine industry very soon. There’s a lot to say about it at the moment and I’m itching to get started.

There’s a lot going on in the industry right now and it seems like it’s a pivotal time in the history of our wine region. There are new wineries coming online every year, new varieties and styles, and new ideas about what the Okanagan and BC wines are capable of achieving. The most interesting thing about it at this point however, is that most of that growth has happened in a bit of a bubble. And with the current changing economic picture, what will happen to the industry and how it has been built / regulated / sustained? The wine industry in BC has been sheltered so far (especially regarding the world oversupply of wine, although it also seems that other regions are not taking that problem seriously either) and we have been content with editorials that continually call into the question the use of the cork over the screw cap as the closure of choice, as if that will solve the problem of wine quality once and for all.

Honestly, there must be more pressing concerns to write about in magazine and newspaper wine columns. And by the time screw caps do become completely accepted (which I argue will never fully happen) the bottle itself will be a thing of the past in favour of the Tetra-Pak at the middle to lower price points. (Cork and glass bottles will become a luxury for those who can afford it.) Oil changes everything, even wine. As soon as the cost of producing and transporting  a glass bottle (even with a screw cap) becomes more expensive than a current $8 bottle of wine, Tertra-Pak or other similar packaging will be the only economical way. Glass bottles will be only for the expensive good juice and the whole debate about screw caps will be a quaint little question in some future version of Trivial Pursuit.

Of course, it is easier to dedicate editorial space to easy targets like screw caps and not to wine quality. Most tasting notes are usually full of pleasant descriptors about what each wine offers without any indication of the quality of the wine. Is it good? What does 89 points mean? Is it really that much better than 88 points? Is it good? What about the crap? Surely there must be some crappy wines, why aren’t they reviewed anywhere in the reviews. Oh, maybe it’s because they’ve payed for the full page advertisement on page 3? Things that make you go, “Hmmm…”

And then there’s VQA…

So there are only a few things with which to get started. For our podcasts, we’ll be tasting a couple of wines each episode and discussing a theme with our panel of local wine lovers. Please tell your friends who are interested in BC wine to get ready for a new generation of wine discussion. Cheers!