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 97 – Interview with Stephen Wyse

I like talking about wine. I can and do talk about it all day long sometimes. Most of the time, I’m lucky enough to get payed to do that.

Stephen Wyse from the boutique winery Young & Wyse in Osoyoos, BC, likes to talk about wine too. When I got to talk to him in his wine shop recently, the time went by quickly and the result is this podcast which pushes 45 minutes. It’s a great conversation with a guy who knows wine. He also has some great advice for anyone who is feeling a little burned out with their job.

We’ve featured Young & Wyse before – exactly 2 years ago in fact – when Amber, AJ, and I tasted their Shiraz from their first vintage in 2008. Their winery has been on our radar ever since with unique blended wines like the “Amber” (our Amber bought one, of course) and the Black Label aka the “33,30,24,13″. Now with new vintagea of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon and a cozy wine shop just outside of town, this is one winery that should be on your must-visit list.

Podcast 97 – BS Rosé

This week, we focus on something that a great many ‘serious’ wine lovers seem to disregard: Rosé. It’s almost a bad word among a certain generation of wine lovers who won’t touch the stuff.

THAT IS GREAT!! Please keep ignoring it!

Keep assuming that it’s all simple, sweet, girly wines and pay no mind to it at all. Without you wanting to buy it, demand will stay low and prices will match it accordingly.

For the rest of us who know about how good r-o-s-é’s from BC can be, here’s an awesome one from Bartier-Scholefield (produced at the Okanagan Crush Pad in Summerland) that Nick and I tried recently. Cheers!

Podcast 94 – Light up the Vines Part 1

Summerland is a lovely town north of Penticton. I lived in Summerland briefly for my first season in the Okanagan Valley and I thoroughly enjoyed it there. Every fall they have a Festival of Lights and this year they sweetened the deal with an artisan’s market and a Light Up the Vines winery shuttle bus tour that wandered through most of the wineries around town.

There were also a few people promoting their new books and we will hear from two of them today. We will hear from Ricardo Scebba about his new cookbook “That’s Amore” which is full of recipes from his restaurant near Lake Country. He makes no secrets about his cooking and this book has some truly outstanding recipes. (He’s also great at doing impressions of the movie Spinal Tap – ask him next time you go to his restaurant – He might give you a discount.*)

I also had the chance to speak with Judie Steeves about her cookbook called “Jude’s Kitchen.” It’s a huge book of recipes based on local ingredients that has some expert wine pairing for each recipe. You’ll have to listen to find out who the expert is but as a hint, he’s been on the Wine Country BC podcast before!

And finally, I couldn’t help but get a word in with Peter Young of Okanagan Wineland Dressings who makes one of my favorite salad dressings of all time. Many of his products are available in local wine shops and delis throughout the Okanagan Valley.

*Or he might charge you double. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

BC Wine Information Centre launches new website

I’m still putting the finishing touches on it, but I figured that as loyal readers and listeners of Wine Country BC, you deserve to be in the know as soon as possible. So here goes…

The BC Wine Information Centre VQA store in Penticton has launched a new website. Full of information, links, wine tips, and services, this is a new and current site that will be updated frequently with info on their special events and tastings that occur throughout the year. You can also follow them on Twitter to find out what they are pouring at the tasting bar at any moment! (This feature might take a little time to get going, but we’ll be working on it soon.)

Anyways, bookmark the new site and check it often – there will be lots going on this summer and if you’re coming to visit the Okanagan or Similkameen valleys, check in with us here at Wine Country BC and then head over to the Wine Information Centre’s new website to help you with your plans.

Don’t forget to say hi when you come for a visit!

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

Cellared in Canada – Let’s talk about it

For those who haven’t been following it, this is more or less what started getting this issue more attention: http://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/a200907291.html (I won’t go over it all here to save space – just Google “Cellared in Canada” for the back story.)

The laws pertaining to the labeling of Canadian wines are not new and this kind of wine has been available for years. As the folks at http://www.iconwinesbc.blogspot.com/ have state, “[w]e don’t think this public outcry would have taken place 5 years ago” and I have to agree. More people now have more confidence in their domestically produced wines and I’m glad to see them effectively defending the image of Canadian wine.

I really think that this issue is important and rather than be like a lot of blogs that I see on the internet (which just rant and rave about issues without actually offering any new and potentially constructive ideas) I have some ideas that I think might be useful.

Now I’m not an expert when it comes to the laws of the land and things like that. But I do work in the wine trade and I think that I’m a fairly knowledgeable consumer.  Since this blog and podcast is geared towards other consumers who love BC wine, I figured that you all might have an interest in how this plays out as well.

At this point, it seems to me that there are two problems. One is that consumers are feeling like they have been deceived by the “Cellared in Canada” wines. The second is that there are no universally accepted controls in place that can tell consumers exactly where the wine is coming from.

1 – Consumer Deception

As John Peller, CEO of Andrew Peller Ltd told Jan Wong on CBC’s The Current (http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/podcast.html), they were just following the rules; their labels “compl[y] with what the federal label standards are” and he’s right. However, just like those out-of-date by-laws regarding the proper hitching of horses to public buildings, these ‘rules’ are now out of date. The industry knows this and has been quiet about it the whole time hoping that no one would notice. The anger of most consumers now shows that they were right in trying to keep it quiet. However, things are going to have to change this time.

No one likes to be called stupid, but that’s exactly what wine consumers are feeling like when they find out what the vague phrase “Cellared in Canada” means. It’s written so small on the back labels of wine bottles that share shelf space with the real Canadian product that it’s easy to assume the wrong thing. Doesn’t finding wine on a shelf with a Canadian flag over it mean that the wine is made in Canada, the same way that Italian or French wines have shelves with their flags over it? How silly would it be to buy a wine imported from France that says, “Cellared in France”??

The big wineries that produce “Cellared in Canada” wines are now going to have to answer for this deception somehow. In the store that I work in, I had three different customers today refuse to look at any of Vincor’s Jackson-Triggs wines because they’ve heard their name mentioned as a producer of “Cellared in Canada” wines. (The white label series of wines are “Cellared in Canada”.) Unfortunately for Vincor, those customers today now equate the Jackson-Triggs label no matter what color it is with deception and this is unfortunate. They will be missing some good wine. The J-T Grand Reserve wines are fabulous and Proprietor’s Reserve wines are great values. I don’t have a problem with the concept of wines that are now produced as “Cellared in Canada”, but I wish that they weren’t labelled as such and that they weren’t placed in the same section of the store.

So here is my suggestion for a solution to this problem;

All wines produced in Canada that are made from imported wine and/or juice should be labelled with the phrase “International Blend – Made from wine imported from {country 1},{country2}…“
This label should appear at the bottom of the front label with a minimum 10-point font size. These wines should also be placed on shelves in the store under the heading “International Blends” with no country’s flag appearing above it to denote any kind of country of origin.

While we’re on the subject of labelling, why don’t we start adding ingredients to the wine labels as well? As a ‘historic beverage’, wine is exempt from having to display all of the things that are put into the bottle. How about knowing if a wine was processed with Blanc Varietal, Beta Glucanase, or ‘balanced’ with sugar or malic acid? Might make reading those labels really interesting on some producers’ wines.

2 – Unanimity on appellations and regulations 

The second problem has more to do with industry bickering than anything else. There is no universally accepted (or government decreed) regulation governing the origin of the grapes for wines in Canada. Each province has its own thing (or not) while BC and Ontario have the much ballyhooed Vinter’s Quality Alliance system (or VQA). For BC at least, there is no unanimity about VQA and a winery’s participation is purely voluntary. As a quality seal of approval, VQA worked great, bringing consumer confidence in Canadian wine up to new heights, while also setting the bar for quality.

Then something happened. Wineries started leaving. Quality started slipping. Of the 4 wineries that I have worked at in recent years, only one was a member of VQA at the time (and has since left). In a classroom tasting just over a year ago, I tasted two identically labelled VQA-approved wines that were utterly different products. It has also been a long time since consumers equated VQA with quality wine that they’ve forgotten what VQA stands for, 19 years after VQA was introduced into law in BC.

The most disturbing part that I see is that the wineries who aren’t participating in VQA are now going to have to prove to the consumers where their wine comes from. Consumers may not trust something that doesn’t have some kind of certification on it anymore. People who would have spent money freely on all kinds of new and wonderful new wines are now a little more guarded about their spending and won’t be taking risks the same way that they did even 2 years ago.

The other side of that coin is that VQA itself will be called in for questioning (not entirely a bad thing at this point). Can consumers trust that a VQA labelled wine is actually grown here, when the same company that makes it also produces “Cellared in Canada” wines? Some of the labels look unsettlingly similar.

So again, here is my suggestion for a solution to this problem;

Make the VQA appellation system mandatory for all wineries wishing to produce wines where the origin of the grapes is important. Allow these wineries to use the region where the grapes are from (example – VQA Naramata, VQA Golden Mile, or more generally, VQA Okanagan). These wineries should also be able to use the terms ‘icewine’ and ‘meritage’ as it currently stands with VQA.

Remove the stipulation that says that these wineries must be a ‘member’ of a club, like the BC Wine Institute and remove the ‘sensory evaluation’ aspect of the procedure. The average consumer doesn’t know about it anymore and its effectiveness is questionable.

Wineries that choose not to include a place name should use a generic label, such as “Canadian Table Wine” (CTW) or something like that. Wine consumers love acronyms and why should the EU get all the AOC’s, IGT’s, DOCG’s, and QmP’s. 3 levels of wine quality are easy for consumers to remember (VQA, CTW, and IB) and easy to stock on the shelf and market.

Also, the VQA system should be a national program administered equally throughout the country (if Italy can do it, so can we) with respect to the different climates and terroirs of the regions. Quebec and Nova Scotia should not be denied using varieties that are frowned upon in BC for the same reason that AOC law in France doesn’t dictate that Grenache be grown in Alsace. (They do dictate what will be grown in each region to qualify for each AOC, but they’ve had a few hundred years’ experience to figure out what works best and we in Canada haven’t, so let’s not jump into that part of it for a while…)

A nationaly run VQA program would give the wine industry a national voice. This might come in handy for getting some of those liquor laws updated and make wine sales between provinces a little easier. Imagine that… 

So in closing (sorry this is such a long post – I didn’t mean it to get this long, honest), the system we have has to change. Producers (especially smaller producers) have to be more united in their organization under an appellation system. Larger producers have to stop deceiving the consumers. At the end of the day, we all want the same result – a good (or great) glass of wine at the end of the day.

Hester Creek’s brand new digs

Hester Creek's grand opening

The grand opening of Hester Creek’s new wine shop and winery took place today in the sun, and then rain, and then sun again near the end.

Let me say just say this – if you visited Hester Creek before, even recently, it will be worth visiting again soon. The wine shop is spacious, the tasting bar is large and brightly lit and they’ve even paved the parking lot!

The tasting room was packed when I arrived, most likely due to the rain that had everyone claiming space inside rather than lounge outside or mill about on the patio. Unfortunately, the first thing that I could smell upon entering the wine shop was a good dose of Calvin Klein or similar blend of fragrance, which almost entirely masked the wonderful scents from the hors d’oeuvres created by Chef Heinz Schmid. (If you don’t already know the effects of wearing too much perfume in general, please don’t douse yourself in anything smelly before going to a wine-related event…)

After a Pinot Gris and some appies, I started to take in the sights. The large main room, with the curvascious tasting bar as a center piece, has many rooms and spaces adjacent to it that will be useful for functions. Off to the right is a private dining room with an entrance to a small, viewable barrel cellar. The dinning room also has its own private entrance and patio outside. The main room has a large, partially covered patio as well which will easily handle the summer (or wine festival) crowds that will do doubt be descending on Hester Creek in the future. There is a viewable demonstration kitchen just to the right of the tasting bar and probably a whole lot of different rooms that I didn’t get the chance to see on this occasion. Perhaps soon.

I’m glad to see that Hester Creek is on the up and up. It was only about six years ago when it would not have been possible to say that. I’m glad to see that this winery will be around for many more years to come. Cheers!

Hester Creek patio off the main room

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

Twisted Tree Winery – Osoyoos

<Every now and then we get to visit wineries and we’d like to share some of that experience with you. There are tons of things written about (and virtual tours online from) the big wineries in the area (Mission Hill, Peller, Summerhill, Vincor) and so our focus will be on the smaller, artisanal wineries that might not be on everyone’s tour schedule, but we think are worth a visit on your next trip.  A large percentage of these wineries are located between Summerland/Naramata and Osoyoos. Hopefully, this will give you a hand in helping to decide which ones to visit on your next trip.>

The Twisted Tree Winery has always intrigued me for some reason. Ever since I learned (probably from a John Schreiner book) that they were planting all kinds of grape varieties that had never at that point been tried in the Okanagan – tempranillo, tannat, marsanne and roussanne and maybe more. The tannat got me especially because I’d really taken a liking to the wines from Madiran, France that use that grape (sometimes blended with cabernet franc) to make their wines.

The Twisted Tree winery is located on Route 3 heading east out of Osoyoos. The winery is on the left after the road turns for the first time just outside of town. (Heads up for y’all who are on motorcycles – they have a loose gravel parking lot.) The wine shop does not face the road and you have to drive around the whole building to park. The reason for this becomes apparent when you step into the wine shop and take in the gorgeous view of the valley behind the tasting bar. High ceilings and large windows give this wine shop a lot of space and more importantly, lots of light to appreciate the wine in the glass.  

Twisted Tree’s first vintage was 2005 with a modest collection of reds and whites. In 2007, the viognier-roussanne blend was introduced for the first time. The 2008 is out now and it was the first wine that Stephanie poured for me on my visit there this past August. If you are interested in a white wine with lots of peach, flowers, and honey aromas and flavours, and that transitions to lush tropical fruits on the beautifully long and lingering finish, then YOU MUST TRY THIS WINE!! It was a most beautiful wine that will surely sell quickly.

2007 is also the current inaugural vintage of their Tempranillo, a grape that I am seeking out these days after trying D’Angelo’s Tempranillo earlier in the summer. To me, this tempranillo had pleasant cocoa, earth, red fruit and floral aromas with more of the same on the palate and a medium finish. It was delish.

It was also an interesting comparison between the two growing regions of Naramata and Osoyoos. Assuming that D’Angelo’s tempranillo is grown in Naramata (there’s no real way of telling for sure where anyone grows anything in this valley at the moment), there are noticeable differences between the two wines. The Twisted Tree temp is darker and has more weight to it with more fruit and chocolate flavours while the D’Angelo is more earthy and complex. Different wine making styles? Different oak treatment? Different terroir? Probably all of the above. Very interesting though and something that I hope to investigate more with different varietals on a future podcast sometime.

My only beef about this wine is that it is priced a little aggressively - $28 (their most expensive bottle) for a varietal that most people don’t really know about seems a bit high to me (especially compared with D’Angelo’s at $15). Regardless, I bought mine and plan to enjoy it around Christmas. Cheers!

 

Twisted Tree Winery http://www.twistedtree.ca/

3628 Highway 3 East
Osoyoos, BC, V0H 1V6
T: 250.495.5161 | F: 250.495.5167