REVIEW - 2007 BISCHOFLICHE AYLER KUPP RIESLING SPATLESE

 REVIEW  -  2007 BISCHOFLICHE Ayler Kupp RIESLING SPATLESE

SKU: 705326  

Agent: Trialto Wine Group Ltd.

In the Glass – clear pale to medium lemon with almost no legs or coating on the rim

On the Nose – light/ medium intensity. I got a lot of stone fruit, ripe melon and sweet fruit like over ripe pineapple, mandarins and late harvest apples.

On the Palete – off dry, balanced, with medium body, which I attribute to the higher sweetness. With flavors of peach stewed fruit, and your basic Riesling flavors and a medium finish.

I would serve this with just about any white meat, or with anything spicy, and at 25$ a pop it’s not bad to have with Thai take out at home. Not that I would know anything about that…

The front of this bottle advertises that it’s a Saar wine. What is a Saar wine?

Good question.

German has 13 wine regions that are sub divided into smaller regions. Saar is a sub district of Mosel. It’s a collection of steep southern slopes along the Saar River in the north and follows the river down where it eventually feeds into the Mosel river. This division occurred in 1998. It’s just a young’en in the Germany senses of wine making. I’m not sure why but labeling a wine from its mini district has fallen out of style so we typically only see things like “Mosel” on the bottle. I like that this one is proud of where it comes from.

Cheers!

Daily dose of yesterday - Day 4 of the WSET foundation course

So in the last night of the WSET wine training we, again, covered a pretty mass amount of material. From locally produced wine to wines out of Italy, Portugal and Spain. We covered tips on purchasing and working in the business. We then reviewed and had our exam.

Out of all the topics I think the Canadian wine was the most interesting.

We stared with a very brief history of wine in Canada, specifically in BC. Over all its safe to say that it wasn’t that bloody eventful. People go drunk, it was deemed bad, and they kept getting drunk anyways. But here are a few points that I thought were neat.

1860  -           The first Canadian vineyard was planted by Father Pandosy for his church and personal use at the Oblate missionary near what is now Kelowna

1916 - 1922 -Prohibition came to Canada. Pfft! See how long that lasted… and how well too…

1974  -            There were 3000 resisted acres are dedicated to grapes and vineyards

1984  -            There are 13 registered wineries registered in British Columbia

1988  -            We get free trade and we drop to only 1,000 vineyard acres’. This is because the government paid the growers over $8,000 and acre to focus on quality as apposed to quantity.

1990  -            We see a huge boom in vine planting in BC because the VQA is adopted as wine law. It forced BC growers to ensure that their wines were 100% produced inside of BC.

1994  - Mission Hills Winery wins IWSC and the real BC wine boom begins

2011  -            We have over 160 wineries and over 10,000 acres dedicated to grape and wine production

In addition to the history we also talked a bit about the different growing regions and what the VQA means for wines coming out of Canada.

The biggest region that I think everyone will know is the Okanagan. This includes sub regions like Kelowna, Naramata, Osoyoos Westbank, and Summerland. The climates here are fairly continental, with a hot dry south and cooler north. Its soils having a very wide range, from sandy in some regions and volcanic in others.

Some of the lesser-known regions are the Frasier valley and the Similkameen valley. The Frasier valley has a more humid climate that produces small local but hearty red wines, like Merlot, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon. I’m not overly familiar with the Similkameen valley but its relative lack of lakes would make for cheaper and more arid climate.

In the end our wine history is really just a little blip on the entire history of wine and grape growing. But its still relatively neat to see where we started from and all the little steps we have taken to get to where we are now.

Cheers!

Review - 2010 Sirens Call Pinot Noir

Review – 2010 Sirens Call Pinot Noir

So tonight, after the worlds longest shift at work, I got to take home a bottle of this Okanagan wine. Based out of Summerland in British Columbia this little French clone delight is exactly what I needed.

On the Nose this wine does start off rather European, rustic, deep and earthy, with strong dark cherries and raspberries. It turns to the new world with rich with vanilla, and almost a caramel, and kind of spicy, similar to the Caramel Apple Spice drink at Starbucks - if you could have raspberry juice instead of apple juice. Overall I found it sort of Napoleonic in nature. To me it says,  “hey! I may only be 5 and a half feet tall but I am a force to be reckoned with!”

On the Pallet it shows dark wild berries, black cherries and a fine but sound tannins. I half expected it to be on the watery side, maybe from the marketing on the mermaid in the ocean on the labeling… and some recent previous experiences with French styled new world pinots… but it really held up, and with style too.

I was lucky enough to have this bottle dropped off with some tasting notes from John Schreiner, one of Canada’s most prolific authors of books on wine. He quoted the wine maker, Mark Simpson, as saying, “I started buying fruit and the next thing you know, I tasted in the vineyards and kept saying, ‘Oh my God, I will take it.’ That kept happening. I ended up with 14 tons and $100,000 invested and [made] a whole line of wines.” What a way to start a winery! One of everything! Mr. Schreiner goes on to talk about siren’s Call and the rest of Mark Simpsons labels, I really do encourage you all to read his blog. He goes on to quote Mr. Simpson explaining to label as  “It is from Greek mythology. It refers to the sirens that are these creatures that are half women, half bird. The idea is that these creatures are seductive and alluring. So the wine will be seductive and appealing.” What a way to describe a wine label? Smooth, seductive and inviting. Even the parent company, Artemis, had the tag line of “ Wine is the Blood of Life”. Oh. My. God. What a magnificent line and ideology to have attached to a wine and its company. Not only is that a brilliant marketing idea, albeit not overly original, its still the icon of what the 20 something wine consumer falls in love with. Sex sells, even if its just a ideology.

Over all I think this is a top-notch wine, and for under 30$ in most liquor stores I would highly recommend it. Myself, I had it alone but as for food pairings anything that came with a fine herbaceous or tomatoes based sauce (“hello pesto!”)  would do magnificently. Just be careful that the protein that went with it doesn’t over power the tannic structure. A chicken or turkey breast pesto penne would be perfect.

Cheers!

...but srsly go see http://johnschreiner.blogspot.com/

Lady in Red - day 3 of wine training

So on the third day of wine training with WSET we covered a fair bit of information. We talked about wine and health, services and storage and the main red grape varieties. The most interesting of all these being the last one. Obviously.

Okay so how do we get the "red" into a wine and why does it vary between wines? Great question! Basically when the grapes are crushed, they are left to sit on “the must”. The must is the pulp, the skin and sometimes even the stems of the grapes.

The wine then goes into a process called maturation; this is where the juice and the must are kind of stirred together to help extract the tannins and flavors out of the must. Some other methods are racking and pressing, but maturation is the most effect and time efficient.

Now, our biggest red wine varietals are Pinot Noir (my personal obsession), Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Syrah/Shiraz. Now each varietal is going to be different because of their terrior, any blending, aging, what they are barreled in, and countless other things that wine makers do to make a wine their own. However each grape is going to have its own set of boundaries that it exists in so lets take a look at some of those.

Pinot Noir – aka The Heart Break Grape

This wine is typically very light in it colour, this is because the grape skins them selves are very thin. This wine is also considered This wine is light to medium body, medium acidity and dry, with soft tannins, often described as elegant, complex, with finesse and this sort of elusive power. I don’t know about you but the last one might be a bit much but it is a very sexy kind of wine when done well. Coming from a variety of places it is known best from Burgundy (mid region of Burgundy is known for an earthy barn quality in their wine), Oregon (because this is considered a newer region they are prone to a lot of vintage variation, but we are seeing some really great stuff starting to come out), New Zealand (pinot noir is the second most grape produced there and for good reason. They produce some of the world’s finest light and fruity pinot noirs) and Champagne (pinot noir is one of the 3 grapes they use in the bubbly).  As for flavors in most pinot noirs you get a range from cherries, strawberries, vegetal, spice, red fruits and even to that French barnyard I was talking about earlier.

Merlot – “if any body orders merlot, I’m leaving!”

Merlot, despite its Hollywood bad rap is actually quite the little grape. Remarkably resilient, incredibly versatile and has the ability to stand up to almost anything. Even bad PR. Often deep in colour, dry and medium to full body but softer and more approachable then a Cabernet Sauvignon, ages incredibly well in top tier wines. We see a lot of well-done Merlots coming from places like Bordeaux (St.Emilion and Pomerol), California (Sonoma and Napa) and Chile. With right bank French Merlots we have vines that are grown in clay and moist soils, where they absolutely thrive!

In my honest opinion I believe that merlots, or any wines for that matter, are always going to be better when done in small 10 to 30 thousand lots rather then being mass-produced.

Cabernet Sauvignon – Rawr

This wine is usually deep in colour, dry, medium to full body, firm and grippy tannins, often blended, it matures well and has huge aging potential. Some of its key regions are Bordeaux (left bank specifically because its gravel and these vines don’t like to get their feet wet), California (single varietal wines that often have a benchmark flavor of dill), Australian, specifically Barossa Valley and Chile – Colchagua Province (where we see a lot of mint and cassis, and over all is excellent value on cabernets).  Some of the main flavors we find are black currant, cedar, bell pepper in cooler site, but this is often seen as a fault. Over all we get complex earthy notes and tobacco. It’s typically ages in some sort of oak barrels where we can get another huge range of flavors.

Syrah/Shiraz – What’s in a name?

Theses two wines are actually the same grape, deep colour, full bodied and rich. Medium to high tannins, and yet another very versatile grape. Some of its most common regions are Northern Rhones, France, where it can age 10- 20 years, Hermitage, where it can age 30 – 40 years, and Côte-Rôtie. Out of Barossa Australia we see wines that are developing towards hedonistic flavors with. With this grape we taste a lot of spice! White pepper to baking spice, black and blue berries, raisins, leather, black current, and smoked meat. This wine is often oaked to soften tannins.

There are thousand of types of grapes that are produced through out the world, these just happen to be the most main stream ones that I know of. If you want a complete list you can click here, but as this blog goes on I’ll go into discussing them as we meet them.

Cheers!

Review - 2006 Trefethen Family Vineyards Merlot, Oak Knoll District, USA

2006 Trefethen Family Vineyards Merlot, 

Oak Knoll District, USA 

SKU: 716300  

Origin: United States  |  California

Agent: Lanigan & Edwards Wine Merchants Ltd.

Trefethen is the largest family run estate in Napa. How ever, they produce only 25% of what they grow, selling the rest to other wine makers in the region. Because of this we can expect to see a high level of quality and precision coming from their wines.

This wine is 95% Merlot, 2% Cabernet Sauvignon, 2% Malbec, and 1% Petit Verdot. With that 95% of the grapes are harvested from the main ranch and  5% are harvested from the Hillspring vineyards. It spends about 17 months in French oak before being bottled

Oak knoll is a cooler region of Napa. Merlot typically flourish in cool growing regions with humid soil the Oak Knoll district is actually perfect for it, a “sweet spot” between its warmer north and cooler south regions. This season in particular seeing a large amount of fog leaving the afternoons cooler drew out the harvest for one of the longest growing season in 40 years.

On the Nose - pepper, herbs and pie spices, chocolate and fur

On the Pallet – beautiful mouth feel medium to long finish, full blackberry, boysenberry and white pepper and hearty chili spices. 

Now the website listed “olallieberry fruit” and I had to wiki what that was but oddly enough I ate these things all the time while I was growing up, and I remember liking them more then any other berry. I just never knew what they were called! Neat!

This wine can more then hold up on its own with or with out food, but I would love to pair it with a duck chili, or true Italian sausage spaghetti.

Awards 

93 points/Editor’s Choice - Steve Heimoff, Wine Enthusiast - March 1, 2011   

Cheers!