Last weekend, we, along with some friends, gathered ’round the old Zoom app for a night of virtual tasting with Stag’s Hollow. This is something I had set up weeks ago, and we finally could all agree on a date to get it done. We were joined by Erin Korpisto, who has been around the BC wine game for many years. Erin is currently the Sales & Marketing Manager at Stag’s Hollow, after similar gigs at Liquidity, among others. There aren’t too many in the BC wine game who can go toe-to-toe in terms of wine knowledge: she is currently a WSET-4 Diploma candidate!
We had arranged to purchase and taste three specific wines, and my thoughts on them are below. Two out of three ain’t bad, as they say 🙂
All of the wines were opened well in advance of the tasting, tasted, and then re-closed (all are screwcaps), and then re-opened and decanted about an hour before the tasting began.
So let’s start with the problem child of the tasting. When we opened and first tasted this, we didn’t like it at all. After decanting it and tasting it again during the tasting event, it had improved a bit, but it still felt like it was holding back. On Erin’s advice, we put it back into the bottle, and left it on our counter (capped) for a few days. We tasted it on day 2 and it didn’t get any better (the opposite, in fact), and we tried again on day 3 and gave up at that point.
Oh, and if anyone is wondering if we just had a bad bottle, our friends had similar comments with their bottle.
Enough about that wine, let’s get to the good stuff.
Both of these come from their Renaissance line, which is only produced in very good years. The Pinot is their 7th in the last 21 years. Even though Pinot Noir is what they do the most, it could be argued that the Merlot is their flagship wine, as it has produced quality fruit (and, therefore, a Renaissance-tier wine) every year.
With my three bottles above, I also purchased three more. Erin recommended their Pinot Gris, which I have not yet tasted, I also bought a Teroldego just for kicks, as I don’t think there is a single other BC winery making this varietal (haven’t yet tasted that either), and their rosé, which we enjoyed the other day.
That’s it for today. A huge ‘thanks’ to Erin for taking us through this tasting and sharing her knowledge and passion for BC wine with us. We learned a lot.
Next up: At some point in the next few weeks, I am going to have a “Part Three” of my series of reviews on BC rosé. For now, though, I have a bunch of random reviews to share. Stay tuned!
Confessions of a Huge Wine-R 