A fun and irreverent wine blog focusing on wine from all over the world. WSET-2 w/Distinction. Also features vacation reports, thoughts about movies and anything else I want to talk about.
Ho-hum, another Okanagan trip, another fantastic visit to Le Vieux Pin. Alex Russo, their wine club concierge, is the best of the best, and he takes incredible care of us each time we visit….even though we are not actually club members anymore! He just celebrated his 10th Anniversary at the winery, and that is really saying something as turnover is generally very high at Okanagan wineries.
To the wine!
And, as a little bonus review, here is one of their wines that we enjoyed recently and have not yet reviewed:
That’s it for today! Next up: The Okanagan trip continues right next door with our first visit to French Door!
Also, a special tasting of six big reds from Blasted Church will be posted soon. The video should be up tomorrow and the blog post with full reviews will follow. Stay tuned!
Up and at ’em early for a 10:30 appointment at Synchromesh; our first ever visit here. We meet up with Andrew Melville, who longtime readers of my blog will recognize as one of the lunatics who made The Hatch such a fantastic place to hang out for the first few years of it’s existence. He’s moved over to Synchromesh now, the home of some serious Rieslings (and other stuff too!).
After a little tour of the vineyards and some history of the property and the winery, we settle in to the tasting room and Andrew takes us through a large portion of their portfolio. I was expecting to like the wines (I have had the occasional Synchromesh Riesling over the years). I was not expecting to LOVE them. Let’s check them out….
And they are not JUST a Riesling house! Some lovely reds as well.
These were so good that I actually placed an order for another half-case while typing up this post. If you are a Riesling fan, and you haven’t experienced these wines, you should get on it! And we didn’t even get to taste their high-end “Blue label” Rieslings as they were all sold out. The next release of those is in October and I’ll certainly do what I can to get some of those!
Next up: A perennial favorite as we visit Le Vieux Pin!
I have gone on record that I am very, very, very much in favor of Okanagan wineries continuing the practice of doing tastings by appointment. For the most part, that is all I am interested in doing. Don’t tell anyone, though, but I also really like having just one or two options to go to when we have a bit of extra time.
Rust Wine Co. is one of those options. They don’t take appointments, but we had time in the late afternoon to squeeze in one more winery, so here we are!
Warmly greeted as always, we are seated at a huge table with comfortable furniture, a very knowledgeable employee to guide us through the wines, and a big, friendly dog. And he wasn’t a winery dog, either, just a local dog that apparently comes down from a neighboring house and hangs out a lot.
So how were the wines? Let’s find out!
Another great tasting here, as always. This was a perfect way to end the first full day of our Okanagan trip.
Next up: We head up to OK Falls for an early morning visit, our first ever, at Synchromesh! Stay tuned!
Up next, we headed up the hill to the beautiful Burrowing Owl, which is always a good tasting. We had hoped to have dinner at their excellent restaurant as well but the timing just didn’t work out so we’ll have to tackle that next time.
This was the only winery we tasted at that didn’t have an outside option, but we knew that the tasting stations were very well spaced out, and our host would be behind a large piece of plexiglass, so we felt safe enough to stay inside for the 15-20 minutes that the tasting would take. The wines here, generally, are universally good, so let’s see what they had for us to taste on this trip!
That was it for this tasting, but here is a bonus review of a wine we enjoyed recently:
That’s it for today! As usual, great wines up and down the lineup from Burrowing Owl.
Next up, we drop in for a tasting at Rust Wine Co.! Stay tuned!
Ah, it wouldn’t be a trip to the Okanagan without a cabana tasting at Black Hills! As always, we are warmly greeted and escorted to our cabana, where our host brings us a tremendous amount of wine. Although their new Rosé isn’t part of the tasting, our host finds a bottle that they had opened the day before at a staff tasting and we get that included as well. After the 2019 Rosé disappointed us a little bit, we were anxious to taste the 2020 before committing to buying a bunch of it. Was the 2020 Rosé an improvement? How is the new Nota Bene??? Let’s find out!
That’s it for now! Another terrific experience at a “must-see” winery.
Next up! The trip report continues as we move up the hill to Burrowing Owl! Stay tuned!
So, last year I told you about Shelby, who had been in the wine industry for all of 2 weeks and already knew more about wine, and her products, then about 75% of the Okanagan tasting room staff. If you didn’t read that blog post last year, you can catch up on it here if you like.
She made such an impression on us that when we booked this year’s tasting, we specifically requested her, if she was still working there.
She was not. And, in fact, she’s left the industry entirely. That’s quite a loss for the industry, IMO.
How do we know this about her? Well, let me introduce you to Emma, who we quickly dubbed “new Shelby”. Emma started at Road 13 around the same time as Shelby and they are friends (in fact, they had lunch together a few days before our visit). Emma knows her stuff, and took excellent care of us. She was the only full-time tasting room staff member who stayed on during the pandemic, and Road 13 was smart to do whatever it took to hang onto her.
When we received the wine that we had purchased (we never take wine with us into the car, we always have it shipped), we received a lovely hand-written thank-you note from Emma. The little touches……
Of course, none of this would really matter much if the wine sucked, would it? But since we come here every chance we get, there wasn’t much chance of that. Let’s get to it!
Honestly, it’s tough to imagine a tasting, top to bottom, being much better than that. It was so good (this year AND last) that we joined the wine club – and we have actually been working to get LESS wine in the door, not more – the first new club we have joined in years.
That’s it for today. Next up: A fabulous Cabana tasting at Black Hills, where we get to taste all the new releases, including the 2019 Nota Bene!! Stay tuned!
So after leaving La Stella, it’s just a 2-minute car ride, basically across the street, to Liber Farm & Winery’s new location. Owner Mike Dowell is in the process of building a beautiful facility, hopefully to open at some point in 2022. For now, he has put up a really comfortable temporary tasting area, complete with an open-air, fully covered, Astroturfed seating area.
This will be a fairly short entry because we tasted a bunch of the new stuff earlier this year. You can see the blog entry here or the much more interesting vlog entry here.
For today’s report, just two other new wines to report on, and neither disappoints, including what is quite possibly the best red wine they’ve ever made.
And then there is this one, that isn’t even released yet (or at least it wasn’t when we were there). The website still lists the 2018 as available. The ’18 is very good, but this vintage is next-level, and an absolute steal at this price.
OK that’s it for now! Next up: After checking into the hotel and relaxing for the evening, we start off the next day with a beautiful tasting at Road 13! Stay tuned!
When we were members of La Stella (and their sister winery Le Vieux Pin), we were treated like family. Every visit. A couple of years ago we left both clubs, simply due to the fact that had we remained in all the clubs we were in, we would have shortly run out of places to put all the wine. Now that we aren’t in the clubs anymore…..they still treat us like family.
A lot of this is due to Alex Russo, their wine club manager. He is the best in the business, and we know anytime we need anything from either winery, he will take excellent care of us. That’s pretty great service for EX-club members. Alex recently celebrated his 10th Anniversary as part of the team, and if you know anything about staff turnover in the Okanagan, that’s pretty remarkable. I think it’s probably more mathematically likely that an employee would work at 10 wineries in one year than at one winery (OK, two, in this case I guess) for 10 years.
We show up for our appointment and are quickly greeted and escorted out to their beautiful patio. We haven’t checked into our room yet, it’s too early, so we still have the dog with us. They are certainly dog friendly on the patio; in fact there are two other groups out there when we arrive and BOTH are accompanied by a furry friend!
Our guide today is someone we haven’t seen before, but he is very knowledgable and takes excellent care of us as we would expect. Now, let’s get to the wine!
Next up, because I guess winemaker Severine Pinte decided that making world class wine for La Stella and Le Vieux Pin wasn’t quite enough work, she decided to create a third label. Artakama is a new label featuring just natural wines. We were lucky enough to get to taste one, and although I didn’t love it (I have not yet jumped on the ‘natural wine’ bandwagon), I look forward to seeing how these wines evolve. If I recall correctly, this is the only one currently being featured at La Stella, while they also have a Viognier/Roussane blend, a Pinot Noir, and a Syrah being sold online or from Le Vieux Pin. Those three are currently only available in Magnums.
Next, two Tuscan-style blends that never disappoint, from two very different vintages.
To finish up, I’m giving this wine a bunch of “+s” because I really am not sure just how great it’s going to be once given some more nappy time in the bottle. Don’t get me wrong, if you have one of these and want to open it now (please aerate and decant it for a couple hours), you will thoroughly enjoy it. But patience is the key here, as I think this just might become one of the great Merlots in Okanagan history. Time will tell!
That’s all for today! Next up: The Okanagan trip continues as we meet up with Mike Dowell from Liber Farm & Winery at his new location which is basically across the street from La Stella! Stay tuned!
Anytime we are driving through the Similkameen Valley, even when we aren’t necessarily planning to stop, it’s difficult not to reach out to Vanessa Vineyards and see if they can accommodate us for a tasting. This trip was no exception! As with our trip last year, we are accompanied by a dog and need our tasting to be outside, and they had no problems taking care of us. Last year we tasted on top of a barrel, but this year they had a picnic table set up and that was even more comfortable. Let’s get to the wines!
We picked up a bunch of these bad boys and also bought a few bottles of their 2018 Cabernet Franc, although it wasn’t available to taste. Our host Blair, who was excellent (same as last year), highly recommended it but suggested not to look at it or touch it for at least 5 years, so we are taking him up on that recommendation.
That’s it for today! Next up: We arrive in Osoyoos and head right to one of the more reliable wineries out there, La Stella!
And if you missed my vlog where I reviewed most of the wines featured in this post, you can find that here.
Part 1 of the series featured exclusively BC rosés, this one also focuses on BC but there are a couple of French rosés thrown in for good measure. Let’s get to it, starting with the BC entries.
OK, now we’ll go across the pond for a couple of nice ones from Provence!
That ends part 2 of the series! Up next, I’ll start on the report from the wineries we visited on our Okanagan trip last week. First up, Vanessa Vineyards!
Confessions of a Huge Wine-R 