Confessions of a Huge Wine-R

OK, here we go, first blog post of this year’s VIWF; I was not expecting to be able to get one done while the festival was still ongoing, not because of time constraints, but because using only my laptop presents quite a challenge. You see, the boxes that have all the information on the wine, including the score and price, etc, are just images that I create by using a snapshot program. Basically I highlight what I want, and take a “picture” of it and insert that image into the blog. Easy, normally, but because I have only my laptop, and not my large monitor, I can’t actually select the entire image; my laptop screen is too small. I’ve found a workaround that entails copying and pasting from Excel to Word and then creating an image…problem is that the images are smaller than I like. I’ve made them bigger below, but that causes them to look a little blurry. Apologies if anyone has issues with reading anything in those images. Now, enough of the housekeeping, let’s get to it!

Full disclosure: This is one of the last restaurants in Vancouver we would frequent on a normal night. Nothing against the restaurant, but it specializes in oysters which the wife is allergic to and I don’t like, and seafood which the wife doesn’t eat. But, given that this was a Barolo tasting, and it was unlikely that they were going to pair Barolo with shellfish, or fish in general, we decided to give this event a shot.

One more note of housekeeping below: The prices that are listed as at the “BC Liquor Store”, as far as I know that is only at the on-site BC Liquor Store at the festival itself, not in regular BC Liquor Stores. You may have to search to find these after the festival is over.

The event was a tasting of Sardo, a well-known winery from Barolo, who brought us their entry-level offering plus three single-vineyard wines, and a white and a surprise at the end. We were joined by their Director of Marketing, Elisa, straight from Italy, and their local agent, Italo. Both were terrific, friendly, warm and knowledgeable. There were a few VIP’s at our table as well, including Sid Cross, the co-founder of The Chefs’ Table Society of BC. I honestly did not know who he was, but apparently he is kind of a big deal in the world of local food and wine.

Going in, we thought this was kind of a nightmare menu for us. The wife can’t eat oysters, has never had Beef Carpaccio in her life, and doesn’t much enjoy duck. I was pretty much in the same boat, minus the oyster allergy.

Thankfully they were more than willing to prepare her a chicken dish to replace the oyster. They were very accommodating.

Course 1:

To say this was the best oyster I have had in my life would suggest I have had a bunch of oysters which is untrue…..but this was really delicious. It might make me reconsider my distaste for oysters. And it paired beautifully with the only white wine served tonight.

Course 2:

To say this was the best Beef Carpaccio I have had in my life would suggest I have had a bunch of Beef Carpaccio which is untrue…..but this was really delicious. It might make me reconsider my distaste for Beef Carpaccio. And it paired beautifully with our first Barolo of the night.

And yes, I was able to simply copy and paste that paragraph above and change “oyster” to “Beef Carpaccio”.

Course 3:

To say this was the best…..OK, enough. I would never in a million years order duck in a restaurant, but in previous instances I have had no trouble eating in when served to me in fixed menu dinners like these. In this case, though, I could not eat this, even after asking the chef to cook it a bit more for me (which he happily obliged). Duck goes against my “no cute animals” stance and this one just wouldn’t go down.

Two wines to pair with this course.

Course 4:

Prime rib that looks like Filet Mignon. Delicious, and a beautiful pairing with the gorgeous wine they served with it. I was so full by this point I couldn’t even eat it all, so I brought the rest of it back to the hotel. The dog is going to get a treat tonight.

And, the wine that went with it was just as special as the beef.

If any of you are interested in purchasing this, the agent’s name is Italo Fionda, and he can be reached via Email. Tell him I sent you and get a 75% discount.

Kidding.

Course 5:

Not exactly my idea of “Black Forest Cake”, but since I am not a huge fan of Black Forest Cake, I didn’t care. This was tasty. The wine they brought with it was something I have never heard of before, a dessert-style Barolo!

All in all, a fun night. Not our menu, for sure, so next year we may stick to wine dinners where the menu is pre-published (some are, some are not) when buying the tickets.

Next up: In just hours, our first event in the tasting room at VIWF, the Thursday trade tasting. The blog will return…..soon.

Going to start with a perfect pairing from last night’s dinner. Got this recipe online, and it is a world beater, for two reasons. First, it’s freaking delicious. Secondly, FOUR ingredients total if you count salt and pepper. Couldn’t be easier.

Filet Mignon with a Rich Balsamic Glaze

Oh, if you make this, do the glaze separately. No need to put them both in the same pan, that opens up the possibility of the glaze actually soaking into the meat which could affect how it cooks.

Now, to the wine. From time to time, at Xmas, the wife treats me to a “Dean bottle”; a wine that I am more likely to enjoy than she is. Generally, that means an aged Tempranillo (although she is coming around). I am not sure if it was Xmas 2016 or 2017, but this was one of those bottles.

Delicious, and complemented the steak perfectly.

A few other random bottles from around the world:

Another bottle that was a Xmas gift from the wife, 2 years ago. This is the entry-level effort from Pahlmeyer, a top Napa producer. Very tasty.

Robert Mondavi knows Fumé Blanc (in fact he invented the term), and they currently make three: This one, from Oakville, is the middle of the three. The entry-level Napa version is easy to find in any BC Liquor store ($23ish), and the high-end one, available only from the winery I believe, is spectacular. The one in the middle is nice but a far cry from the best one.

Here’s something you don’t see all the time, a Napa Chardonnay closing in on 7 years old, on BC Liquor Store shelves.

This was our “backup bottle” from our recent Argentina theme night; just in case one of the reds we served was no good. That wasn’t the case, so we took it to a friend’s place for lunch last weekend. So different from BC Syrah (or Aussie Shiraz for that matter), but quite pleasant.

Ah yes, Provence rosé. There is nothing like it. Can’t wait until spring and the new crop.

Here is an interesting bottle; a gift from a friend that knew we were into wine but didn’t know much more than that. This is the one where you can scan the label and get a story about the crime committed by the crook on the label. Interesting gimmick. The wine isn’t something we would drink, BUT, I must confess, we put most of this into a pasta sauce that ended up in lasagne, and it was spectacular there. The sweetness of the wine complemented the sauce.

Now, let’s go to BC for some local treats! We will start with a very special one, part of Tinhorn Creek’s Innovation series. I had to ask them exactly what was so different about this wine, and this was their response:

The grapes were hand harvested in early October and were fermented whole cluster (no crushing or destemming) in open top fermenters and allowed to ferment naturally (no added yeast) for 25 days.  The whole berries and clusters go through a partial carbonic fermentation (void of oxygen) creating a unique flavour profile and texture to this wine that is more typical of Pinot Noir or Syrah.  As the yeast must work harder to get the sugar inside the berries these fermentations typically are cooler and are much less vigorous, leading to long, slow, gentle extraction of colour, tannin and flavour.  The wines were then pressed and racked to French oak barrels for malolactic fermentation and aging.  The Innovation Series Whole Cluster Cabernet Franc was barrel aged for 16 months before racking, fining and minimal filtration.

The fruit was harvested from Red Brick Vineyard (Osoyoos – Anarchist Mountain).  Vines are 15 years old and the soil is sandy loam.

Some random beauties:

Here’s a couple from another high-end winery under the Von Mandl banner, Martin’s Lane:

That’s it for today, and probably that’s it for at least a week. Who knows, maybe I’ll find the time and inspiration to do a blog post about the VIWF during the festival itself, but no promises. Worst case, I will have a ton to report on when we return!

So let’s talk a minute about wine pairings. Anyone who has ever had a glass of wine in their life has probably at least heard about them, or contemplated them. Those of us who take wine a little more seriously, which probably includes anyone reading this blog, know quite a bit about them. In today’s effort, I want to tell you about one of the most perfect pairings I have ever produced. And it was just a little recipe at lunch yesterday.

But we’ll get to that….first, the supermodel.

Yeah, she’s kind of fetching, isn’t she? And she fancies herself a bit of a cook. And she is married to Uber-hunk (if you are into that sort of thing) John Legend. And she has written two cookbooks (so far). Oh, and if you aren’t following her on Twitter, you are missing out. She is hilarious.

I know what you are thinking….first, who the Hell buys cookbooks anymore when there are approximately 1.9 billion free recipes on this thing called ‘the Internet’?

Well, from time to time, you find a special one, and these would both qualify. I know, I know, she’s a supermodel, she can’t eat real food, right? She’s probably produced a “diet cookbook” full of kale and quinoa and other stuff that somehow qualifies as food these days.

Uh-uh. Real recipes, and some pretty great ones too. One of the best potato salads I have ever had. Definitely the best grilled cheese sandwich on the planet. And so many more.

Oh, and if you like Thai food, her mother is a crazy wicked Thai cook, and each cookbook has a section specifically for those recipes.

For lunch yesterday, I made this:

Spicy Jammy Drummies (this is someone else’s picture)

Insanely good. And the sauce would go with almost anything. Any kind of chicken, and probably any pork too. Ham? Oh yeah! In fact, the sauce was so good that next time I will DOUBLE it, so that my chicken is even more gooey and decadent.

And the wine that paired PERFECTLY with it? Here it is.

The food was great. The wine was great. Together, they were sublime.

Pairing food and wine is a passion of mine, and sometimes I get it right, sometimes I miss horribly, and then, occasionally like yesterday, I freaking nail it. And it’s awesome when that happens!

Next up in the blog, a ton of more random stuff to tell you about. I’ll get at least one blog post done this weekend, and then I’ll be silent for a little while as we spend most of next week at the Vancouver International Wine Festival! Can’t wait!

Well, we did it, we got through the entire list of countries that we were presenting for our “theme nights”.

OK that’s not totally true, we skipped two of them, but we will get back to those. Reasons.

For now, this was the first country to be repeated. And yes, I was playing music from “Evita” when the night began. I am not an animal.

A quick refresher on our first Argentina night, here. That was quite a night. It was actually the second one of these we ever had and it seems like a lifetime ago!

From our humble beginnings with just the four of us, our theme nights have branched out to include others. There were eight of us here enjoying some special food, special wine, and special company.

Links to the recipes are included.

Course 1:

Argentinian Proveleta with Grilled Chorizo, Olives and assorted cheeses

This was a bit of a disaster….I mean, the recipe calls for putting slices of Provolone cheese directly on the BBQ. What did I THINK was going to happen?!

It was tasty, once we scraped what was left of the cheese off the BBQ.

Course 2:

Matambre w/Chimichurri Sauce

A dish I had never heard of, but I will make again. It was DEEEEEEEE-LISH-OUS.

True story: I am in the BC Liquor Store at 39th and Cambie last week, not really intending to buy any wine, but there are 3 bottles that I am having trouble finding that I thought I would look for. I struck out on the first two, and was perusing the “Fine Wine” section when I came across this one…the LAST BOTTLE! I scooped that bad boy up tout d’suite. About 3 minutes later, I’m wandering around when another customer comes up to a sales clerk and asks him to find a wine…and shows him a picture of THIS! LOL. Sorry pal, MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE. The sales clerk wanders around, can’t find it, then eventually goes to the computer and finds out that they have one bottle in inventory.  I hear him say “Sorry, the computer must be wrong, I can’t find it”. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA SUCKER!!! 🙂

When we open up that bottle, it’s going to taste like “Victory!”.

Course 3:

Chicken Milanesa

Argentina is overrun with cows. They eat a TREMENDOUS amount of beef. Seriously if I had wanted this to be a totally traditional Argentinian meal, I could have served 6 courses of beef.

But, for goodness sake, I had a Chardonnay and Pinot Noir to pair with, so I turned this Veal Milanesa into chicken. They eat chicken in Argentina once a decade or so.

This was….fine. I mean, there really isn’t much to the recipe, and I was expecting it to be pretty bland. It wasn’t as bad as I expected….but nothing special.

Course 4:

Rosemary Steak with Burnt Carrot, Goat’s Cheese & Beet Salad

I chose this recipe because, given that a couple of the other recipes were labour intensive, I needed something really simple. This was really simple, but also really tasty.

Course 5:

Pork Tenderloin Churrasco with Pineapple Salsa

Since some of my guests are not huge on spicy dishes, I left out the hot peppers from the Pineapple Salsa. This was really delicious.

Course 6:

Argentinian Style Ribs

The recipe was right….it sounds way, way too salty, but it wasn’t at all. Everyone enjoyed this, even if it was the last course of the night and we were all getting pretty damn full by this point. And, it paired perfectly with this beautiful wine.

Terrific night of food, lots of good wine (and some GREAT wine), and good friends. Wine is fantastic, and sharing it with great people makes it even better.

Next up: Tons of random bottles to share, and we are only TWO WEEKS AWAY from the Vancouver International Wine Festival. It is going to be epic!!

You’ve never heard of the AWAS – Australian Wine Appreciation Society? Well, now you have, and you are going to thank me for it….especially if you live in the Lower Mainland.

Website

Facebook Group

This group was started in 1989 by a bunch of fun loving, Australian-wine loving folks. They hold around 10 events each year, and membership in this group costs only $40 per person or $70 per couple. The events run around $130 per person. Guests are allowed but will pay a premium.  In the past, they have been able to get some Principals from Australia to come to their events and present their wines (Wolf Blass attended one!). There is a lot more information and sign-up info at the website, above.

This past Friday we attended one such event at Glowbal, in Vancouver. The food was terrific and was paired with some absolutely world-class wine. We started with a range of appies they passed around and paired with a bubbly that I didn’t get info on (but it was quite tasty). To the main courses!

BTW I have not given accurate prices on the wines as I simply have no idea; unless I found the exact bottle on a website that gave a specific price.

Course 1:

I am not a ‘ceviche’ fan….I do not eat raw fish at all, and consuming the scallops was a bit of a challenge. Having said that, they were delicious.  It was paired with these two wines:

Course 2:

Another thing I never eat – veal. This was sublime…the veal cheeks were fall-apart tender. I didn’t need a knife. And some of the best tortellini I have ever tasted.

The wines were the same grape, but from very different areas of Australia and they were totally different:

I think I was in the minority, but I felt (and my wife agreed) that the less-traditional Shiraz, from the Hunter Valley, outperformed it’s Barossa counterpart in every way, particularly in the pairing with the food.

Course 3:

Sous Vide Lamb Loin – lamb sweetbread, confit sun choke, pickled eggplant, cumin spiced lamb jus

You may sense a pattern here, but I never eat lamb either. This was the best I have ever had.

The wines:

Course 4:

You are thinking to yourself: this must be the wrong picture. There is nothing about this that screams strawberry. But it’s there, you just had to look for it.

Voila.

The final wine pairing of the night wasn’t really meant to be a pairing at all, and we enjoyed the wine AFTER, not with, the dessert (which was delicious).

What a terrific evening, and a real treat to taste a 19 year old Shiraz that has been well cared for.

Whenever I go to an evening of wine tasting which spotlights a specific country, whether it be a wonderful event like this or our own theme nights, I always find myself thinking about the comparison between said country and wines from our own backyard. BC wine can be pretty special if you find the right bottles. Would wines from BC stack up against what we had tonight?

Well, there are a handful of BC dry Rieslings that would clobber the one we tasted tonight. Certainly I’ve never had a BC Semillon that would even compare to tonight’s beauty.

Cabernet? Probably not, although there are some very underrated BC Cabs.

Shiraz? Well, I’m not even going to try to make a comparison, because BC Syrah and Australian Shiraz are so different, they are hardly even the same grape.

We sat next to Tony, the AWAS President, and talked about these comparisons throughout the night. If our schedules allow, we are going to try to get together and have a full-on “Australia vs. BC” wine duel.

Who will win? Well, I have a pretty good idea, actually….but one prediction I can make without hesitation: It will be close!

Big thanks to Tony, Rick, Trent and Patti and the rest of the folks behind the AWAS for allowing us to join in on their little fun. It was a special evening, and we look forward to doing it again in the summer.

Next up for the blog: Our Argentina theme night, which we held at our place a couple of weeks ago, and so, so, so much random great stuff to update you on. Stay tuned!

Jesus. It’s January 31st and this is my first post of the year? I suck.

Anyway, let’s get right to it. A few random BC selections we’ve enjoyed recently to start, and some beautiful bottles we enjoyed on our recent Vegas vacation at the bottom….including a Pinot Noir to watch out for and a top notch Brunello!

That’s it for today, but so much more to come, including our first “theme night” of 2019, hosted by the author, as we took our second bite out of Argentina!

I sincerely hope all of my readers had a wonderful Holiday season; whichever Holiday you may celebrate: Hannukah, Christmas, Festivus…whatever it is, I hope you had some special time with friends and family. I certainly did.

Every year, we plan a “West Van shopping day”, which for the past few years has involved us staying at the Lonsdale Quay Hotel in North Van (where I was born and raised, and which will always be ‘home’ to me) and having a nice dinner on Friday night, then hitting Park Royal and surrounding stores on Saturday before heading home. This year, we decided to kick the luxury factor up about a dozen notches, and stay in downtown Vancouver, at the Shangri-La Hotel. To say that was a good decision would be an understatement, and this is definitely now going to be our yearly tradition.

The Hotel was fantastic in all regards, but they really outdid themselves at dinner. We dined at Market by Jean-Georges, their signature restaurant, and had one of the great meals of our lives. I am generally not a “take pictures of my food” guy, even when we are dining in a fancy restaurant, but these meals were plated so beautifully I had to.

Filet Mignon, beet puree, winter vegetables, Demi-glaze

Soy-Glazed Short Ribs, Whipped Potatoes, Rosemary Crumbs, Apple-Jalapeno Puree

My steak was one of the best I have ever tasted. Delicately seasoned, the meat really spoke for itself. My wife had short ribs, which is a favorite of hers, and she raved about the quality. We also both had a fantastic mushroom soup to start our meal, and shared a Chocolate Peanut Butter bar for dessert. All in all, this meal was perfect from start to finish.

The restaurant is classy without being overly pretentious, the service is terrific, and the food is of the highest quality (without being ridiculously overpriced). We will definitely be back.

But…this is a wine blog mostly, right? So where’s the wine? Well, we opened up the wallet a little (OK…a LOT…..$450) to try out this little beauty.

What an absolute treat. The restaurant had a decanter, of course, but keep in mind that if you are drinking this wine now, it needs to decant for 4-5 hours, not the time it takes to eat dinner. Although it was phenomenal, especially as the meal wore on, but it has SO much more to give. We were lucky to find a couple of these at Everything Wine in Langley, and they are heading to our cellar to enjoy them in a few years. This was #1 on Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines of 2018, so finding it was not easy. In fact, we were unable to find it in any of the terrific wine stores we visited on our aforementioned West Van shopping day.

That was not the only terrific bottle of wine we enjoyed around the Holidays though. Here are a few more little gems we cracked open.

Hmm, that seems to be as big as I am able to make the image on my new Mac. The images above were done on my old PC. Pardon me while I figure out this new computer. There may be a bit of a learning curve. For the most part, though, I love the Mac.

Hmm OK that one is probably TOO big. I will see what they look like when I publish it. This new site is supposed to look much better on different devices (phones, tablets etc) so I hope that my readers are enjoying the new look.

OK that’s enough for today! Now it’s time to go and play with some of my new Xmas toys, like trying to make rice in my new Instant Pot. Enjoy the day, and hopefully you all have a wonderful New Year’s.

OH, speaking of New Years, we are planning an exciting vertical…..so keep your eyes peeled for that one shortly after NYE!

I’ll just leave this picture here without comment.

So, yeah, that’s the home. The tasting room isn’t actually IN the home, of course, you go around the right side of the home to the back where they have set things up in the garage. The entire process, from winemaking to tasting to sales, takes place in this garage.

Our lovely host, Tanya, told us on numerous occasions that they “don’t know what the Hell we are doing”. LOL.

Well, if the wines are any good at all, chances are they are going to figure it out.

Tanya regaled of stories of membership parties where they unknowingly broke several bi-laws and several actual laws. She was a FANTASTIC host, and I hope she is there the next time we visit. Passionate people showing off your brand should be the first thing any new winery, or business for that matter, checks off their list.

But….was the wine any good?

We had a terrific experience here and will definitely be back on our next journey up to this area. This is a winery to keep an eye on!

Next up: We finish off the Okanagan trip, finally, at Mt. Boucherie!

Also, have lots of other great stuff to tell you about, including a couple more really special wines. Stay tuned!

I guess too many people were calling this winery “Spy-er-head” so they decided to change the spelling to match the correct pronunciation of “Spearhead”.

In early 2018, it was announced that Spearhead had hired Grant Stanley, late of 50th Parallel Estate and Quails’ Gate, to be their GM/winemaker. Time will tell how much impact this will have on the quality of their wine. Spearhead specializes in Pinot Noir, and those who have followed Stanley’s career know that is a special grape to him.

To the wine!

So there you have it; we will check back with these guys in a year or two and see if Grant can make these wines even better once he really has time to put his stamp on the project. For the most part, they don’t need a ton of improvement.

Next up: The penultimate entry in this trip report, at a brand new player in our little game: Kitsch Wines!

Tantalus is a winery that “stays in it’s lane”…and by that I mean that they know what they do well, and they stick to it. And they do those things very, very well.

Riesling. Pinot Noir. Chardonnay. That’s just about it. And the results are almost consistently excellent. Let’s get right to it!

So that’s it for today; we left here with a whole bunch of Riesling and some of the other stuff too. All of the Rieslings are in the cellar, to come out in the middle of the next decade. Lots to look forward to!

Up next: Three more entries to finish off the Okanagan trip report, starting at Spearhead!