Back from the Okanagan

Sorry for the lack of activity but August has been a busy month, what with hot weather pushing business at the restaurant through the roof, an extended visit from my in laws and a trip to the Okanagan I've just been too busy to write but here goes.

As I mentioned we spent some time in the Okanagan Valley recently, Summerland mostly, courtesy of friends who have been gracious enough to loan us their cottage near the lake for the past four summers. It is an absolute joy to just get away from the city for a week or so and do, well really nothing. We generally spend the time beaching and reading with a movie viewing each evening before bed at around 11pm. Food is, for once, secondary although the fruit and vegetables available are just beyond my wildest dreams and dirt cheap. We returned with a case of unbelievable Red Haven peaches which I paid 79 cents a pound for, yesterday on Granville Island I saw the same fruit at $2.99 a pound.

We visited the Farmer's Market in Summerland and although the market was mostly void of farmers, full of crafts and baked goods, I did spend some time talking with the owner of a small organic farm and sampling his produce. Beautiful heirloom tomatoes at $2 a pound, a massive bag of fresh basil for $2, lemon cucumbers so sweet I ate one like an apple for $2 a pound and the list goes on.

I also spent a full morning tasting, and buying, wines on the Naramata bench and once again with mixed feelings. The problem, as I've stated many times, with the Okanagan wines are the price/quality ratio, many of the wines I tasted were very good but rarely did I feel they were worth the price tag and there is virtually no "entry level" wines from the smaller estate wineries. I know that limited production and high land/labour costs mean that $12 wines from 10,000 case wineries aren't going to happen but almost all these wines start north of $20 and go rapidly up from there meaning that they just aren't likely to be on the average dinner table too often.

The best wines I tasted were, once again, from LaFrenz Winery, consistently they seem to produce quality across the board but I was also pleasantly surprised by Lake Breeze for their overall quality and Hillside Winery, especially for their white wines. It also became apparent that Syrah is becoming the signature red grape on the Naramata bench, which is a good thing as far as marketing goes. I ended up picking up a mixed case or so of wines, mostly reds but with some Hillside Viognier tossed in as well.

For the second year running however my favourite wine from the trip was the delightful frizzante Rose from 8th Generation Vineyard. This nondescript winery situated right on Highway 97 produces a wide variety of wine but their frizzante Confidence Rose is just perfect for deck chairs after a hot day at the beach. Frizzante wines are sparkling but not too sparkling, as they have the secondary fermentation halted to create less bubbles. The 2011 Confidence is a blend of Syrah, Pinot Gris and Dunkenfelder, a grape so obscure that it's actual parentage is unknown, but who cares. The wine is a burst of strawberries with a hint of something sharper in the background, cranberry maybe, and although it contains a fair bit of residual sugar it's crisp acidity keeps it from being sweet. Once agin, as is typical of the Okanagan, the wine is a little pricey at $22.50 a bottle but in this case I don't mind paying. They make less than 650 cases of Confidence a year so if you get the chance to grab a bottle do so, but drink it quickly before the summer fades away.

Two Argentinean Reds

I hit it lucky the past week with a pair of good value red wines from Argentina. Both wines are currently on sale at the BCLDB, meaning that for a 4 week period their retail price has been reduced, in each case by $2 per bottle. This is a practice, known as LTOs for Limited Time Offering, is used by agents to create interest in their wines, sometimes just to get the brand noticed, sometimes in order to reach sales quotas required to keep the brand listed. Often this practice seems futile to me, I mean is a $1 discount on a $25 bottle going to make me buy it ? Unlikely.

In the case of these two wines the discounts did drive my purchase, for different reasons. In one case it brought a known quantity into everyday drinking range, and in the other case it dropped the wine into I'll take a chance range. The first wine is the Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon from the Don David range of wines, the third of five tiers of wines Bodegas El Esteco in the Cafayette region of Argentina, way up high. This wine is a consistent value at it's regular retail of $15.99 but when placed on sale becomes perfectly affordable for everyday quaffing.

The wine is robust and typically Cabernet with black fruits and cocoa in the nose and a distinct note of smoked meat and peppers, the flavours are rich, this is new world fruit driven cab, but there is enough tannin to keep things in check and complement red meats. I opened this 30 minutes before dinner and served it with a roasted striploin of beef, it was a delicious combination. I will likely buy a half dozen bottles of this before the sale price ends to keep on hand for better dinners, and hope it goes back on sale when grill season arrives, it is perfect burger wine.

 

Next up was the I'll take a chance wine, the Reserva Syrah from Santa Julia. Santa Julia is one of the ranges of the massive Familia Zuccardi winery, Argentina's third largest, and is produced in the dry, lower altitude area of Mendoza. Generally I'm not likely to spend $15 on a "Reserva" from a big box winery but the $2 discount swayed me and we tried this with pizza with happy results, the wine is full bodied with lots of herbs, pepper and red fruits in the profile. There is a fresh acidity to it that would limit it's ageability but made it a nice match with the tomato, cheese, mushroom, salami combo on the pizza.  

Unfortunately this wine is in limited supply, less than 400 bottles in the province, so I fear the discount may be for the purpose of removing any stocks prior to delisting. If you see it on a shelf at the current retail of $12.99 I'd recommend grabbing a bottle or two.

So, in summation, I had good fortune with a couple of discounted wines, one new and one already a fave. I generally use the discounts to buy wines I'm already familiar with but looking back over past tasting notes I've discovered that a number of wines that are currently in rotation on our table got their start as LTOs so I guess the discounting works. I guess the lesson is to pay attention to those sale tags when you're shopping in government stores and you may be pleasantly surprised.