Oh yes.

I should pre-emptively intercede to point out that we didn’t just do this to be the online jerks who make fun of cheap wine.  Like it or not, the wines picked for this tasting are embedded in global drinking culture, are a gateway for many people to more serious bottles (the marijuana of table wines, I suppose) and have had a market position that can only be described as dominant.  As someone who has studied wine quite a bit over the past few years, I had heard a ton about all of them:  Baby Duck, Canada’s most successful retro sparkler.  Mateus, Portugal’s top export and once the world’s best-selling wine.  Gallo White Zinfandel, flagship of a wine “fad” that continues in full force to this day.  Black Tower and Blue Nun, continual influencers of global opinion of an entire country’s wine tradition.  And Naked Grape, one of the most likely local inheritors of the legacy of these cheap and cheerful drinks.  I had never tried a single one of these wines, and my desire to do so was more than just morbid curiosity.  I was hoping to discover both what has made these bottles so iconically popular for so long and whether the suspect reputations that preceded them into the tasting room were well-deserved.  Let’s find out.

Since this was a celebratory occasion, we felt it appropriate to start with some bubbles and go from there, which led us to a somewhat roundabout pink-then-white-then-red tasting order.  First up, of course:  the Duck.

#1:  Andres Baby Duck (N.V.) — 7% alc., $9.99

First of all:  Baby Duck is a rose??  How did I not know this?  Made from grapes of unknown provenance sourced from Kelowna BC, Grimsby ON and Truro NS (ED. NOTE:  I have since been told this is not actually the case, sadly — see the comments section), this sparking legend launched into the glass luridly pink and with mountains of foamy fizz that quickly dissipated.  It smelled like every pink and purple candy you’ve ever loved as a kid:  pop rocks, Nerds, those strawberry marshmallow things (not sure if they have a proper trade name) and especially grape bubble tape.  There was a surprising medicinal tinge on the palate, almost like cough syrup, to go along with the more expected sweet flavours of Tahiti Treat and cotton candy.  The Duck started out lush and lathery like cream soda, but the sweetness faded by the time I swallowed, leaving a flat, chemical sort of aftertaste that lingered for longer than it should.  You can barely tell there’s alcohol in this; it just tastes like pop.  I don’t necessarily say that in a bad way, though — we actually quite enjoyed ourselves putting this back, and I have no problem seeing how a bottle of BD would have appeal for someone more inclined to sweeter drinks and less into dry table wine.  It was fun in a glass, and it actually turned out to be the second best thing I drank all night.

82-83 points

#2:  Mateus Rose (N.V.) — 11% alc., $8.59

One of the things I discovered doing Baby Duck research is that when the Duck was initially created, it was modelled after Portuguese rose powerhouse Mateus, a wine that in its heyday in the ’80s sold over 3.25 million cases a year.  That’s THIRTY-NINE MILLION BOTTLES OF MATEUS!  Instantly recognizable for the squat gourd-shaped bottle that it continues to rock to this day, Mateus is almost assuredly the most successful rose of all time.  It also cost LESS than a bottle of Baby Duck.  Frizzante (lightly sparking) rather than full-blown carbonated like its Canadian successor, the Mateus was much more aromatic in the glass than the Duck, and, as a guest at the tasting so succinctly put it, “smelled a lot more like wine” than BD did.  Pink grapefruit, lavender, and even mineral notes played across a nose that was actually quite pleasant, and the wine was FAR less sweet to taste, leaving room for actual acidity to flex its muscles and liven up the palate.  It bordered on over-tart, with not quite enough fruit to balance the citric/pink lemonade flavour profile, and the (relatively low levels of) alcohol spiked a bit on the finish, but the Mateus was still legitimately refreshing.  On a patio, near a beach, in the summer, I am on board with this.  Wine of the night!!

83-84+ points

#3:  Gallo White Zinfandel — 9% alc., $7.69

I hope you soaked up all of the joy from the last paragraph, because the waters now start to get a little choppy.  White Zinfandel is such a cultural phenomenon and has been so wildly successful that a legion of casual wine drinkers likely don’t even know that Zinfandel is a red grape that produces deep, brambly, smoky wines that absolutely rock with good barbecue.  This wine has nothing at all to do with real Zinfandel.  It begins with a massive nose of candied/stewed strawberry, watermelon and red apple, as if all the red fruits in the grocery store dunked themselves in melted sugar and then jumped in the glass.  That still somehow did not quite prepare me for how shockingly sweet the wine tasted.  SO sweet, and not in a ultra-ripe-grapes sort of way, but in a somebody-added-10-tablespoons-of-white-sugar-to-the-bottle sort of way.  There was no acid to balance off the sweetness, leaving the wine tasting heavy, syrupy and flat, totally devoid of any structure.  I don’t quite have the technical skill to properly describe this, but the White Zin also tasted utterly manipulated and mechanical, like all of the constituent elements of the wine were mixed together after the fact, leaving everything seeming slightly off and disjointed.  When we came back to this wine a half hour after first pouring it, it had completely disintegrated:  the red fruit candy nose was totally gone, replaced by a one-note aroma that smelled EXACTLY like an old opened box of raisins, and all trace of flavour had disappeared.  It had became a White Zin zombie, immediately destablized outside of the bottle.  Without question, this was the worst wine of the night, and it was probably in the top 5 worst wines I’ve ever had.  I was longing for the Baby Duck after this one.

72-74 points

Intermission:  Rose Swamp Water

Yes, we mixed the three roses together…can you blame us?  We called the resulting concoction Baby Galeus, and it was quite horrible.

#4:  2011 Black Tower Rivaner — 9.5% alc., $9.50

If you know me at all from a wine perspective, you know that I LOVE German wine.  But unless you know German wine from a wine perspective, you might think this bottle is its whole story.  Along with Blue Nun, Black Tower is a colossus in the German wine industry, churning out primarily inexpensive medium-sweet whites that have gained massive levels of popularity over the past few decades.  Unfortunately, the blowback to this success on the lower end of the industry was that people painted the whole of the industry with the same brush, leaving the utterly stunning single-vineyard Rieslings that are the apex of Germany’s wine production tarnished by association.  This is hardly Black Tower’s fault — it’s just trying to make enjoyable wine for less than $10.  But I did carry some leftover German Riesling persecution complex into this set of wines, so be prepared.

This bottle of Black Tower (the most common one on the market, I believe) is not Riesling, but Rivaner, another name for the workhorse German grape Muller-Thurgau, a solid but non-prolific crossing of Riesling and the obscure varietal Madeleine Royale.  As an aside, there was a time when German enologists were obsessed about crossing Riesling with other grapes to create a mystical super-grape that combined Riesling’s remarkable aromas and flavours with characteristics like earlier ripening and increased heartiness.  It never totally worked.  That time has thankfully (largely) passed, but not before Muller-Thurgau ran rampant in Germany.  It was the country’s most planted grape in the 1970s and is still in the top three today.  It is used mainly to make straightforward table wines like this one, which had the unfortunate characteristic of smelling like feet when it came out of the bottle.  There was a cheesy sort of locker room funk about the Black Tower that blew off slightly with time, but some of it remained throughout, giving a tinge of sweat to the fairly faint notes of citrus and green apple that joined it.  There was a slightly fermented/miso flavour to the palate, which basically replicated the flavours of the nose but added a dose of sugar on top of them (sweet feet?).  I think there’s a strong possibility that something was off with this particular bottle, but it was not a good scene.

76-78 points

#5:  2011 Blue Nun Riesling — 11% alc., $10.99

If Black Tower is the king of mass-produced cheap German wine, Blue Nun is undoubtedly the queen.  Sadly, this is not the base-level $9 blended-white Blue Nun with which you would be most familiar — that particular offering (in its telltale blue bottle) was obviously in high demand when I went to grab these bottles and was sold out.  As a result, I was forced to splurge and buy the higher-end, single-varietal Reserve version of Blue Nun, a Riesling from the Rheinhessen region of Germany that won the title of priciest wine of the night.  Maybe it was the extra $2 on the price tag, but it smelled a whole lot better than its Teutonic running mate above — the slightly muted but tropical nose gave off hints of coconut, banana, pineapple and sweet macaroons, not a variety of aromas commonly associated with Riesling, but certainly not offensive either.  And on the first sip, I was delighted to discover that it actually sort of tasted like Riesling, with creamy (almost fuzzy even) lemon and apple notes, actual acidity and a slightly soapy but non-disgusting finish.  It faded as the night went on but still was recognizably real wine; I’m not sure if the original Nun would have fared as well, but I’ll take it.

A brief public service announcement for those reading this who have gone into their local Superstore liquor store to pick up a Black Tower or a Blue Nun recently:  if you look a little up and a little to the right from where these bottles are located, you should see the Dr. L Riesling (white label) and the Urban Riesling from St. Urbans-hof (black label, copper writing).  Both cost $12-$13, and both are dynamite entry-level Rieslings from some of Germany’s absolute best producers.  They cost TWO DOLLARS MORE than these April Fools’ wines but offer up so much more of the skill and precision and joy that German Rieslings should bring to your table.  They will change your view of German wine.  Try them.

82-83- points

#6:  Naked Grape Luscious Red  (N.V.) — 12.5% alc., $6.50

I bought this bottle partly because it represents the New World Order of cheap uber-brands and partly because it was the cheapest bottle of red wine I could find in the store.  Naked Grape is a Canadian company, but before you get too excited about representing your home and native land, take a look at the magic words on the back label:  ”Cellared in Canada from Imported & Domestic Wines”.  This means that, instead of being made from grapes grown in Canada, this Luscious Red was made from pre-made jug wine shipped to Canada in giant tankers from Australia or Chile or some other cheap wine haven, seasoned with a dash of Canadian juice, bottled and sold.  Naked Grape is known for not oak-aging any of its wines, ostensibly so that the natural flavours of the grape can shine through, but more likely because oak is expensive, and if you spend money on it you can’t come up with a bottle of red in Canada that sells for $6.50.

I tried and failed to find out what the actual blend of grapes were in the Luscious Red, and there’s no real way to guess from the wine itself.  The strongly chemical nose smelled mostly artificial and gave off sweet, hollow aromas of cherry and permanent marker.  The thing most immediately apparent on the palate was that there was a sizeable amount of sugar left in/added to the wine, making it quite noticeably sweet for a “dry” red table wine; this use of residual sugar is the same approach that has made Apothic Red the top-selling wine in the US, but Apothic clearly starts with superior source material and does the job way better than this.  The Luscious mouthfeel seems almost TOO smooth, and the wine is glycerol-coated and unbalanced, with the burst of sweetness hitting first and the rest of the wine feeling limp, flat and waxy.  All of the components of the wine are compartmentalized and come to prominence at different times, the hallmark of a excessively manipulated wine (see the Gallo above — it was the exactly the same phenomenon).  Everything in this bottle is out of whack and false; quite simply, this is not what real wine tastes like.  It also gave both of us immediate heartburn upon swallowing.  It was just so bad.

74-76 points

Finale:  Luscious German Mix

Since we blended the first three wines together, we felt it only appropriate to mix the last three together as well.  The two German whites and the Luscious Red formed an all-powerful rose blend (tentative name:  Naked Black Nun), which tasted eerily like Mateus.  I have no explanation for that.

By the end of this experiment, I was feeling a bit loopy and nauseous from the sugar but much more enlightened on these ubiquitous landmark wines.  I can’t say I’ll be bringing any of them home again too soon, but I admit that it was a ton of fun to get to know them all a bit better.

My two year-old son is going to his first symphony on Sunday.  Before the matinee performance of Peter and The Wolf, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra is putting on an Instrument Petting Zoo so that kids like mine who haven’t experienced live music can see and feel for themselves the difference between an oboe and a piccolo, a trombone and a timpani.  Our city’s remarkable orchestra is constantly innovating like this, striving to make symphonic music more accessible to a broader audience, whether it’s putting on these Symphony Sundays for smaller children or lending their arsenal of talents to performances of music from video games, The Lord of the Rings, or rock and roll bands like Queen.  This fun and unpretentious vibe extends to the CPO’s fundraising efforts as well:  if you want to, you can adopt your own member of the orchestra for a year, or book a concert for your child’s elementary school.  Or, like me, you can drink.

Tuesday night kicked off the CPO’s annual Cork & Canvas Art & Wine Festival, a series of a half-dozen fantastic wine-and-food driven events taking place over the next month that forms a key part of the Orchestra’s fundraising efforts for the coming year.  Willow Park Wine & Spirits’ Bonaventure location played host to the inaugural event in the program (described in more detail below) and will also welcome music lovers to the C&C Craft Beer Night on Thursday, March 14th and to the Art of Whisky tasting the following Thursday, March 21st.  The Cork & Canvas itinerary also includes High Tea at the Palliser on the afternoon of Saturday, March 16th and a classic French luncheon at La Chaumiere on Tuesday, March 19th, and it wraps up in style on Saturday, April 6th with a Winemakers’ Dinner and Art Auction at the Petroleum Club.  Let’s just say that lovers of the finer things will have plenty to do over the next 30 days, all of it for a tremendously good cause.

I was lucky enough to help kick off the festivities at the Cork & Canvas opening Wine Tasting at Willow Park, where wine of all kinds was flowing in one of Calgary’s largest and best-stocked boutiques.We were in WP’s hugely spacious lower level, which was ringed with wine and food booths as far as the eye could see.  Restaurants (Belgo), caterers (Great Events) and a small army of importers and wine agents (Christopher Stewart, Pacific and about 15 more) were flouting their wares, and at least 200 people were milling between them, glasses outstretched, seeking out their next sample.  An array of silent auction goods were laid out in the middle of the room, from original works of art and handmade pottery to trips and vacation stays to 30 year-old bottles vintage port and aged Bordeaux.  There was even a salsa dancing demonstration, because, well, why not?  We checked our coats, grabbed our complimentary Willow Park wine glasses, and dove in.

I didn’t make it through the whole inventory in the couple hours I was there, but I probably managed to at least try about a third of it, around 20 wines.  A few stood out above the rest, all of which I was told were available at the event’s host shop:

• Juan Gil Monastrell, Spain (Christopher Stewart):  This is the wine I’ve written the most about in my young online writing career.  I’ve sung its praises in Pop & Pour, called it the ultimate comfort wine in Culinaire Magazine, given it top marks as a Secret Santa Christmas gift…let’s just say it tickles my fancy.  Bright lush dark fruit, sun-baked earth, a touch of smoke, a touch of heat, and an ultra-sophisticated all-silver label, all for $20.  Find one and buy one.
• Astrolabe Sauvignon Blanc, New Zealand (Christopher Stewart):  Christopher Stewart’s booth was on fire at this tasting.  The Astrolabe just came off making the list in Wine Spectator’s Top 100 wines of 2012 (it was #59) and was definitely more than just your standard NZSB.  Swirling flavours of candied pineapple, lychee, mango, bell pepper and mineral, racy acid structure, and a grippy, almost waxy mouthfeel make this one of the more ultra-intriguing whites I’ve had in awhile.  Plus the name sounds like a science fiction movie.  Astrolabe!
• Cooper’s Creek Riesling, New Zealand (United):  Possibly the most random pour of the night, this 5 year-old Riesling was a rarity:  you don’t see that many vines in New Zealand devoted to this awesomest of grapes.  It had a “gas station” nose — petrol, burnt rubber, wet pavement — and a dry, tart, crisp green apple and rubber elastic palate, all a ton of fun for $18.
• Gonzalez-Byass Apostoles Sherry (Grady):  I haven’t had many sherries in my life outside of WSET class, but this one was probably the weirdest, although I mean that in the best possible way.  A blend of Fino sherry (which is usually pale, tart and ultra-briny) and Pedro Ximenez sherry (which is usually dark, oxidized, sweet and nutty), this 30 year-old wine was somehow both flavour profiles at once:  a steeped-tea colour, incredibly nutty (cashews?), somewhat salty, somewhat sweet, totally perplexing on the palate.  We were told this would be amazing with a salty aperitif, and for $30 a bottle, this might be a hypothesis I’ll have to test at some point.

Other wines were less lucky, but anytime you can hold out a glass pretty much anywhere in a huge room and somebody will fill it with something different, you’re pretty much guaranteed to have a fun night.  Between the dancing, the food (duck pastrami!), the wine and the auction, it was an utterly enjoyable event in support of an even better organization.

There is nothing quite like live music. It engages you intellectually and emotionally, transports you to other worlds, and gives you a front row seat to the majesty of human brilliance.  We are incredibly fortunate to be the home of a dynamic, talented and engaging philharmonic orchestra, and too often we forget just how incredible a gift that is.  If you can, go take in a show, make a contribution, or come to a Cork & Canvas event this month — support your CPO.

There is no debate: this is a baller-looking bottle of wine.

Apologies in advance to my local Alberta readers:  this review will be almost useless to you.  I have never seen this bottle in our fair province, or on a retail store anywhere else for that matter.  I got it for Christmas a couple years ago from a cousin-in-law out in Vancouver (thanks Brad!), was immediately impressed by the rap-video blinginess of its container (the bottle must weigh 2 pounds empty) and then discovered through research that it was created as part of a unique and forward-thinking experimental line of wines by stalwart Okanagan producer Stag’s Hollow.  The Cachet wines are limited edition blends of top quality grapes which are outside of the standard SH catalog; they are made once, as a small run in a single vintage, and then never replicated again.  So while this is the 2008 vintage of Cachet No. 01, there is no 2009 or 2010 bottling — the 1500 bottles (125 cases) of this wine from that single year are all there is.  I have no idea how this is commercially workable, but I find it fascinating.  These high-end one-off blends put the power in the hands of the winemaker to express a different vision with these specialty wines every year…or at least that was the plan.  As it turns out, only two Cachets have ever been made:  this one, and the sequel Cachet No. 02 (made from Grenache, Syrah, Viognier and Marsanne) that was released around the same time.  The world is still waiting on Cachet No. 03, and I’m sort of wondering whether the concept has died before it ever really got off the ground.

Individually hand-written limited edition bottles: cool. Getting your website wrong on your own label (it’s actually cachetwines.com): not cool.

But back to Cachet No. 01.  Believe it or not, this is a Tempranillo-based blend, making it the only Canadian wine I have ever seen made using this Spanish grape.  Even better, the Tempranillo is estate-sourced, grown in a special rocky subplot on the Stag’s Hollow property called The Hollow, where the vines get extreme heat and sun in the summer but must withstand much cooler temperatures later in the growing season.  The precise blend is 40% Tempranillo, 35% Merlot, 20% Syrah and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon, and the wine is modelled after the new riper style of modern Spanish reds (as an added homage, it’s even aged in new American oak barrels sourced from the Spanish region of Navarra).  For a producer who has never previously grown Tempranillo to plant it in a new site and learn how to work with it only so that it can be used for one year in a single small-production premium wine…I’m not even sure where I’m going with this. The whole concept cuts so against the grain of how things are normally done that it’s either revolutionary or insane or both.

Entering into its fifth year of life, the inaugural rendition of Cachet was still a deep, thick purple-ruby colour, thinning out very slightly near the rim but still not showing a hint of browning.  Brambly and jammy on the nose, it exuded thick waves of candied, almost confectionary fruit (creme de cassis, raspberry liqueur) along with anise, violets and liniment/medicinal notes.  There is an impressive depth to the wine:  on both the nose and the palate, its flavours persevere without fading or changing into something lesser, a trait that not all Canadian reds share.  On the palate, the Cachet had a medium-full body, subtle and slightly powdery tannins, and straight line acidity making railroad tracks down the centre of the tongue.  Even after medium-term aging, it was still mostly primary fruit — blackberry and black cherry, with a touch of fig/raisin — lined with baking spice, a prevalent smoky oak influence and a lingering sweet note almost like angel food cake.  However, it doesn’t finish cloying and is eminently drinkable throughout.

Cork Rating: 9.1/10 (The best cork I’ve seen in awhile — longer than normal, great font, red wax, killer.

There is no way that I would ever guess this bottle comes from Canada, which in some ways is a good thing (presumably part of the reason to put so much effort into a high-end Canadian red is to establish that it can stand on its own on the world stage) and in other ways is a bad thing (there’s nothing about the bottle that specifically reflects its Okanagan roots, no strong sense of place about it).  I suppose when the raison d’être for your wine is to emulate cutting-edge Spanish Tempranillo blends halfway across the world, whatever local touch the wine might have is necessarily sacrificed to that goal.  This is one of the better non-Spanish bottles of Tempranillo that I’ve had, and it does a good job reflecting the new Spanish style (albeit without the streak of earthiness that even the most modern wines from Spain seem to possess), but in our national search for a niche in the global wine world, we may be better served by not being the cover band for traditional powerhouses.  The price tag of this bottle may also serve to detract from its marketability — $50 at the cellar door can buy you a LOT of amazing wine and is a hard price point in which to remain competitive.  I love the vision, creativity and ambition behind Cachet; I love the risk and the reach involved with pursuing it; I quite liked the wine itself; but I worry that the soul and the birthmark of Cachet No. 01 gets a little lost in translation because of how and why it was created.

88- points

$45 to $50 CDN

There’s nothing quite like listening to winemakers talk about their own wines.  You can learn a lot about a wine by reading labels, going to websites, talking to shopkeepers and (of course) reading blogs and online reviews, but nothing gets you inside the soul of a wine faster than hearing the person who created it talk about what led up to its birth.  On Valentine’s Day, a few of us were treated to this rarefied experience at Vine Arts on 1st Street and 13th Avenue SW, where Wine Boy Imports presented an interactive tasting with Piero Lanza, co-owner and winemaker at Fattoria Poggerino in Tuscany, Italy.  Lanza led us through his entire lineup of classically inspired wines and made most of us mentally pencil in a trip to central Italy at some point in the future.

Poggerino is first and foremost a family venture:  it was purchased by Piero’s grandfather in 1940, and he and his sister are the third generation of Lanzas to work on the property.  The estate is comprised of 43 hectares of land, although only 12 hectares are planted to vines (11 to Sangiovese, 1 to Merlot), with the rest largely covered in forest.  Lanza described the relatively narrow spread of the vineyards as “human-sized”, stating that he preferred to keep the operation on a scale that allowed him to personally work on all the crops and “speak to my vines”.  His passion for maintaining, preserving and expressing the essence of the land is powerfully sincere and has led Poggerino to be both organic and biodynamic in its vineyard practices.  ”This land is mine on a piece of paper, but it’s really for everybody”, Lanza explains; many of his decisions with respect to the handling of his crops paint him as a steward for future generations.  He is focused on ensuring that the soils where his vines grow are constantly teeming with life and that the grapes themselves are merely one part of a thriving ecosystem instead of a single disruptive force that creates imbalance with its surroundings.  Given Lanza’s dedication to the land, it is not surprising that his winemaking style is devoted to reflecting the unique footprint of the soil through its grapes.  He keeps any intervention in the cellar to a minimum and aims to produce wines of elegance and intensity without excess concentration, keeping them fresh and food-friendly.  In his words, “I work hard to produce simple wines.”  We were lucky enough to try 5 of them, each somewhat different from the others, but all reflecting a common origin.

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Wine #1:  2011 Poggerino “Aurora” Rosato ($20)

Available At:  New to Alberta — Coming to Vine Arts and Highlander Richmond Road Soon!

Everybody should drink more rosé — it is probably the most versatile type of wine on the market today, and the quality that is available for what is usually a rock-bottom price is stunning.  This one was more intriguing than most, because it was made in a unique way, as a blend of the juice of two batches of Sangiovese grapes picked at entirely different times.  The first batch of grapes is harvested very early, before anything else at Poggerino, and its lower degree of ripeness results in juice containing less sugar, very high acid and powerful aromatics.  This juice is joined by additional juice from the general harvest:  it is removed from the tank shortly after the grapes are pressed so that it only gets a trace of colour from the red grape skins, which has the effect of focusing and deepening the colour and flavour of the remaining red juice in the tank (a process called “saignée”, or bleeding off).  The saignée juice has more body and complexity than the early harvest juice, but in combination they really sing.  The most notable thing about this rosé was its surprisingly deep colour, a bright, vivid, purple-tinged pink that immediately grabbed our attention.  Slightly briny on the nose, it gave off tart fruit aromas of pink grapefruit and cranberry which foreshadowed the absolutely piercing acidity that jumped out on every sip.  Waves of pomegranate, citrus and strawberry rode this straight line of acid on the palate, but there was a roundness to the body that kept the Aurora easy-drinking, making it crisp yet creamy at the same time.  The surprisingly long and mineral finish on the wine showcased the craftmanship that went into its creation.  A great way to start any tasting!

88-89+ points 

Wine #2:  2011 Poggerino “Il Labirinto” Rosso ($22)

Available At:  Vine Arts, Highlander North Hill

Il Labirinto is Poggerino’s entry-level red and the first of three all-Sangiovese red wines we had in a row at the tasting.  The primary difference between it and the two Chianti Classicos that followed it in Lanza’s tasting lineup is that Il Labirinto is made exclusively from grapes grown on younger vines, all less than 15 years old.  While it is still possible to make good wine from a young vineyard, older vines tend to produce grapes with a greater sense of identity and more developed and complex flavours.  Since this wine was grown within the confines of the Chianti region and is made entirely out of Chianti-approved Sangiovese grapes, Lanza could have chosen to label Il Labirinto as a Chianti Classico as well, but he opted against it, saving that historical designation for the bottles from his more mature vineyards.  This wine was a translucent blood red colour in the glass and featured an exuberant nose of juicy cherry fruit tinged with secondary notes of sweat, earth and pickling liquid.  It exploded with cherry, blueberry and leather flavours as soon as it hit the tongue, starting out soft and plush but with more verve and structure kicking in after a beat or two.  It finished slightly sour, thanks largely to its cheek-puckering acidity (a common element to all these wines), which exposed the wine’s Old World roots the longer it stayed in your mouth.  It seemed a touch disjointed, almost like it was an entirely different wine in the first half of each sip than the second, but my glass was still empty in short order.

85-87 points

Wine #3:  2009 Poggerino Chianti Classico ($26)

Available At:  Vine Arts, Highlander (all locations), Brittania Wine Merchants, Eau Claire Wine Market

Now we move into Poggerino’s bread and butter, the Chianti Classicos that are the heart and soul of the estate (and the bulk of its production at 40,000+ bottles a year).  There is an immediate difference in how the Chianti looked and smelled as compared to its baby brother above:  it was slightly more rust-coloured, more delicate to the eye, and it had far more complexity on the nose, largely due to a series of Port-like oxidative aromas (raisin, almond, maple, burnt sugar) that were nowhere to be found in Il Labirinto.  The promise hinted at in the layered nose is realized on the palate, which was a seamless combination of equal parts fruit (sour cherry, blackberry), earth, caramel and a tomato-like herbaceousness, all in a body that was much more rounded and fleshy than many Chiantis on the market today.  Despite its generosity of texture, this Classico remained fresh and bright throughout thanks to a spine of scouring acidity and pinpoint balance.  Dollar for dollar, this was probably the bottle that delivered the most value for its price point, and it’s the one I walked out of the shop with after the tasting was over.  This is a great example of what modern Chianti should be.

89-90+ points

Wine #4:  2007 Poggerino Chianti Classico Riserva “Bugialla” ($50)

Available At:  Enoteca

The pinnacle of Lanza’s Chianti production, the Bugialla is a single-vineyard wine made from old-vine Sangiovese planted in 1973.  The vineyard, named after a church on the Poggerino grounds, yields the best fruit on the estate and thus is vinified and bottled as a separate higher-end offering. The wine is aged longer in barrel and bottle before being released (24 months in large oak barrels called tonneaux, then at least 12 months in bottle) and produced in smaller quantities, usually only about a fifth of the volume of the regular Chianti Classico.  While the Bugialla resembled the base Classico in many ways, it was still strikingly different, with a deeper, thicker, more garnet-based colour and a more potent nose that leapt out of the glass, carrying aromas of bright red fruit, smoke, a bit of a secondary funk and clear hit of glycerol-like sweetness and heat that was suggestive of higher alcohol content.  Sure enough, the bottle clocked in at 15% abv, noteworthy for a Chianti.  Lanza is a winemaker focused on retaining elegance and delicacy in his wines, so you can imagine what this bottle could have turned into in the hands of someone focused on maximizing flavour and ripeness — it could have been a booze-laden monster.  Thankfully, one taste of the Bugialla revealed that it’s the exact opposite:  although it started out plush, opulent and silky, the wine’s acid grip quickly jumped in and, with some help from its subtle but grippy tannins, kept everything balanced and in check.  The result is a pure and majestic drinking experience, luxurious but still controlled, with a regal bearing, textured fruit and an elongated mineral finish.  This would be a match made in heaven with some fresh bread and hard cheese…I would pair it up with simple food to let the wine shine.  A true joy to drink.

91-92+ points

Wine #5:  2008 Poggerino “Primamateria” ($50)

Available At:  Eau Claire Wine Market

I mentioned above that the Poggerino estate is 11 hectares of Sangiovese and 1 hectare of Merlot.  This is where the Merlot goes.  While all of the previous wines in the tasting were made exclusively of Sangiovese, this Super Tuscan-styled bottling is an equal blend of Sangiovese and Merlot, each of which are fermented separately and then placed together for 18 months of aging in small new oak barrels.  The resulting wine is the one most unlike its Poggerino brethren, stretching the boundaries of its family resemblance in search of its own unique profile.  Deeper and more purple in colour, it featured a darker nose of blackberry, plum and gingerbread spice (cloves, allspice, nutmeg) with a clean, almost soapy tinge at the edges.  While every single other Poggerino at the tasting was structured with acidity playing a more prominent role than tannin (an arrangement quite rare in red wines these days), the Primamateria placed its tannin at the forefront, rushing in on the attack and remaining aggressively in the spotlight throughout.  As compared to the two Chiantis, this blend had more dense fruit (blackberry, blueberry) but less earthiness and complexity.  It was lush, balanced, pure and packed with flavour, but in contrast to the standard-bearers for the region that we had tasted previously, it did not seem to possess the same level of “Italian-ness”, that distinctive mix of flavour, earth and soul that makes it clear that a wine could have come from nowhere else.  Great wine, but if you have $50 to spend and want to know what Poggerino is all about, I’d personally pick the Bugialla first.

88-90 points

Many thanks to Wine Boy Imports for organizing and to Vine Arts for hosting such a remarkable event, and thanks especially to Piero Lanza for making his way to our fair city to share the labours of his love with us.  After Thursday night I would not hesitate to recommend Poggerino, especially its two Chianti Classicos, as land-driven examples of what good Tuscan wine should taste like and as ambassadors for a Chianti region that is still trying to re-establish its international reputation after decades of overproduction and lax quality.  These wines are the modern state of Chianti and should not be missed.

How much of your 2012 Christmas shopping did you do online?  In my case, the answer comes perilously close to “all of it”.  No malls to brave, no parking to find, no bags to carry, just page after page of every imaginable type of gift easily accessible from the comfort of my house — it’s hard to see the downside.  The Internet has increasingly become my retail destination of choice, and over the past few years I have purchased any number of things online:  books, movies, furniture, shares, even (sort of) a dog.  But wine?  Forget about it, at least in Alberta.  While e-commerce has started to become an important part of the wine industry in the US, there has been almost a total vacuum in the local market, with no retailers offering a comprehensive online ordering platform and no other service providers stepping up to fill the void…until now.  With its formal launch earlier this month, Alberta Winestein (http://www.albertawinestein.com) is making online wine ordering a reality in our province and is seeking to bring high quality boutique products to every corner of Alberta.

The idea is a simple but powerful one:  find some way to connect the scores of wine buyers across the province to the wares of some of Calgary’s most respected and prestigious shops, to the benefit of all parties.  After a couple years of intense planning, Alberta Winestein founder and CEO Guillaume Bedard is now ready to implement his strategy to realize this goal.  ”As a consumer, it was difficult and time-consuming to know what unique products were offered in Alberta from all the best boutique retailers,” Bedard explains.  ”We dreamed of a way to ease our search while using state of the art e-commerce services.  We then realized that boutique retailers are themselves under increasing pressure from large surface retailers and are now facing greater competition than ever while trying to address a growing market demand.  That is when Alberta Winestein went from concept to reality:  a central e-commerce platform for amazing boutique retailers in order to ease the purchasing process for consumers.”

For Bedard and his 5-person AW team, this focus on partnering with independent boutiques is a choice borne of pride and passion and not a mere marketing exercise; it is immediately clear that the organization has put a great deal of thought into who has been approached to offer products under the Winestein banner.  ”Our partners make a direct contribution to the quality of life we have in Alberta.  They all work hard to seek out great suppliers and build connections with farmers and vintners from around the world to ensure that the selection of wines and food here is among the best in Canada,” says Bedard.  ”Our partners are like an extension of our family.  They make Alberta one of the best places to shop for wine in North America.”  To date, Alberta Winestein’s selection of boutique partners reads as a who’s who of longstanding independent wine retailers in Calgary:  Metrovino, J-Webb Wine Merchants, Richmond Hill Wines and Bin 905.  In addition to wine, the site also offers artisanal meats and cheeses from local stalwarts Janice Beaton Fine Cheese and CRMR At Home Specialty Market (the retail food arm of Canadian Rocky Mountain Ranch).  Each of these retail partners have strong relationships with the AW team, who have over 20 years of Calgary wine and specialty food industry experience between them.

So how does it work?  Each AW retail partner offers a rotating series of wine/food packages on the Alberta Winestein site for consumers’ purchasing pleasure.  The wine offerings currently come in two different formats:  (1) Discoveries, which are mixed six-packs of bottles swapped out monthly that are geared around a particular wine region or style (some of this month’s theme packs include African Wines, Blended Wines, Malbecs and New World Cabernets), and (2) Features, which change weekly and offer the customer a pair of 3-packs of matching or contrasting bottles (for example, “Surf ‘n’ Turf”, pairing 3 crisp seafood-friendly Chardonnays from Chablis with 3 rich and beefy reds from France’s Languedoc region, or “Syrah Showdown”, pitting 3 bottles of New World Syrah from producer Shooting Star in California against 3 bottles of Old World Syrah from Pierre Gaillard in the Rhone Valley).  On the food side, the Market page is regularly updated with new and varied meat and cheese combinations, some with included wine pairings.  The retailers themselves choose which selections will grace Alberta Winestein’s pages and offer them up to the public through the site at prices that tend to average 10% to 15% below standard retail.  When a customer makes a purchase online, the order is placed directly with the relevant boutique and Alberta Winestein does all of the behind-the-scenes coordination work to ensure that the products are gathered and shipped, all AGLC regulations are respected and the highest e-commerce security standards are maintained.

Every Thursday, all orders from the previous week are shipped for delivery directly to the customer’s door, and within a couple days after that (depending on the order destination — same-day in Calgary!), your purchased wines are in your hands and ready to drink.  Shipping is free within Calgary’s inner-city and only costs up to $12 for deliveries along the main Highway 2 corridor and other major centres; if you live in Fort Mac, Grande Prairie or rural Alberta, you’ll pay a bit more, but you can still get your hands on some killer wines that would have previously been completely inaccessible.  Even better, if you order wines/food on the site from multiple different AW retail partners, they all get combined into a single package for shipment (and a single shipping charge) rather than being sent out piecemeal.  Bedard sums it up concisely:  ”While still enjoying a competitive price for their purchases, customers gain the convenience of having amazing products delivered directly to their door from all our partners in one easy delivery.”

The upside to the retailers is clear:  they get the ability to sell their wines to a much broader market online without having to invest in operating and maintaining their own electronic purchasing system.  The access to free/cheap delivery is a huge convenience bonus to those of us in Calgary, and any opportunity to purchase high-quality artisanal wine from home is a massive boon to everyone living outside of Alberta’s two major cities, who have generally struggled for market exposure up until now.  Alberta Winestein has had a strong start and has met all of its business milestones to date, but I think they are just starting to scratch the surface of what wine e-commerce in Alberta can become.  As the site grows and people become more aware of this online purchasing avenue for wine, I can see significantly expanded product lines and fully customizable order packages as possibilities going forward, growth options that would give customers the same level of choice and buying power at their home computer as they now have walking into a wine shop.  The future is now for online wine, and there has never been a better time to be a wine consumer in Alberta.

Some of my favourite labels of all time. Classic.

If there’s anything better than a good bottle of wine, it’s a good bottle of wine that you got on sale.  While this particular bottle usually retails for around $50, I was lucky enough to grab it on special for a shade under $30, which made me ultra-excited to open it and greatly reduced my chances of being disappointed with what was inside.  Not that there was much of a chance of that, given who made it.

Luciano Sandrone is a Barolo legend.  If you were going to make an All-Star team of producers from the Piedmont region in northwest Italy, Sandrone would definitely be in the starting lineup. Ever since his first vintage in 1978, he has wowed the wine world with a slate of bottlings that are crafted in a more open, approachable manner than those made by the staunch traditionalists in the area but yet that remain elegant, complex and capable of aging and improving for a long time.  Most famous for his Barolos (Barolo is a subregion of Piedmont whose wines are made from the Nebbiolo grape), Sandrone also makes a Barbera (which is fantastic), a Dolcetto, a red blend and this Nebbiolo d’Alba.  Here’s a good rule of thumb for reading Italian wine labels:  if you see a label stating “_______ di _______” or ”_______ d’_______”, odds are that the first word in the sequence will be the name of the grape and the last word will be the area where it’s from.  ”Nebbiolo d’Alba” means “Nebbiolo from Alba”, which is the name of a Nebbiolo-growing region in Piedmont immediately adjacent to the great Barolo and the equally great Barbaresco appellations.  Since the soil and climate conditions in Nebbiolo d’Alba are similar to those in Barolo/Barbaresco, and since the same varietal is used to make the wine, Nebbiolo d’Alba can be a source of wines that give you a good sense of what Barolos and Barbarescos are all about but at a fraction of the price.

At the risk of alienating all readers by introducing even more geographical references into this review, the word “Valmaggiore” on this bottle’s label is the name of a vineyard in Vezza d’Alba, a sub-zone in the heart of Nebbiolo d’Alba, where the grapes are grown at high densities on south-facing slopes so steep that they make machine harvesting impossible.  If you’re keeping track at home, that would make Valmaggiore a sub-sub-sub-region of Piedmont (Piedmont — Nebbiolo d’Alba — Vezza d’Alba — Valmaggiore).  Who said wine was hard?

Cork Rating: 2/10 (Much less classic. More modern and less tradition needed here.)

Despite being a relatively uncommon grape (you don’t find it grown much outside of northern Italy), Nebbiolo can be one of the easier varietals to pick out of a tasting lineup due to certain very distinct features that it possesses which few other grapes share.  First, it tends to have sort of an orangey colour, even when quite young, a stark contrast to the deep purples and bright rubys of most other younger reds.  Second, although it is not full-bodied and generally feels fairly delicate on the palate, it usually has significant levels of tannin that pack a huge punch.  That combination of light, airy body and dominant tannin is rarely seen.  Finally, if you look in any wine book under “Nebbiolo”, you will likely find the flavour descriptors “tar and roses”…in my experience the tar has been hit or miss, but almost every Nebbiolo I’ve tried has had a clear floral component to its flavour profile.  Put all of these indicators together and you have a tasting roadmap that is truly unique, part of what makes this grape so alluring to so many.

The Valmaggiore followed this guide almost to the letter.  It was a medium garnet colour, partly translucent and heavily tinged orange/brick at the rim.  There was a slightly oxidized, Port-like quality to the nose to go along with the telltale floral note and other swirling aromas of dates, rust/iron, dark chocolate and chlorine, a taut, earthy mix that seemed like a nod to the region’s traditional roots.  The wine started out light and almost papery in the mouth, then slowly expanded, delicately filling the palate with dusty cherry, strawberry, black pepper, scorched earth and green olive flavours.  A heartbeat after the Nebbiolo hit my tongue, waves of massive yet deft tannin enveloped it, cut only by the wine’s surprisingly mouthwatering acidity, which steered it into a clean, tangy finish.  This would be a tremendous bottle to have with food (I’m thinking it would be fun with game meats especially), but to Sandrone’s credit, despite being a fairly young Nebbiolo, it’s still quite enjoyable on its own, a characteristic that many wines from this region would definitely not share.

This is an excellent introduction to the Nebbiolo grape and the Piedmont area from a master of the region, and though it’s far from cheap, it’s still a non-wallet-crushing way to see if this is a style of wine that speaks to you before you launch into your Barolo-buying career.  While I’m not sure if I’m a full-fledged Nebbiolo disciple, this one carefully succeeds at the difficult task of putting a modern face on a traditional soul without ruining both; you can see that high-wire act with every sip, which alone justifies the purchase of the bottle.

88 points

$45 to $50 CDN

This must be tasted to be believed. Just give yourself a couple days.

Back!!

Almost a calendar month from my last real post, things have finally returned to some semblance of normalcy in my household and all family cold and flu issues are mostly a thing of the past, leaving me free to kick back with a (highly intriguing) glass of wine and blog to my heart’s content. Luckily for me, PnP’s revival from the ashes of neglect comes in the form of a review of a bottle that I could write about for days, a wine that you can buy here for less than $30 and which has been constantly opening and evolving since I opened it over a day ago. I’ve tasted it over many hours and still can’t entirely figure out how to put it into words, but here goes.

Venus La Universal is one of many vinous projects currently being undertaken by Sara Perez, who is considered by many to be the most important female winemaker in Spain. Her roots in wine are familial: when she was young her parents moved the family from Barcelona to the nearby (and now-renowned) area of Priorat, located due west of the city in northeast Spain. Her mother and father became the founders of Priorat’s School of Oenology and early contributors to the wine boom that now envelops the region. Perez’s wines are all driven by a sense of place and a deep connection to the vineyards from which they are derived. I don’t usually include quotes in my review, but this one got to me: in a 2005 interview with Luis Cepeda, Perez maintained that “[t]here has to be absolute complicity between land and winery.” The land that ultimately resulted in this wine is a 4 hectare piece of farmland found in the southern end of the oddly donut-shaped region of Montsant, which forms a complete ring encircling the bullseye of Priorat (and thus can offer wine drinkers Priorat-level taste experiences for value prices). It’s a harsh landscape featuring nutrient-poor granitic soils, high altitudes, hot days and cold nights, terraced vineyards that must be harvested by hand, and vines that have to struggle to survive. Unlike most agricultural crops, however, with grapevines this constant battle to thrive leads to deeper, stronger roots and higher-quality, more flavourful fruit, making areas such as this prized for their ability to coax the most character out of their grapes.

All of Perez’s wines are named after mythological goddesses or heroines, and this one is no exception: Dido was the founder and first queen of Carthage, according to the poet Virgil (and not, apparently, merely the name of Daedalus’ evil lynx in the old Hercules cartoon). It is made up of 75% old vine Garnacha (known outside of Spain as Grenache) and 25% non-Spanish international varietals — 10% Syrah, 8% Cabernet Sauvignon and 7% Merlot. I was separately instructed by each of the good folks at Wineboy Imports who gave me this bottle to taste the wine over time and watch it change in the glass, a lesson reinforced by the promo sheet that came with the bottle, which stated that this was a “meditative” wine that would not immediately show its true character. I am excellent at following instructions when given constant reminders, so I have tried the Dido at various times over the past 27 hours and have scribbled down the following ever-shifting account of what I found in my glass:

Cork Rating: 1.5/10 (After such a moving wine, I admit I expected more than a lonely Website Foul on the cork.)

6:30 p.m. Tuesday: Fresh out of the bottle, the wine was a deep, rich ruby colour, thick at the core but visibly lightening at the edges. The nose was enough to make me do a double-take: distinctly earthy, with an almost cheesy funkiness and a medicinal sharpness (iodine?) swirling up out of the glass along with an acrid, scorched aroma like burnt rubber, car tires or brimstone. There was no real fruit to be found, only frenetic secondary notes. Massive but textured tannins swarmed the palate from the start to the finish of every sip, but peeking through this wall of structure was luscious pinpoint acidity and a vague hint of red fruit, earth and spice. The Dido was only medium-bodied, but it still came across as a huge beast of a wine just starting to uncoil itself. It became immediately more approachable with food, which helped relax the Dido’s tannic grip and released bright flavours of cherry and violets.

7:00 p.m.: I don’t often associate minerality with red wine, but that’s what I keep coming back to, a bracing stony brininess that is constantly present from sip to swallow. After a half hour in the decanter, the palate has started to become much less tightly wound, with sage, smoke, raspberry and tart pomegranate notes joining the flavour chorus and the potent charred funk starting to dissipate from the nose.

8:15 p.m.: Add smoked meat and bakers’ chocolate to the rolodex of aromas. Even though the Dido is much more approachable now than it was two hours ago, it remains tough, spicy and rugged instead of smooth and polished, a quality that I think goes right to the soul of the wine. If it was a person it wouldn’t be a sedentary desk dweller like me: it would have a sunburned face, callused hands and a deep yearning for the outdoors.

9:00 p.m.: By now the texture has levelled out and become less jagged, but this is still an intense, untamed sort of wine. I’m saving half the bottle for Wednesday (using argon preservation, for the record, so the wine wasn’t continually exposed to oxygen overnight) but this still hadn’t finished stretching after its long slumber when I put it away for the night.

8:30 p.m. Wednesday: I poured the wine again as of 6:00 on Wednesday, so by now it has had an additional two and a half hours in the open air (5+ decanting hours total). It is certainly light years different from where it started, with darker, deeper, more pervasive fruit (now more black than red) and a more inviting, expressive palate. I could almost call it lush and silky, but not quite: it still retains some of its inherent wildness that was on full display last night, and it continues to maintain a strong mineral spine throughout. The tannins have relaxed substantially, and the Dido’s inner beauty is starting to peek through, but to me this wine is just beginning its journey. It’s a velvet fist in an iron glove, the converse of the old saying, and I think if you hung onto it a little longer it would have many more secrets to tell.

I decided to include Sara Perez’s “absolute complicity” quote above because I have rarely seen a wine that so purely exemplifies the land in which it was born. Drinking this bottle constantly conjures up images of harsh, almost desolate, rocky landscapes, blazing sun, and hilly, dusty soils that just barely offer up enough to keep you going for another day. I have never been to Montsant, and yet I feel like I have. I can see it so clearly. And when a wine can make that happen, there is no doubt that it is special.

90 points

$25 to $30 CDN

You almost certainly don’t need me to remind you that it’s December 17th.  By some true Christmas miracle, I managed to finish both my shopping AND my wrapping this past weekend, easily setting a new XMas Efficiency Standard for myself.  But if you happen to be using the eight days between now and the 25th to scramble madly around looking for last-minute gifts, fear not, because I can help you with two simple words:  buy wine.  Shopping = finished.  Everybody likes receiving a gift they can drink, and even if they aren’t sure about the wine you pick out on the first sip, by the fifth glass I guarantee they’ll be all over it.  Alternatively, if you don’t quite feel up to the pressure of picking out that perfect bottle for the people you love, you can do the next best thing and buy them a book that tells them what that perfect bottle might be.  Shelley Boettcher’s slightly pre-emptive 2013 edition of Uncorked! is one such book that is focused on finding that rarest of beasts:  good cheap wine.  All of its recommendations clock in at $25 or less retail.  It is also the only such wine guide that I have seen which is geared entirely to the Alberta market instead of to American or European audiences, each of whom have a remarkably different selection of vino to choose from than we do here.  If you live in the province, you should be able to find at least some of these wines at a shop near you; if you live in Calgary or Edmonton, you should have access to almost all of them.

This is the second edition of Uncorked!, the sequel to the inaugural edition of the book which was released in 2010.  Boettcher is in a unique position to put together a “Best Wines Under $25″ list:  as the executive editor of Wine Access magazine, she has access to the yearly releases of most of the major producers worldwide.  She tasted a large number of bottlings before whittling down the list to the 125-odd wines that made the final cut, a few of which were holdovers from the 2010 guide but the bulk of which were new.  The book is written in a light, casual tone and geared towards casual drinkers and relative wine novices, steering clear of overtly technical terminology and giving general impressions and information about each bottle without lingering on vintage data or production details.  It’s a user-friendly recommendation guide rather than an educational text, but if you’ve ever stepped into a wine store and felt totally lost, it could be a great starting point for your vinous journey.

The wines of Uncorked! are sorted by colour and then by country, with each review featuring the basic details of the wine (name, grapes, region, vintage, price), a short description of what it’s all about and what to expect from it, and then sidebars containing trivia about the bottle in question, recommended food pairings and suggestions of suitable drinking occasions.  Every bottle is concisely summarized on a single page, which also includes (highly useful) pictures of each label to help you find the bottle in your local shop.  Boettcher goes out of her way to include a number of Canadian wines in her value list, but the entire wine world is represented in the book, from France and Italy to Israel and Georgia (more on that last one shortly).  I certainly haven’t tried all of the bottles that Boettcher recommends, but I can wholeheartedly agree with a few of her choices, listed below in order of their appearance in the book:

1. 19 Crimes Shiraz/Durif (red, Australia):  As mentioned in my own review of this bottle, I enjoy the label design, adore the corks and admire the restraint of this bottle, which combines exuberant Aussie fruit with impressive structure and surprising elegance for a sub-$20 wine.  Collect all 19 crimes listed on the corks!
2. Waterbrook Melange Noir (red, Washington):  Washington State makes incredible red wine, but rarely does it come cheap.  Waterbrook pulls off that economic feat here, packing a bottle that you can find for $15 with tons of smooth dense flavour (not to mention 16 different grape varieties!).
3. Rabl Spiegel Gruner Veltliner (white, Austria):  If you’re leery about venturing into the unknown world of grapes with strange names like “Gruner Veltliner”, consider this:  my friends served this Rabl as the lone white wine option at their wedding of 150+ people and it was a massive hit.  A fun and funky glass of wine.
4. Pheasant’s Tears Rkatsiteli (white, Georgia):  This wine will warp your mind.  From the old Soviet state of Georgia, made from a grape (Rkatsiteli) that I don’t dare try to pronounce, fermented and aged in giant beeswax-lined cement eggs buried underground, this tastes like nothing you have ever come across before, part parchment paper, part nectar, all soul-alteringly weird.  You owe it to yourself to try it, just once.  And when you have, move up to its big brother in loopiness, the Pheasant’s Tears Kisi.

My lone source of disappointment from this book was that it did not include my personal King and Queen of Alberta value wines, the bottles that I have turned to religiously for the past few years for dynamite quality at an amazing price.  Of course, all palates are different, and Alberta has so many stellar wine options that they can’t all be shoehorned into a book this size.  But if you go to stuff someone’s stocking with Uncorked! next week, you may want to add a sticky note inside with the names of two additional bottles:  Juan Gil Silver Label Monastrell (red, Spain) and Kung Fu Girl Riesling (white, Washington).  I have waxed poetic about each multiple times, on Pop & Pour and elsewhere, but briefly, Juan Gil is the epitome of Spanish value wine, a glorious mix of juicy red cherry, sun-baked earth, smoky spice and pleasantly warming alcohol in a sub-$25 package, while Kung Fu Girl is a warning that cartoon labels can be deceiving, as its playful exterior hides a seriously impressive wine with searing acidity, a beautiful balance between sweet and sour and pristine minerality for under $20.  If you have a favourite value wine, I’d love to hear about it — just like Boettcher’s book aims to show, sometimes knowledge is the greatest wine gift of all.  Merry Christmas everyone!!

Just a classic-looking bottle of wine. And don’t overlook the awesome ceiling fresco on the neck capsule!

Wine lovers owe monks more than you might expect.  For centuries in Europe, it was these members of religious orders who cultivated and maintained vast tracts of vineyard land owned by the church and who advanced the world’s knowledge of viticulture and winemaking.  Legendary wine regions like Burgundy in France were first classified and sub-divided into distinct terroirs by the monks, who analyzed soils and slopes and charted the subtle similarities and differences discovered and their effect on the grapes that were grown in each location.  But that’s all ancient history, right?  Not so fast.  On the banks of the Danube River in Austria there is a Benedictine monastery that is almost a millennium old which has been making wine for 300 years and which still owns and is involved in managing wine production today.  This piece of living history is Stift Goettweig, founded in 1083 and home to a contemplative order of Roman Catholic monks bound to vows of solitude and meditation who have been producing wine on the property since 1730.  In 2006, the monastery leased its 26 hectares of vineyards to a small group of investors (a group that includes some of those running the monastery itself) who are dedicated to making high-quality white wines from grapes grown in the hallowed soil, particularly from Austria’s signature grape, Gruner Veltliner.

If there was an all-underrated team for wine countries, Austria would probably be the captain.  Ever since the nation was plagued with a tainted wine scandal in the 1980s (when it was discovered that some bulk producers were spiking their wines with diethylene glycol, a component found in some brands of antifreeze, in order to make the wines seem richer and more full-bodied), it has undergone a quality revolution backed by some of the strictest wine laws in the world.  Austria is now best known for Gruner Veltliner, a white grape that makes tremendous yet somewhat eccentric wines that manage to combine tropical, chemical, herbaceous and spicy qualities in a truly singular package.  Gruner is the only white wine that I know of that can be successfully paired with both an arugula salad and a rare steak, and it is a drinking experience like no other.

Stelvin Rating: 9.5/10 (Not only is there ceiling art on the screwtop, it’s decked out in colour and flair from top to bottom. Bravo, monks. Bravo.)

This particular Gruner Veltliner is called “Messwein”, which translates to “altar wine” or “mass wine”.  It is a long-time institution of the monastery, the lightest, cleanest, least alcoholic (12% abv) of Stift Goettweig’s lineup of wines, meant to be fresh and easy to drink.  It’s sort of a Gruner-lite, a good introduction to the unique flavour profile that Veltliner brings to the table.  It also retails for $15 or so, making it an inexpensive window into a winemaking nation that desperately deserves some more exposure.  I personally am a huge fan of the look of the bottle, which brilliantly pairs a historical sense of Gothic/Germanic tradition with clean, modern, minimalist design…and I would be remiss not to mention that the screwtop and neck capsule for the Messwein showcase a cylindrical rendition of a famous painted ceiling fresco located inside the monastery!  I’m always ragging on producers to get serious about the artistic value of their corks, and here’s a bunch of monks putting ACTUAL art on their closures, thus showing everyone how it’s done.  Listen to the monks, everybody.

The Messwein was a very pale lemon-green colour in the glass, totally transparent, with a vivacious, sharply mineral nose that immediately commanded attention.  Bath salts and celery gave way to quirky fruity aromas of banana and baked apple, all tinged with almost plastic varnish notes and hints of white pepper.  As advertised, it was light and clean on the palate, featuring fairly gentle levels of medium acidity and a delicate mouthfeel.  The first thing I tasted was a sort of rubber/elastic band flavour that I always associate with Gruner, followed by red apple (and the slightly bitter, papery taste of the apple’s skin), spice and something herbal or woodsy, like moss or wet leaves.  The minerality that started off the nose finishes off the palate, leaving the taste buds scoured clean and primed for the next sip.

If you have not yet had the fortune of being introduced to Gruner Veltliner, some of the flavours above may strike you as a bit weird, but believe me when I say that (1) in combination they’re actually both enjoyable and strangely fascinating, and (2) this particular Gruner was nowhere near as overtly wacky as some of them are, which can be good or bad depending on your feelings for this grape (and for wackiness…I happen to quite like both).  Still, the Messwein was both a pleasurable and a versatile drinking experience — I had it on back-to-back days, first with chicken caesar salad and then with pizza, and it somehow didn’t seem out of place either time.  It’s something I’d drink in church anytime.

86 points

$15 to $20 CDN