By Dan Steeves
As a loyal reader and follower of Pop & Pour for the past few years, it is a great honour to have the privilege to contribute to the blog today! I am often reminded of how great the wine community is in YYC; how generous people are, and how so many people enjoy talking, experiencing, and sharing wine with each other. Today marks my first attempt at wine blogging, and I’m hoping the community goes easy on me!
The streak of great wines continues on Day 5 of the Bricks Wine Advent Calendar with a delicious Sauvignon Blanc from Spy Valley Wines, based in the Marlborough region of New Zealand. Sauvignon Blanc is the heart of the New Zealand wine industry and the Marlborough region (located at the North end of the South Island) is where the majority of it hails from. A combination of close proximity to the ocean, protective mountain ranges, high diurnal temperature variation (temperature change between day and night), and plenty of sunlight, all provide the Marlborough vineyards a long ripening time and help preserve the flavours and acidity in the grapes. When it comes to New World SB, there is no doubt that New Zealand is at the top of the podium.
Spy Valley Wines is a relative newcomer in the wine world, choosing to cultivate land in the Waihopai and Wairau valleys of Marlborough back in 1993. The winery gets its name due to its close proximity to an actual spy base (an international satellite communications monitoring facility) and they take their clandestine efforts seriously. It may not be noticeable at first (which is the whole point) but see if you can locate and decipher the secret codes found on the bottle and closure. You won’t need an enigma machine but you might want to use this website for help.
Sleek and simple design with integrated Morse code on the label and screw cap! 🙂
Upon opening this wine and taking the first sniff, it is no secret what the wine is and where it is from. The wine has a clean nose with intense aromas of lime, grapefruit, melon, lychee, grass, and the telltale bell pepper. New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc is known for having bright and fresh citrus and tropical aromas as well as a green herbaceous side and this wine displays both, just as it should. On the palate, the wine has crisp acidity that gives a little zing on the tip of your tongue and shows flavours of lemon, lime, grapefruit pith, and green bell pepper. The wine displays a slight creamy texture, perhaps due to the 8% of the wine that is barrel fermented, but it is still light on its toes like a stealthy agent on duty.
88 points
Thanks to Bricks for introducing me to a beautiful wine. Another successful day of the Bricks Wine Advent Calendar completed!
3-isobutyl-2-methoxypyrazine – aka Pyrazines – the compound responsible for the bell pepper aroma in wines can be found in many Bordeaux wines (Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, etc.) and is detectable in very low concentrations
This is a pleasing yellow hue with a slight green tint. Nose hints at the crystalline mineral power within. I’m getting yellow apple, fresh parsley, snap peas, mango, and a potent undercurrent of musty white peppercorn. The herbs are more vibrantly green than umami in character. On the palate this is precise and linear, with acids brisk but not punishing … Although hang on, there’s some tangy lemon juice bite after a few sips. A compost bin funk, like old apple cores and lawn clippings, starts to creep in around a fundamentally solid core of green pears and apples, white peach, and lemon-lime zest resting on a chalk and wet slate base. This gentleman is dressed in a dapper suit but there’s something off, perhaps some mud on his dress shoes. Fruit? Check. Minerals? Check. Rotundone? Check. I’ve had Gruners that bounce around a lot more than this one, flopping around like a fish in a boat and always changing their look. This one is less dynamic and more cohesive and laser sharp, with just a slight halo of corruption … Not a bad thing in this case.
I first got seriously into wine about 10 years ago, when the Australia Phenomenon was in its heyday and Argentinian Malbec was just a glint in some clever investor’s eye in Mendoza. Yellow Tail Shiraz was my gateway drug, a fact that is assuredly true of more than one of you currently reading this as well. Looking back now on the Australian wine scene then, there are still tons of similarities. Critter wines, like it or not, are still a thing. On the quality pinnacle, the high-end wines from Down Under rocking people’s worlds in 2017 aren’t that different from those doing so in 2007. But I’ve noticed a couple clear differences in the imports from Australia that have evolved over the last decade: first, a welcome explosion of site-driven elegance from the cooler areas of the country, be it Pinot from Yarra or Mornington or bubbles from Tasmania or the laser purity of some of the post-modern wines coming out of the Adelaide Hills. Second, a new focus on bottles like the ones below, step-up bottlings, a shade above entry-level in price and a world above the critters in authenticity and quality. The $20-$30 tier of wines has never had stronger representation on our shelves from Australia than it does currently, as more and more producers zone in on these bottles as the best way to build a lasting relationship of trust with consumers as opposed to an $11 fling.
Ever since I first saw The Hatch’s avian-Thomas-Crown-Affair primary logo shortly after it opened a couple years ago, I have been sort of transfixed from a distance, finding both the winery and its artistic ethos strangely compelling despite knowing basically nothing about them. Based out of a rustic-modern “shack from the future” in the heights of West Kelowna and sourcing grapes from across the Okanagan and Similkameen Valleys, The Hatch initially comes across (quite intentionally) more like an artists’ collective than a commercial winery, 
The Hatch releases its wines in stylistic series, of which I had the opportunity to experience two: the mid-tier Hobo Series wines, featuring a panoply of hand-drawn labels of hobos (seriously) that risk making you cry thanks to their sheer beauty (also seriously), and the ambitious Black Swift Vineyards series wines, which collectively form an expansive single-vineyard project focused on the various facets of BC’s glorious dirt. The wine, like the winery, was never boring. 
cabernetdialectic (Raymond Lamontagne)
Dan Steeves
Peter Vetsch
tylerderksen
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