Wine Review: 2009 Eroica Riesling

17 10 2011

Named after the Beethoven song, not the Madonna song...get your head out of the gutter.

In the car on the way back to Calgary from Edmonton yesterday, we decided to have Chinese food for dinner.  The problem:  I didn’t have any off-dry everyday-drinking Riesling (my pairing of choice for basically any Asian/Indian cuisine) in my cellar.  The solution:  a quick side trip to Costco in Red Deer to stock up.  Avid readers of this blog with photographic memories may remember the luck I had at the Costco in Grande Prairie earlier this summer; I’m not sure if visiting small-city Alberta Costco liquor stores now qualifies as an official PnP theme, but I can guarantee anyone from Red Deer that they’re not finding better wine at better prices anywhere else.  I was fully ready to walk out with a $17 German Riesling when I was stopped in my tracks by this wine, which I’ve had before in prior vintages, but which I’d never seen on sale for less than $40.  At Costco, in Red Deer:  $27.  Sold. Read the rest of this entry »


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Happy Thanksgiving!!

10 10 2011

To everyone out there in the PnP universe who has followed and supported this blog, whether or not you’re from north of the 49th parallel, I just wanted to take a quick minute tonight to wish you all a very happy Canadian Thanksgiving.  Apologies for the lack of posts this weekend, but we hosted this year’s family Turkey Day feast, which meant that most of the past three days has been spent either in the grocery store or the kitchen.  I’m happy to report that the meal turned out great — and if you’re wondering, I paired our brined, spice-rubbed and BBQ-rotisseried turkey with both a Ridge Geyserville Zinfandel from California and a Tantalus Old Vines Riesling from the Okanagan…both were top-notch wines, but I think the Zin was a surprise winner of the top pairing prize.  Pop & Pour should be back churning out content in a couple of days:  tomorrow night is the great wine & chocolate taste-off, where we will try to answer the question posed last week about what wines pair best with chocolate, so look for that write-up mid-week.  Cheers!


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Wine Review: 2007 Peccatore Douro Reserva

6 10 2011

Can you see the difference? Price is the difference. Though the ultra-cheap faux foil on the neck was still a bit disappointing.

I’ll try to be (more) brief tonight than I have been recently — quite a few posts over the last couple weeks have eclipsed the 1000 word mark.  To cut to the chase, tonight’s wine costs $13 and doesn’t suck.  Thanks to my (sizeable) tuition bill for the WSET Advanced class starting at the end of the month, I’ve cut back my wine budget substantially over the past few months and as a result have been on the lookout for inexpensive wines that still deliver.  There may not be a better place in the world for these bargains than Portugal, which is cultivating a reputation for solid, easily drinkable dry reds at value prices.  You may have some initial reticence to delve into the Portuguese wine market, largely because it’s based around a large number of indigenous grapes that no one outside of Lisbon has ever heard of, but if you embrace your fear of the unknown, accept that your $15 Portuguese red won’t be made out of Cabernet and just drink it for what it is, you WILL be very pleasantly surprised. Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2010 Dirty Laundry “Madam’s Vines” Gewurztraminer

16 09 2011

The folks at Dirty Laundry are marketing geniuses.

I love the sign at the bottom right that says "Scenic Outlook: That Way". "Really?! Where?"

They have their own unique story — namely, that the current site of the winery used to be home to a laundromat that illicitly doubled as a brothel during the Gold Rush era — and they stick to it with rigorous discipline in absolutely everything they do, from their wine names to their label art, winery decor to gift shop souvenirs (yes, there’s a gift shop).  All of their production and sales efforts are relentlessly to brand, and the secretly naughty tale of the brand generates a lot of interest; before my recent trip to the Okanagan, DL was one of the places I was told I absolutely had to see.  So one day we ventured out to Summerland, a half hour southwest of Kelowna, and drove up (and up, and up) a series of winding backcountry roads until we found it, high up in the hills above the town overlooking the Lake.  We were treated to a thoroughly modern tasting room, with a brand new gorgeous outdoor patio (complete with giant clothespins and lingerie gently swaying in the breeze) and an amazing view of the surrounding area.  However, amidst all the winks to its shady past and seamless self-promotion, Dirty Laundry got slack about one thing:  the wine. Read the rest of this entry »


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New Address!

25 04 2011

As of tonight, I am officially legit:  I have ditched the blogtacular domain name, shelled out $24 and registered the shiny new web address for Pop & Pour:

www.popandpour.ca

The old WordPress site address should still continue to work, but when you have the best the Canadian Internet Registration Authority has to offer at your fingertips, why live in the past?  Update your records, tell your friends, and be sure to check out the new (but in all other respects totally the same) popandpour.ca tomorrow for another wine review.  Hint:  tomorrow’s wine (half of which I had tonight) is one of the few bottles whose picture has been featured in a PnP article without me actually opening and drinking it…until now.

Time to go sign up $24 worth of advertising!


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