Wine Review: 2008 CARM Douro Reserva

8 07 2011

Know what the problem with most wine labels is? Not enough turquoise.

Most people are probably acquainted with Port, the fortified sweet wine from northern Portugal that has never met a blue cheese platter or a dark chocolate dessert it didn’t like.  Port is made by partly fortifying a blend of indigenous grapes from Portugal’s Douro region, but interrupting the fermentation before all of the grapes’ sugar is converted into alcohol by adding concentrated grape spirits to the mix.  These spirits vault the booze level over 20%, which kills off the yeast driving the fermentation and leaves some residual sugar in the finished product:  a half-fermented, spiked, naturally sweet wine.  What would happen if this fortification process wasn’t interrupted and the yeast wasn’t killed off before it turned all the grape sugar into alcohol?  Dry Douro table wines like this would happen.  Not all of grapes in this region are pre-destined for Port production anymore; an increasing proportion of them are cultivated in the steep terraced vineyards along the banks of the Douro River strictly for non-dessert wines.  These wines are fascinating to try, because although it is only production and aging methods that separate them from their sweeter, more famous counterparts (which are made from the same grapes grown in the same areas), they show a completely different side of Portugal in the glass. Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2010 Jorge Ordonez Botani Moscatel Seco

6 07 2011

Summer is finally, briefly here -- I have just the wine.

It’s wines like this that make a good local wine shop (or a friendly neighbourhood blog) so important.  Apart from an atypically stylish label, this wine has nothing going for it that would normally make you pick it up off the shelf:  it’s not bargain-basement cheap (usual retail is $25ish), it comes from a completely obscure region (Sierras de Malaga) in a country (Spain) that is not at all known for its white wines, and it’s made from a grape (Moscatel Seco, otherwise known as dry Muscat) that doesn’t exactly have Chardonnay-esque market appeal.  Why have a $25 Muscat from southern Spain when you can stick to Wolf Blass and Kim Crawford and avoid risking that kind of cash on the unknown?  Because it’s freaking awesome, that’s why.  Thanks to a good wine store initially talking me into taking the plunge, I’ve now tracked down Botani in three successive new vintages, possibly the longest streak in my brief wine-collecting career, and if I can encourage some of you to be similarly adventurous then this blog will be worth its while. Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2005 Andrew Rich “Les Vignes En Face” Syrah

4 07 2011

What a difference a day makes.  I first cracked this wine last night and was sort of ambivalent about it, despite the fact that it represented my current ideal red wine region and grape (Washington State Syrah); as a result, I was fully gearing up to write a “nice try, but…” 85-86 point review tonight.  But then I had the rest of the bottle tonight and everything changed:  the rough and rustic edges had softened, the fruit was better balanced, and every component of the bottle was suddenly in harmony.  How cool is wine, that 24 hours in the fridge can make that transformative a difference?

Ridiculous name, but give it time...it'll grow on you.

Let’s back up.  I was tremendously excited to try this wine because it was simultaneously recommended to me by both my favourite Calgary wine shops (Ferocious Grape and Highlander Wine & Spirits) and because it was a good-quality Washington State Syrah for under $30, not a common combination.  The grapes for Les Vignes En Face came from two of the better Syrah vineyards in all of Washington, Ciel du Cheval (the vineyard that spawned my poor cork-ruined Andrew Will wine a few weeks ago) and Klipsun.  Even better, it was a 2005, so it had already had some time to settle down in the bottle before making its way into my greedy hands.  The only downside was its unfortunately pretentious faux-French name, which as far as I can tell roughly translates to “The Vines In Front” (note to producers:  if you’re not in France, don’t name your wines French names), but questionable nomenclature notwithstanding, I still had high hopes. Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2006 Therapy Vineyards Superego

1 07 2011

A+ label art -- even cooler up close, AND appropriate Canada Day colouring.

Happy Canada Day, everyone!  I would have been remiss if I didn’t focus on a wine from my home and native land tonight, but that proved to be more of a challenge than I thought, as my cellar’s currently a little thin on the Canada front — out of the 90-odd bottles that I keep stored in an army of wine fridges in my basement, only two of them are from Canada.  One of them is a $15 Niagara Cabernet Sauvignon that I’m a little scared to open, and the other one is this bottle.  Fearing the patriotic retribution that might ensue if I rated a cheap Canadian wine 65 points on Canada Day, I instead went with this bottle, the 2006 Superego from Therapy Vineyards in the Okanagan Valley.  You may know Therapy from their ink-blot labels and punny wine names (Freudian Sip white blend, Pink Freud rosé, etc.); the Superego is their top red bottling, made from top quality grapes using stringent processes to be Therapy’s flagship wine.  As you can see in the picture to the left, it comes in an absolutely spectacular-looking bottle that rivals Chile’s Montes Folly Syrah as my favourite wine label art of all time.  I got this particular bottle from a fellow wine lover and a Therapy devotee (thanks Allison!) and have been holding it for the right occasion.  Happy 144th, Canada — tonight I pop and pour for you! Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2006 Trimbach Pinot Gris Reserve

29 06 2011

Long time no PnP!  Sorry about that — I was away on the weekend and discovered both at the time and after coming back that trip-related schedule lulls are multiplied tenfold when babies are involved.  However, I am now back in the saddle and again devoted to reducing my cellar one bottle at a time.  Tonight’s wine seemed like a promising combination:  a region (Alsace, France), producer (Trimbach) and varietal (Pinot Gris) that I love, all at a bargain price (I think this bottle was $17).  Too good to be true?  Oh yes.

"Reserve" is the wine equivalent of "part of a nutritious breakfast".

For those of you wondering if Pinot Gris has any relation to Pinot Grigio, the Italian white that I reviewed a few wines ago, they’re actually the exact same grape, although they usually manifest themselves in the bottle in very different ways.  Pinot Grigio is grown and made to be light, crisp, refreshing and neutral-tasting, whereas Pinot Gris is much fuller, lusher, riper and more flavourful.  If you taste classic examples of the two back to back, you wouldn’t believe they were the same grape.  Pinot Grigio’s home is northeast Italy, while Pinot Gris is best known from Alsace, where it is one of four “noble grapes” allowed to be in the region’s top Grand Cru wines (the others, if you’re curious, are Riesling, Gewurztraminer and Muscat).  I personally prefer the Gris to the Grigio, as I find it more interesting and think it has much more personality in the glass.  Even better, like many Alsatian wines, it can be a value:  I’ve seen Grand Cru Pinot Gris on sale for less than $30 a bottle.  It’s also consumer-friendly, because all Alsatian wines actually list the grape on the bottle label, unlike the wines from almost every other spot in France. Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2007 Edward Sellers Syrah

23 06 2011

Better than a fancier, more expensive version of itself -- awesome!

Apologies in advance for the short-form review, but I haven’t gotten to the computer until now and I’m heading out of town tomorrow for the weekend, so faced with the Sophie’s Choice of not posting at all for almost a week or posting a lame point form review, I went with lameness over absenteeism.  This Syrah from the Paso Robles region (which is between San Jose and LA in southwest California) is mainly interesting because it’s the cheaper, less fancy, less package-focused (screwcap here vs. cork on the other bottle) version of the Edward Sellers “Le Thief”, which I reviewed way back in the infancy of PnP.  Granted, the Le Thief was a Syrah-based blend, and this is pure Syrah, but I got the impression that the Le Thief, pretentious name and all, was set up as a higher-end offering, while this Syrah was more the base model.  All of this is only important because I think this Syrah is a way better wine.  Condensed review…go! Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2008 Rocca Delle Macie Confini Chianti DOCG

20 06 2011

Before I get into tonight’s wine, if you read my review of the 2007 Amavi Cellars Syrah from Friday, you’ll know that I was musing about why the 2005 Amavi Syrah tasted so different from the 2007 when so many of the variables going into it were the same, and I vowed to take to Twitter to get some answers right from the source.  Lo and behold, the Information Age is a wonderful place to be, and the good people at Amavi have posted a tremendous and thorough response to my Syrah-related queries in the comments section of the review.  So to recap, I had a bottle of wine in Calgary and then posted a blog article and a Twitter question, and then someone in Washington State who I’ve never met went and personally asked the head winemaker at Amavi Cellars what the difference was between his 2005 and 2007 Syrahs!!  There is very little cooler than that.  Thanks Amavi!

Warning: drink with food or face the consequences.

I wish I could say that tonight’s bottle has spawned Amavi levels of inquisitiveness and interest, but not quite.  I’ll get to that in a moment.  Chianti is a well-known wine region located in Tuscany, in west-central Italy, that has seen its share of ups and downs in recent decades.  Once regarded as one of the cream of the crop of Italian vinicultural areas, it then became the victim of shoddy production and overplanting and lost its reputation for quality, which it is only now starting to regain.  The problem with Chianti is that a lot of it is still pretty bland, although some of the higher-end renditions from the Chianti Classico region (the historic heartland of Chianti, which forms a smaller sub-zone within the larger area of Chianti) definitely can make you stop and take notice.  The main thing you need to know about wines labelled as Chianti is that they will be predominantly made using the Sangiovese grape, a varietal that shows best in Tuscany and isn’t usually seen that much elsewhere (though it WAS in the 2009 Abbot’s Table from Washington State, if you’ll recall…I doubt you’ll recall). Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2007 Mercer Columbia Valley Merlot

19 06 2011

Special delivery from the tasty factory.

Right after reviewing a wine (the 2007 Amavi Syrah) that was identical to one reviewed previously but for the vintage, tonight I’m tackling a wine that’s identical to a prior review but for the grape.  I reviewed the 2007 Mercer Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvignon at the end of March, and tonight I stick with the same vintage (2007), the same producer (Mercer) and the same subregion (Columbia Valley in Washington State), but I’m subbing out one full-bodied red (Cab) for another (Merlot).  As I look back on my previous Mercer review, it strikes me how similarly these two wines have been put together; both are built to pop, pour and enjoy in the near term, with big accessible fruit and no hard edges, and both are ripe, friendly and easy to drink.  Both are also a direct shipment from the tasty factory — they’re absolutely delicous, the Merlot even more so than the Cab.  I bought this wine over the weekend from Highlander Wine & Spirits because it was crazily on sale:  half off normal retail price at $20!  It’s one of my rules in life not to turn down Washington State wine when it’s 50% off…I’m principled that way. Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2007 Amavi Cellars Syrah

17 06 2011

Yes, I drank the whole bottle before remembering to take a picture. Shoot me.

This is a Pop & Pour first:  a review of a wine that has been previously featured on this site, just in a different vintage.  I have very fond memories of the 2005 Amavi Syrah from Walla Walla Valley in Washington State, which bears the eternal distinction of being PnP’s first 90+ point wine (92 points) and which delivered layer after layer of complex, savoury, intriguing goodness when I had it back in March.  Skip forward two harvests and you get to tonight’s wine, Amavi’s 2007 rendition of the same Syrah from the same region, which I’ve been eagerly awaiting to compare to its predecessor ever since I bought the bottle.  The ’07 had big shoes to fill (I still vividly remember the ’05 three months later), but it definitely delivered, albeit in a very different way than I expected. Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2004 Rabl Kaferberg Gruner Veltliner

14 06 2011

Before we get to tonight’s wine, I should pass on that today was a red-letter day for PnP, as we got some unsolicited (but very welcome) press from one of Calgary’s top local websites, calgaryisawesome.com.  Check out the article here — it’s truly exciting to be mentioned alongside some pretty damn talented Calgarians.  Calgary Is Awesome is awesome!

Possibly the tallest bottle of wine I've ever seen. It didn't even fit in the frame!

Now, raise your hands if you’ve ever had an aged Gruner Veltliner.  If you haven’t, I’m now telling you that you owe it to yourself to try.  Gruner, as discussed in more detail in this prior post, is Austria’s signature grape, a white with a unique flavour profile that is now receiving much more mainstream attention, and for good reason.  Like many other older wines I’ve purchased recently, I got this 2004 Rabl from Aspen Wine & Spirits, which routinely puts back-vintage wine (obtained in a fire-sale purchase of the inventory of a now-defunct Calgary boutique shop awhile back) out for sale at fantastic prices.  This bottle, from a strong, well-known producer, hasn’t been on the market for 5+ years (the current vintage of this Gruner is the 2009), but was on the shelf for $22.  Crazy.  I don’t go to Aspen W&S a lot, but when I do, it’s to hunt out backdated bargains like this. Read the rest of this entry »


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Tips & Tricks: When Cork Attacks

13 06 2011

My Andrew Will, and the biggest piece of cork that refused to be separated from it.

I fully intended to write a wine review last night.  I had the wine all selected, and was even going upscale:  the 2005 Andrew Will Ciel du Cheval Vineyard red from Highlander Wine & Spirits, a $55-$65 predominantly Merlot/Cab Franc blend from one of the best producers and top vineyards in Washington State.  I had my notepad in front of me and my iPhone camera armed and ready; I popped the cork and out came…half of it.  The other half didn’t even budge from the bottom of the bottle neck.  I gently tried pulling out the stuck half with the corkscrew, but to no avail:  all I ended up doing was puncturing a good sized hole in the middle of the half-cork and causing a bunch of cork debris to fall into the wine.  Awesome.  I eventually ended up having to push the stuck cork back down into the wine, which would have been a great idea if the cork hadn’t disintegrated on its departure from the bottle neck and showered Andrew Will’s labour of love with a fine layer of wood powder.  After some salvage efforts I was able to get the wine back to a quasi-drinkable state, but decided against putting it up on PnP in case somebody questioned my tasting notes of sawdust, tree bark and firewood.

As a mournful tribute to the waste of a bottle that good (and the corresponding portion of my wine budget that went with it), I thought that tonight I’d quickly touch on what to do if you’re faced with this exact situation where your cork breaks as you’re pulling it out of the bottle.  Step one:  swear.  Even if you manage to save the day with the maneuvers described below, it’s still a giant pain that will require most of the contents of the bottle you’re trying to rescue to de-stress from. Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2008 Maison Roche de Bellene Cote de Nuits-Villages

9 06 2011

I’m pretty sure this is the first Burgundy that’s made its way onto PnP; I don’t drink a lot of it because the cheaper stuff tends to taste that way and almost all of the good stuff tends to be out of my price range.  However, I’m trying to put a little more effort into discovering the wines of that region, because top quality Burgundies are some of the most alluring, complex, memorable wines in the world.  I got a chance to try some high-end white and red Burgundy at my WSET course a couple weekends ago (a Domaine Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet [white] and a Domaine Roy Marc Gevrey-Chambertin [red], if you’re curious) and started to understand what all the fuss is about, so tonight I dug up this wine, which comes from one of the few solid value producers in the area, to continue my Burgundy initiation. Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2009 Owen Roe Abbot’s Table

7 06 2011

Great label, insane blend, great wine.

From delicate Old World white to bold New World red in the span of a day!  This wine gives new meaning to the term “red blend”: it’s comprised of (wait for it) 25% Zinfandel, 20% Sangiovese, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon, 13% Grenache, 10% Syrah, 7% Blaufrankisch, 2% Cabernet Franc, 2% Malbec and 1% Merlot.  I feel like that should add up to 250%…I can buy into the use of the first 5 grapes, but I think the last 4 are just for showing off.  Unsurprisingly, this info is left off the label, as it must prove abjectly terrifying to most consumers (including me).  The precise blend for the Abbot’s Table changes every year, and with this many grapes involved, the focus of the producer must be to create a wine that’s of a similar style and flavour profile every year rather than one that’s reflective of one or two particular varietals.  And I have to say, even if it takes nine different grapes from disparate world wine regions to make it happen, the end result is quite worthwhile. Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2007 Joh. Jos. Prum Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Kabinett

5 06 2011

I will always be attached to this wine. Pure heaven.

As I hinted at yesterday, tonight’s wine is special to me.  It’s one of my “eureka” wines, one of those rare bottles that turned my general interest in wine into a huge passion and that continues to drive me to learn, read, taste and write about wine.  If you’re wondering why German Riesling is my favourite kind of wine, this bottle can take a lot of the credit.  The first time I had it was at a casual tasting that some friends and I organized a couple years ago.  I picked the wine as a curiosity, as something new to try en route to the more expensive and exciting big reds waiting at the end of the evening.  Instead, the first sip of this Riesling stopped time and drowned out everything else.  I couldn’t tell you what any of the other wines I had that night tasted like, but I remember this one intensely.  I haven’t had it again until tonight. Read the rest of this entry »


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Wine Review: 2006 Kris Pinot Grigio Delle Venezie

2 06 2011

Every label needs a good dose of Surrealism. Look at the colour on that Pinot Grigio!

I got this wine as a gift from my awesome in-laws…thanks Alan and Margaret!  In my experience, there’s no wine that’s better than free wine.  I don’t often drink Pinot Grigio, but here’s what I know about it: (1) its most well-known renditions come from northeast Italy (as this one does); (2) it remains one of Italy’s best selling wine exports and has found a willing and thirsty audience in North America; and (3) it is the same grape as Pinot Gris, a varietal grown in Alsace (France), Oregon and Canada, among other places, although the wines from the two versions of the PG grape are almost nothing like each other.  Pinot Grigio tends to be dry, light-bodied, very pale, high in acid and neutral, crisp and refreshing, while Pinot Gris is fuller, richer, deeper in colour, more complex in flavour and used for both dry and sweeter wines.  I’ve had my fair share of Pinot Gris, but only a handful of Pinot Grigio, so tonight I broaden my horizons. Read the rest of this entry »


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