Riedel takes on the BC Wine Appreciation Society

Okay, hands up all you Riedel fans. No, I mean way, way up. That’s better. Now I’m betting every one of you is going to understand right away when I say that Frank and I have a serious

problem when it comes to Riedel. You guessed it, neither of us have enough room for our collection of wineglasses.

So we had to chuckle when the BC Wine Appreciation Society kicked off their 2010/2011 season with the famous Riedel challenge – four wines, four Riedel Vinum XL glasses, plus a Joker glasses. Wines are transferred from glass to glass to see, smell, and taste the difference, and you get to keep the four Riedels at the end. Right, like either of us need four more stems.

Still, glasses get broken, and besides, it’s always fun to see the reaction when people try this experiment for the first time. So here’s an abbreviated recap of our little romp through the evening, starting with some interesting tidbits I’d never heard before about specific glasses. Frank graciously declined to gloat since he seemed to already have all this info filed in the mental databank.

· Riedel created the Vinum XL series’ Pinot Noir glass (6416/67 and shown above left) specifically to complement Oregon’s heartbreak grape… but only after 20 years of relentless pressure from the region’s wine producers.

· The Chardonnay glass (6416/57) is also used for Montrachet and is actually the Pinot Noir glass with the upper half inch or so trimmed off.

· Cactus Club restaurants experienced a 20% increase in wine sales when they began putting Riedel’s restaurant series glasses on the table.

· The expression “here’s mud in your eye” originated when, after the decanter had been emptied, people wanted one more for the road – the final inch of wine that’s left in the bottle of pedigreed Bordeaux or other fine red and filled with sludge and sediment. Mind you, if you google the expression, you’ll find pages of other explanations from rustic to religious. Personally, I like Riedel rep Dave Sanders’ story much better.

· One deep breath in downtown Los Angeles contains more lead than you would ingest from drinking a bottle of wine decanted in a leaded crystal decanter for an entire evening.

Mission Hill (pictured right) kindly donated the wines for this evening, and the line up was impressive. First, 2009 Mission Hill Reserve Riesling in the Riesling Grand Cru glass (6416/51) –

Frank’s desert island glass. If you’re ever shipwrecked on an island with one glass and a wine cellar, this is the one to have. The wine was crisp and fresh with the anticipated delightfully petrol nose. Moved to the Joker, there was a collective gasp of surprise as this award-winning vintage turned dead on the nose, acidic on the palate, and retained not a hint of petrol. In the Chardonnay glass, it exhibited some apricot and peach, but the petrol was still missing.

Full on buttery and smooth in the correct glass, sipping the 2007 Reserve Chardonnay from the Joker glass was only marginally better than flat Perrier water, and in the Riesling glass it turned outright bitter.

By now, people around us were getting the idea, so there were fewer expressions of amazement when the big, aromatic 2005 SLC Merlot (served in the 6416/00 Cabernet Sauvignon glass

first) lost all its huge blackberry taste with beautifully integrated tannins and morphed into obscurity in both the Chardonnay and Riesling stems.

My favourite of the evening was the 2008 Reserve Pinot Noir, but not when we transferred it to the Chardonnay glass where it, too, became nondescript except for a lingering bad aftertaste. In the joker glass it was sharp and bitter the whole way. Tip from Dave: if you’re dining out and they don’t have a Pinot Noir glass, ask for a brandy snifter.

By the time the tasting was over, we’d sampled each wine from each glass. You could tell the folks who hadn’t done this experiment before, because they were the ones walking out of the hotel still shaking their heads. For us, it was just as much fun as the first time we tried it. We just had more room to store the glasses we got that first time.

The Chianti Challenge: Three Decades of Frescobaldi

Anyone who’s read Blanc de Noir for long knows we’re both huge fans of Italian wines. There’s just something about the diversity, quality, and sheer fun factor of Italian wines – whether it’s a casual summer patio sipper or a robust vintage to accompany a big, festive dinner or one of the meditative Amarones that are still way up there on our list of favourites.

So when BC Wine Appreciation Society decided to add a couple of Italian wines to an educational tasting scheduled just prior to the 2008 Playhouse International Wine Festival – the theme country for this year’s festival was, after all, Italy – Frank and our illustrious BCWAS leader, Tim Ellison, decided to add a twist to the event. How about putting up a couple of Italian wines with the usual BC vintages? Frank, however, took the concept one step farther.

Here’s the deal. From BC: three sparklers, four Pinot Grigios, two Pinot Noirs, a Cabernet Sauvignon, and a Merlot. From Italy: three Chiantis – just three and all from Frescobaldi, one of Italy’s most respected winemakers (multi-generations shown above).

Here’s the catch. The Chiantis were bottled in 2004, 1982, and 1975. No, it’s not a typo. The last two came from the collection of Italian wines Frank recently acquired – one of those fantastic opportunities that come about from being in the right place and the right time and having way more patience than most when it comes to negotiating.

Alas, on the night of the event, Frank was sick with flu, but you can bet eyes went wide as people realized what he’d sent.

The 2004 was, pretty much as expected, dark purple with lots of fruit and tannins that were more “in your face” than makes for a good sipping wine unless you’re eating. But truth is, few people spent much time with that particular wine since they were all eager to try the two older offerings.

Immediately apparent was the change in colour – now tawny with a much larger rim than the 2004. Controversy was plentiful and several people found neither one was “quite my thing” as one member put it in an attempt to be diplomatic. The level of oxidization, especially in the 1975, caused raised eyebrows among half the folks there. It was virtually unanimous that the ’82 needs to be drunk now and the ’75 is clearly a bit past its prime – although not a soul suggested it should be tossed.

However wide ranging the evening’s opinions were, one thing we all did agree on. These are wines made with love and benefit from patience.

Frank’s Tasting Notes:

Castello di Nipozzano Riserva 1982
This wine has aged well, probably because it is a Riserva. After more than a quarter of a century there’s still lots of fruit left – black cherry and dark fruits with a note of white truffles in the background. The tannins have smoothed right out so they are now a little silky, and the finish is fairly long. This wine shows just how well age can improve a Chianti. Alcohol 12.5%. All the bottles for both these wines are numbered – I have 10 left, all around 84,960 series out of 293,600 bottles produced in 1982.

Castello di Nipozzano Chianti Rufina 1975
Sadly just a little past its prime but still drinkable as the acidity has helped this one hold up. Wide orange rim, brick red colour. Truffles leave sherry undertones. This vintage has shown a lot of bottle variation – the fruit showed up a little more in this one than the first one we tried. Alcohol 12.7%. The last bottle I have left is number 74324 of 80,000 bottles produced.

An Evening with Tinhorn Creek Wines

It was the final event of the BCWAS season and one of our favourite BC winemakers was the speaker. We can always count on Tinhorn Creek’s Sandra Oldfield to inspire lively discussion and offer intriguing insights into the BC wine industry. Tonight was no exception.



But this time, Sandra had a special treat in store for us – a vertical flight of Oldfield’s Collection Merlot – five vintages from 2001 to 2004. Now in case you’re questioning the math of five vintages and only four years, here’s the twist. Two of our glasses actually contained the same wine, from the same barrel, bottled within an hour of each other. The difference? One was under cork, the other under Stelvin. Oh yes, and one wasn’t actually pure Merlot – it had a small amount of other varietals added.

That was it, the entire sum of information we were given. Go to folks. Sip away, and do your best to figure out which year was which and what two wines were the same. Within minutes, the room was buzzing with speculation.

A single sniff and Frank pegged the fifth wine as the one under cork. Across the table Leo was, quite uncharacteristically, smirking – just a wee bit. Under some “friendly pressure” from the rest of us, he finally ‘fessed up. Frank’s nose was accurate – the last wine in the flight was definitely the one under cork. He knew for sure because, as one of our dedicated volunteers, he’d poured it. However, that was the extent of our secret edge on the rest of the crowd.

So now to match the fifth Merlot with its screw capped barrel mate? Most of us agreed the first in the flight was an odd man out. Different nose entirely with a hint of white pepper. The second was leather and a bit of barnyard or straw but seemed younger than the first wine and not a pair with number five.

It was the third wine where conversation at our table began really heating up. Frank and a couple of others thought this was the bottle we were looking for. But when we hit number four, a few of us suggested this might be “the one.” Back and forth, we sniffed, swirled, and peered into the glasses comparing rims, depth of colour, and clarity, but by the time Sandra called a halt, our group was still undecided – like every other table apparently.

In a show of hands, each wine on the table got at least some votes as the wine that was from the same barrel as wine number five which Sandra finally told us was the single vintage under cork.

And the final results? Wines four and five were the pair – a 2001Merlot and the first in Canada ever to be bottled under Stelvin, even though it was only 10% of the vintage to receive this treatment. Wine three was the 2002, wine two the 2003. The first wine we tasted was the 2004 with 2% Syrah and 10% Cabernet Franc accounting for it’s unique flavour among the rest.

A long time fan of Stelvin, Sandra admitted she had chosen the biggest, toughest red for Tinhorn’s initial experiments with red under an alternative to cork because “if we could make it work with the Merlot, everything else would seem so easy.” She did, however, confess to having one, growing problem with Stelvin closures. It seems her two-year-old has already figured out how to open them, thus necessitating a lock for the wine cellar back home.

FYI: here are the whites we sampled earlier in the evening before the Great Merlot Challenge began.

Gewurztraminer 2006: $15.99
Produced from grapes picked on the Golden Mile (buds shown left), this wine exhibited the classic floral Gewurztraminer nose and was slightly off-dry thanks to its 1% residual sugar. Great patio sipper on its own or would go with Thai and Indian foods – like this should come as a surprise with a Gewurtz? One to stock for when friends drop by or it’s just time to quit for the day and kick back. (Note: this Gewurztraminer was recently awarded Gold at the Taster Guild International Wine Judging in Michigan and Silver at the Pacific Rim International Wine Competition in Orange County, California.)

Pinot Gris 2006: $15.99
This is Tinhorn Creek’s first vintage of Pinot Gris that was partially fermented in stainless steel (40%) rather than neutral oak barrels. We both felt this wine lacked the structure we’d expected. However, it would have been worthwhile to see what happened over time as the wine opened up in the glass.

Chardonnay 2005: $17.99
Making its debut right here at our BCWAS event, this wine was 29% fermented in new French oak barrels – rather than the 20% Tinhorn normally uses – with the balance in stainless steel. Not overpoweringly oaky, but since I’m just not a fan of any oak in my Chardonnay at all, I’d probably take a pass in the liquor store. Still, it exhibits the buttery texture you’d expect and would be good with all kinds of summer picnic fare.

Oldfield’s Collection 2Bench 2005: $23.00
This was a fun and just plain yummy wine. Made from 47% Semillon, 24% Chardonnay, 24% Sauvignon Blanc, and 5% Gewurztraminer, it was the evening’s only wine not from all estate-grown grapes – the Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc were brought in from Oliver. Eventually, Sandra wants this to evolve into a five-varietal wine that includes 10% Viognier picked from six, select rows in the vineyard. Green apple on the nose but with a lovely floral Gewurztraminer undertone. Crisp and elegantly austere, this wine, according to Sandra herself is “absolutely meant to be served with food.”

Photo top: Tinhorn Creek's winery.
Photo middle: Sandra holding a 2001 Merlot that was the first in Canada to be bottled under screw cap.