Browsing “Wine”

[Cross-posted at www.popandpour.ca]

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.

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[Cross-posted at www.popandpour.ca]

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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[Cross-posted at www.popandpour.ca]

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.” Read more

[Cross-posted at www.popandpour.ca.  This book was provided as a sample for review purposes.]

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. Read more

[Cross-posted at www.popandpour.ca]

There are wine tastings and there are WINE TASTINGS.  And then, about 500 feet above those, there was the tasting I went to this past weekend.  It is not blog-boosting hyperbole to say that most of us who walked into Vine Arts on Friday night were stepping into a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to try wines that we would literally never see again.  The rarity of the event was not lost on the buying public:  the Friday tasting sold out so quickly that Vine Arts scrambled to add an encore showing on Saturday, which sold out just as fast.

What was so incredible about it, you ask?  It was the near-unheardof chance to taste six of the world’s most famous, celebrated, acclaimed and expensive wines in a single sitting.  Over a span of two hours, I crossed a number of vinous firsts off of my bucket list:  Try a 100-point rated wine.  Try the top dessert wine in the world.  Try a well-aged First Growth Bordeaux.  Try one of the all-time best wines from my favourite region.  And so on.  I have never seen ANY of the bottles in Friday night’s lineup available at another tasting in town, so having all of them together in one room for one occasion was a huge coup for owner Jesse Willis and the Vine Arts team:  it would be like a music lover arranging for the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and Bruce Springsteen to play at a single concert, with the Beach Boys and Queen as opening acts.  For wine geeks like me, this was almost a religious experience.  If you’re not a wine geek, hopefully the excited rambling above has gotten across that this was kind of a big deal. Read more

[Cross-posted at www.popandpour.ca]

The best word to use to describe Richmond Hill Wines as you pull into the parking lot is “unassuming”.  Located just north of Richmond Road in a quiet strip mall just off of 51st Street SW, it has the almost dreary, sleepy look of your average neighbourhood liquor store.  This Clark Kent exterior hides an absolute gem of a wine shop on the inside, one whose longevity is almost unparalleled (it opened in 1991) and whose staff are some of the most knowledgeable and qualified in the city, not to mention the longest-tenured.  In an industry where high turnover and staff attrition are entirely expected, Richmond Hill has a number of long-time employees who have been with the shop for years, helping to maintain loyal customer relationships and giving the store a sense of consistency and permanence that is tremendously rare in the world of retail wine.

One such employee is RHW manager Dave Amadio, who was the first guy I met when I first walked into Richmond a couple of years ago and who continues to remember me to this day even though I only manage to frequent his doorstop once every few months.  I use the term “manager” loosely because, as Dave puts it, “we don’t really do titles at Richmond Hill”; the actual job description that he provided was “manager/purchaser/pusher/overly opinionated wine guy”, which more or less sums it up. Read more

[Cross-posted at www.popandpour.ca]

Consider this less of a blog post and more of a public service announcement.  If you’re going to remember a single message out of everything I’ve ever written about wine, make it this little piece of advice:  DO NOT BE AFRAID OF GERMAN RIESLING.  I wish I could tell you that this was self-evident information, but there remains this persistent and lingering seed of doubt planted deep in the brains of casual wine drinkers in North America irrationally warning them that German wine in general, and German Riesling in particular, is something to be wary of.  Even (or rather, especially) people who haven’t tried it tend to avoid it, looking askance at its tall tapered bottles and Gothic multisyllabic labels, spouting the well-worn syllogism:  ”I don’t like sweet wines.  German Riesling is sweet.  Therefore, I don’t like German Riesling.”  Most people who say this probably don’t realize that:

1.  NOT all German Riesling is sweet — in fact, there has been a concerted movement towards drier (“Trocken”) styles of wine in Germany over the past decade or so; and

2.  Even sweeter German Riesling isn’t sweet like other wines are sweet.  To me, the best expressions of Riesling are those where there is a little residual sugar left in the wine after fermentation, because that hint of sweetness is a necessary counterpart to the firestorm of acidity usually present in good German wines.  The delicate razor’s-edge dance between sweet and tart is the very essence of what German Riesling is all about, and to dismiss a key component of that ballet as something akin to what you find in a $6 bottle of insipid white Zinfandel is to do both yourself and these amazing wines a disservice.  Most people who say they don’t like “sweet wines” actually don’t like UNBALANCED sweet wines, wines with a bunch of leftover sugar and nothing else to level it out.  German Riesling is the antithesis of these kinds of bottles, and the best illustration that not all “sweet” wines are created equal.

If you get past the stereotypes and try a bottle of German Riesling for yourself, I predict you will quickly fall in love; to me they are the most individual, remarkable and memorable wines in the world.  And the best part about joining the German Riesling Revolution is that the wines usually offer remarkable levels of quality for a bargain price.  Many top producers make entry-level bottles that are widely available for under $20 CDN, some of the most impressive of which come from the well-known Mosel Valley winery of St. Urbans-Hof, instantly recognizable for its striking black and copper label design (see the bottle pics below).  Last Thursday, a lucky few of us attended at the Crowfoot location of Co-op Wine & Spirits to hear Urbans-Hof owner and winemaker Nik Weis talk about his property and share a half-dozen of his recent wines. Read more

[Cross-posted at www.popandpour.ca]

The first time I met Tim Hendrickson, he was selling me cheese.  In between stints as co-owner of some of Calgary’s most interesting and eclectic wine shops, Hendrickson was the resident cheese guru at Blush Lane Organic Market in Aspen Woods, and every time I saw him it turned into an educational experience about cow vs. sheep vs. goat milk, aging and ripening techniques, the nuances and subtle differences between the products of different countries.  The man straight up knows his cheese, and his knowledge and enthusiasm about his wares led me to try things I never would have picked out for myself.  This earnest desire to serve the customer and teach them new ways to appreciate their favourite indulgences translates seamlessly to his current venture at Wine Ink, where he gets to engage with people about his foremost passion.

For Hendrickson, wine was initially a family affair:  his parents often enjoyed a bottle at the dinner table, and his father was a chef who encouraged his son’s interest in the topic.  After some personal study on the subject, Hendrickson initially entered the retail wine world as “a strong back and delivery driver” before ultimately transitioning to a position at the front of the store handling sales.  He worked for the initial incarnation of Calgary’s The Wine Shop in the mid-90s, where he met current Wine Ink business partner David Bransby-Williams, and after the passing of the original proprietor in 1996, he was given the chance to become a store owner for the first time.  He sold his stake in the shop a few years ago, but the thirst for the business never left his blood, and last year he teamed up with Bransby-Williams once again to open Wine Ink, a store focused on bringing consumers adventure and value from all corners of the wine world. Read more

[Cross-posted at www.popandpour.ca]

Corkage has been a hot topic in Canada recently, thanks to last week’s announcement from the British Columbia government (finally) allowing diners to bring their own bottles of wine into participating BC restaurants.  Here in Alberta, restaurants already have the ability to establish Bring Your Own Wine (BYOW) policies, and many have done so, generally charging a set per-bottle fee (called the corkage fee) in exchange for letting their guests arrive with their vino of choice.  Although this option is widely available in Calgary, it seems like it’s only rarely exercised, as most people either don’t know about the possibility of corkage or would prefer to trust in the carefully-selected wines that a restaurant puts on its own list.  While I usually fall into the latter category, there are certain times — when I have a certain bottle that I’ve been dying to open, when I’ve had a less-than-stellar past wine experience somewhere, or when I want to bring a Wine For An Occasion to celebrate something special — where corkage comes in really handy.  If you’re not sure about how the corkage process works, what the etiquette is around bringing your own bottle, and which places in Calgary offer BYOW service (and for how much), all your answers await below.

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[Cross-posted at www.popandpour.ca]

I walked into the Vine Arts retail space for the first time a couple of weeks ago and, like I do in most wine stores, I looked for the Germany section.  There wasn’t one.  No Riesling section either. Rather than sorting its vinous wares by country or by grape, the more or less universal ways of arranging a wine shop, Vine Arts had catalogued and displayed all its wines by adjective, grouping whites under headings like “Off-Dry & Aromatic” or “Light & Fresh” and reds under headings like “Bold & Structured”, “Spicy Earthy Funky” or, my favourite, “Smooth & Sexy”.  That simple but radical design choice is why I believe Jesse Willis when he tells me he’s trying to do things differently.

Like so many others that I know in the wine industry, Willis came to his grape-soaked calling from a completely different vocation:  he had an established small business as a personal fitness trainer in 2006, but a major shoulder operation had him looking at alternative career paths.  Willis’ first interaction with the wine business wasn’t an overly pleasant one — “I worked at a little neighbourhood liquor store when I was 20 years old while going to college and was pretty much convinced that ‘wine people’ were full of it when wine reps would drop by and start describing flavours of tobacco and pencil shavings in their bottles” — but with more exposure and tasting opportunities came the inevitable passion for both the drink and the industry.   Read more