France Ooh La La
1 Comment
Degan Beley
May 17, 2010
If you can’t wake up in France, the next best thing may be to start the day with a round of French champagne. Just the thing happened with France Ooh La La, a Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival (VPIWF) event at the Rowing Club. France has long been synonymous with wine culture so this was a popular event and it didn’t disappoint.
While there were many notable reds in attendance, it was the rosés and summery whites that seemed to most capture my attention. Favorites included both the Nicolas Feuillatte Champagne Brut Rosé and the Nicolas Feuillatte Champagne Brut Reserve Particulière that I had tried at the grand tasting and made a note of. The rosé in particular is perfect for summer with it’s delicate fizz and pale pink tinge and I’ll be picking up a couple of bottle for those languid brunches. At $59.99 and $69.99 respectively, however, they’ll not be brought out for just anyone, whereas the Château des Demoiselles Rosé does an excellent job of conjuring grassy summer meadows at a price point perhaps more suited to drop-in guests ($25.99).
The Cordon Blue Brut Select and Vin du Paradis Cuvée Dry both stood up well and rounded out my champagne picks. A couple of more interesting whites are the Dopff & Irion Riesling – redolent of green apple and one that could make for an interesting picnic; the Cremant de Bourgogne from Blason de Bourgogne, a lovely white blend and the Grand Ardèche Chardonnay that would be perfect in a park with some buttery foie gras.
Categories: Events, Food, Wine
Tango for your tastebuds
2 Comments Degan BeleyMay 13, 2010
“Wine is not a beverage, wine is pleasure,” Jose Alberto Zuccardi announced at some point in the evening. This encapsulated the feeling of the Tango for Your Tastebuds event that happened on the last day of the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival (VPIWF).
Tango is known as the dance of passion, distilling the fullness of life into a controlled environment – much like wine – and the combination of Argentine Familia Zuccardi wine with the latin fusion food of Cobre was passion for the soul and the palate.
Starting with a 2008 Santa Julia Organica Sparkling Chardonnay, guests mingled and got seated while Harry Hertscheg, Executive Director of the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival, and Jose Alberto Zuccardi, representing Familia Zuccardi, introduced the event and the wine. The whole family is involved in the business peripherally, with some members handling the olive oil and sparkling wine lines, and Jose at the head of the operation like a South American partido (godfather).
There are three varieties of olive oil currently in production: the Frantoio, made with olives from Tuscany; the Manzanilla, from Spanish olives; and the Arauco, a 100% Argentinian olive varietal. Each has different flavour characteristics evident against the apple-y crispness of the sparkling wine.
The Zuccardi Serie A Chardonnay Viognier and the Santa Julia Organica Torrontes were paired with a pan roasted BC sablefish, melon and serrano ham and a prawn ceviche respectively, but it wasn’t until the Santa Julia Magna and the Zuccardi Q Malbec that the wines really started to hit their stride. The ‘Serie A’ label indicates wine from the best regions of Argentina, whereas ‘Zuccardi Q’ stands for quality and ‘Z’ or ‘Zeta’ is the top of the line.
The Santa Julia Magna is the best blend each year and in 2008 brought out notes of chocolate, black fruit and dirt whereas the Q Malbec was sweeter and redolent of cherry and plum. Both brought out the richness of the Yarrow Meadows duck breast and chicaron – the skin removed and re-fried. This turned out to be my favourite dish of the evening.
The next wines were even better – a 2006 Zuccardi Q Tempranillo and a 2006 Zuccardi Zeta – positioning black fruit and spice in the first against more cherry in the latter but the pork tenderloin didn’t stand up the the flavour as well as it could have. Fortunately, there was goat milk panna cotta and a Malamado Viognier. Literally translated as “bad lover”, it’s a play on words meant to invoke the tango and its sad, romantic stories and finishing the evening with bittersweetness.
Categories: Events, Food, Wine
Le Clos Jordanne showcases New World terroir
2 Comments Degan BeleyFebruary 5, 2010
“Why does the old world have terroir and we just have varietal wines?” Le Clos Jordanne’s winemaker Thomas Bachelder asked at a recent Terminal City Club tasting. “It’s not fair.”
Sampling five wines – all from 2006 but from various vineyards – he walked us through the different regions and vineyards and illustrated how much terroir comes into play even for Canadian regions. Le Clos Jordanne is situated on a 400km limestone bench stretching around the lake and into the USA. It has a landscape perfectly suited to wine and the proprietors recognized this, starting the winery with a terroir experiment.
Le Clos Jordanne is a joint venture between Vincor and Domaine Boisset from Burgundy. The idea was to start a winery completely from scratch in the burgundy tradition and try to capture the characteristics of the Niagara Peninsula area around the village of Jordan.
There are four vineyards: Talon, La Petite, Claystone and Le Clos. Village Reserve comes from all four; La Petite is so small it can only be used for the reserve and the La Petite Pinot Noir. The Claystone and Le Clos grapes contribute to both pinot noir and chardonnay.
This is a careful, deliberate operation. The yields are so low that they have to net the vines or the birds would eat everything. Then the grapes are hand-picked and hand-sorted to eliminate rot. The exacting methods pay off, however. These are top-notch Niagara wines, and they’re now available in BC.
All of the wines we tasted are the same vintage (2006) and the same grapes (pinot noir and chardonnay) in order to better find the characteristic expressions in the wine. Starting off with the Village Reserve Pinot Noir, we tasted blackberry and floral notes. This is almost a perfumey wine with the characteristics of all vineyards mingling happily. In contrast is the Claystone Pinot Noir which comes from the western, “best part” of Claystone. Thomas Bachelder has determined that the tough minerality of this area is most representative of Claystone.
Finally, the Grand Clos Pinot Noir takes the best grapes from all four vineyards and the result is both delicate and bold. Karen of WineBard.ca detects citrus and she’s right: in there with the red fruit is a bit of tangerine. Paired with the pinots were a Fraser Valley duck breast on potato cakes, five spice beef tempura on potato puree and bruschetta that brought out the richness of the wines.
The two whites we tasted, Claystone Chardonnay and Grand Clos Chardonnay, were sipped in conjunction with preserved lemon risotto, seared scallop with sunchoke tureen, and chardonnay-poached lobster with black truffle chip. Again, the differences between the single vineyard and the Grand Clos were evident. Claystone is hard and tight, yet elegant. It has a soft palate and the sweetness of the wine is enhanced by the food. The Grand Clos has a rich, lemony essence to it, slightly mineral and utterly mind-blowing.
I’m not normally a fan of chardonnays but both of these are gorgeous and rich – completely unlike any other American chards. I will be buying both again without a doubt.
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