Thoughts From My Belly

The Rotten Grape has been hosting a series of events that they’re calling “Wino Wednesdays” in their restaurant on Bernard (near The Sails). Basically they invite a winemaker/winery owner to the restaurant from 5pm and 8pm. Anyone who drops in during that time gets a flight of three 1.5oz glasses of wine from that winery, a bite-sized snack paired with each wine, and the opportunity to meet the winemaker/owner for $12. When I first heard this I thought it was a great idea and had really hoped to attend the event on April 28th with Hope Family Wines from Paso Robles California (an awesome wine region!!!), but unfortunately had another commitment. Instead I had to wait until this past week for my first Wino Wednesday.

I sent out a few tweets from the event to share my thoughts on what we were eating and drinking, but if you don’t follow me on twitter I will summarize them here. The first wine in our flight was Meyer Family Vineyard’s McLean Creek Gewurztraminer. It, like most Gews, had a beautiful highly aromatic nose. Unfortunately when tasted it didn’t live up to the lofty expectations set by the aromas of lychee fruit and spice. It wasn’t bad, but its not something I would go out an buy. It was paired with a very nice piece of Brie Cheese, however the wine didn’t have enough acidity to stand up to the creaminess of the cheese. For Brie I always prefer something with a lot of acidity like a Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, or Riesling.

The second wine in our flight was the 2008 Tribute Chardonnay. It had a nose of spice, toast and straw and on the palate there was a startling acidity and some soft vegetal notes. This wine was more enjoyable than the Gew, but I agreed with the rest of my table that the high level of acidity really took away from the wine. I do have to give a lot of credit to the culinary staff at the Rotten Grape for the food pairing with this wine. The Papaya Salad that was served with it was the perfect match for this wine due to the acidity and spice of the Papaya. I’m sure the salad would have been great on its own, but this was a perfect example of the right food/wine pairing really taking a dish to the next level.

After not being very impressed with the first two wines I wasn’t holding out a lot of hope for our third wine, Pinot Noir. Pinot is notoriously hard to grow and in my experience one of the most consistently poorly made wines in BC. Meyer Family Vineyards McLean Creek Pinot Noir was a breath of fresh air! It displayed a very full nose of plum and black cherry with more cherry notes on the palate combined with a very nice smokey character. As much as I enjoyed the flavours I was even more impressed by the fact that this wine had body, a refreshing change from most of the watery Pinots produced in BC. The Rotten Grape did another very good job with this Pinot Noir, picking up on the earthy notes of the wine and pairing it with a Mushroom Crostini. Mushrooms are one of the classic food pairings for Pinot Noir, right up there with roasted duck.

While there is no doubt that the wine and food for $12 was a very good value, the thing that sets this event apart is the chance to chat with a principal from the winery. My table had a great conversation with Jak Meyer about everything from his wine, to the formation of an OK falls winery association, to the ridiculously high land costs in the Okanagan and the financial pressures that those costs put on our wineries.

The next Wino Wednesday is May 19th with Kestrel Vineyards from Washington State. If you like wine and gourmet food and have $12 I will see you there.