Tasting nine B.C. icon wines

King's Ransom was unavailable during photo shoot

Because several wineries this year released their icon Bordeaux reds around the same time, I assembled nine of these stars for a blind tasting by myself and three wine-loving associates.

With the possible exception of Nota Bene, these wines are all available from the wineries and in most VQA wine shops. Nota Bene was released in the spring. However, the Black Hills winery kept some back for sale at the winery (one per customer) during the wine touring season and at $60 a bottle. The wine was included in this tasting because it has such a cult following. We wanted to see how it stacked up against other icons (pretty well).

This is not an exhaustive list of B.C.’s icons; no Pinot Noirs were included, for example, because this was not meant to be a Pinot Noir tasting. As well, at these price points, there is an economic reality. Some of the wines were samples from the wineries but others had to be purchased.

Because the wines were all reasonably young, every bottle was decanted and then returned immediately to the original bottle. The point was to let the wines breath a little and open up.

Consumers need not be in a rush to open any of these wines. They all have the structure to improve in the cellar for at least the next five years.

Ideally, icon wines should score 90 points or better. Most of these did and the rest were close enough that time in the bottle just might lift them as well. These are all delicious wines that collectors seek out.

They are reviewed here in order of price, with such additional information as the wineries have made available. Surprisingly, a few wineries don’t bother to break out the percentages of each variety in the blend. I would suggest that a buyer of an icon wine wants to know that, especially those who collect vintage after vintage. To its credit, Osoyoos Larose puts the detail right on its front label.

Note that Merlot is often the backbone of a blend. This is not just because Merlot is the most widely planted variety in the Okanagan and Similkameen valleys. The terroir there produces Merlot that has structure and firm ripe tannins, a good building block for a red blend.


Herder Josephine 2007 ($40) Alcohol: 13.8%
Merlot (66%), Cabernet Franc (21%), Cabernet Sauvignon (13%)
Aged 12 months in French oak barrels

This is the flagship red blend from Herder Winery. This just-released vintage has a slightly raw, youthful edge, with firm tannins, suggesting the wine will benefit from aging in the bottle. The aroma has a note of vanilla and mocha; as it opens in the glass, there are floral aromas as well as dried fruit aromas. The flavour displays vibrant red currant hints. 87 and age-worthy.

A re-taste of the second half of the bottle two days later confirmed how aging will help. The wine had rounded out and developed a graceful elegance. Now it scored 89 points and rising.

Black Hills Nota Bene 2006 ($43) Alcohol:14.7%
47% Cabernet Sauvignon, 37% Merlot. 16% Cabernet Franc

Dark in colour, this wine begins with aromas of mint and sweet fruit. This follows through on the palate, where the mint (a Cabernet Sauvignon fingerprint) gives the flavours a brightness and an attractive lift. The oak is well integrated. 90


Osoyoos Larose Le Grand Vin 2006 ($45) Alcohol:13.5%
Merlot (69%), Cabernet Sauvignon (20%), Cabernet Franc (4%), Petit Verdot (4%), Malbec (3%)
Aged 16 months in 60% new, 40% one-year-old French oak barrels and six months in bottle. 10,000 cases produced.

The French winemaking touch shows here in this elegant and layered wine, with its flavours of plum and cedar. The tannins are firm but ripe, giving this generous wine the classic structure for aging. Le Grand Vin tastes good now but should keep improving at least to its 10th birthday. 90

Mission Hill Quatrain 2005 ($47.99) Alcohol:13.5%
Merlot (57%), Syrah (28%), Cabernet Franc (10%), Cabernet Sauvignon (5%).
Fermented in French oak fermenters; aged 15 months in French oak barrels

This is one the three wines in what Mission Hill calls its Legacy series (with Oculus and an elegant Chardonnay called Perpetua). The Syrah gives substance and depth to this full-bodied wine. Dark in colour, it develops attractive berry aromas in the glass. There are flavours of currants and black cherries, with a robust hint of earthiness. 90

Church & State Quintessential 2005 ($50) Alcohol:14.62%
Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Malbec.
Aged 18 months in French oak, 18 months in bottle. 364 cases produced.

Church & State owner Kim Pullen says he searched about a year for a good name for this new icon blend. Not making much progress, he asked his teenage daughter for an idea. Within minutes, she came up with Quintessential. (Eat your heart out, Bernie Hadley-Beauregard!). The wine begins with a wonderful aroma of mocha and fruit cake, shows flavours of cassis and blackberry and a hint of liquorice on the finish. A real charmer. 91

Sumac Ridge Pinnacle 2005 ($50) Alcohol:14.4%
Merlot (56%), Cabernet Franc (21%), Cabernet Sauvignon (18%), Syrah (5%).
Fermented in stainless steel, left on the skins for 16 days and aged 25 months in 70% American oak, 30% French oak. 500 cases produced.

The debut 1997 Pinnacle was released in 2000 and was British Columbia’s first $50 red blend. The early vintages were slow sellers. That was not a reflection on the wine but rather on how hard it was get consumers to pay the price before the industry caught up with Sumac Ridge. As usual with Pinnacle, this is a bold wine with a brooding dark hue. This wine spends more time in barrel than any other icon; there is vanilla on the nose and sweet oak flavours. It takes a while for the fruit flavours to take over in the glass. When they do, there is dark chocolate, cherries, plums and even sweet tobacco, with layers of flavour. 90+

Noble Ridge King’s Ransom 2006 ($65) Alcohol: 14.5%
Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon. Aged in new American and French oak. 100 cases produced.

This is a new wine from Noble Ridge, just released on December 1. The wine begins with aromas of red liquorice, spice, vanilla and oak. At this stage in the wine’s life, the firm oak tannins are restraining the fruit flavours and giving the wine a somewhat dry finish. Either decant this or give it another year or two in the cellar to enable the fruit and oak to knit. 87

Mission Hill Oculus 2005 ($70) Alcohol:13.5%
Merlot (42%), 28% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Cabernet Franc, 10% Petit Verdot.
Fermented in small French oak vats, aged in French oak for 13 months.

This is Mission Hill’s flagship wine and is priced accordingly. No holds are barred in making this wine: the best grapes are selected during two passes over sorting tables, fermented in expensive oak vats and aged in expensive barrels. When it comes to blending, Michel Rolland, the super-consultant from Bordeaux, lends his well-travelled palate. This wine took a little time to open up in the glass but when it did, it showed aromas of red berries and cigar box; and layers of flavour, including spice and chocolate. This is a richly elegant and very polished wine. 94

Lastella Maestoso 2006 Merlot ($85) Alcohol:15.3%
Fruit harvested at just over one ton an acre. 250 cases produced.

The Lastella winery opened this summer on a vineyard at the north end of Osoyoos Lake (the winery actually has 400 feet of water frontage). It is a sister to the Le Vieux Pin winery near Oliver. Both wineries practice extreme viticulture, producing fruit that yields wines of immense concentration. The model seems to be Harlan Estates or the big reds made by Helen Turley in California. Maestoso is a classic example, a huge wine with sweet, almost porty flavours. The wine is so rich that one does not notice the alcohol. As the score shows, this wine caused controversy at the tasting precisely because it is so over the top and so totally sensual. 87-92

A retasting of the second half of the bottle two days later showed that the wine had become more generous in structure; and delicious flavours of blackberry and plum jam had begun to emerge. This is an easy wine to like, even if contentious in the original tasting.

Rob Van Westen loads the bases

Robert Van Westen’s wine releases are out of synch with his peers. Most other wineries tend to release their white wines in spring. Robert, the co-owner and winemaker at Van Westen Vineyards, waits until late fall – when most of the competing good whites have disappeared from wine store shelves.

He has now released his three 2007 whites. What a triumph in winemaking they represent. The only complaint is that the quantities are limited; buyers need to move quickly to find these wines before they, too, have disappeared from wine stores and restaurant lists.

There are the best white wines so far from this small Naramata Bench winery, which has been open three years now.

Next year, Rob and Tammi, his wife, will be opening the winery’s first tasting room, making it easier to find the wines. A word of warning: call ahead because the tasting room is likely to be open only n Tuesdays and Saturdays.

Vino Grigio 2007 ($18.90) was released November 1. This Pinot Gris, of which 333 cases were made, is aptly named because its exuberantly fruity style mirrors what Pinot Grigio should be: a fresh, tank-fermented white that sets out to be delicious, not complex. The aromas show lemon zest and citrus notes. On the palate, there are flavours of ripe pears and more citrus. There is a fine skein of minerality and acidity to give this wine a crisp backbone. The finish is refreshing and very long. 92

Vivacious 2007 ($18.90) was also released November 1, with a production of 230 cases. This is Van Westen’s ingenuous take on giving complexity and a fruity lift to sometimes bland Pinot Blanc by barrel-fermenting some of wine and by adding four percent of Pinot Gris to the blend. This is a big, generous white with flavours of apple and melon. The time that the barrel-fermented wine spent on the lees shows through in the rich texture of the wine on the mouth. But the good acidity gives the wine a clean, tangy finish. 90

Viognier 2007 ($24.90) was released December 1 and the release is only 101 cases. This is emerging as the Van Westen flagship white. It is an explosion of tropical aromas and flavours – apricots, citrus, peaches – with an appealing aroma of grapefruit. There are layers of taste in this wine; it opens like a flower in the grass as it warms up, but it has good acidity to give it a crisp, tangy finish. 92

Fairview's Bill Eggert makes his first Pinot Noir

Photo: Bill Eggert

Fans of Bill Eggert and Fairview Cellars will be surprised, and probably delighted, to hear that in the 2008 vintage, he purchased enough Pinot Noir grapes to make “a couple of barrels of Pinot Noir as an experiment.”

Since opening Fairview Cellars in 2000, Bill has made his reputation primarily with the Bordeaux reds – Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot – with a little bit of Syrah and Sauvignon Blanc.

There was a very simple reason why he made those wines. “I am only a Cab man because that is what grows well on the property I have,” he says. His 2.4-hectare vineyard is on a sunny promontory at the start of The Golden Mile, not far from Oliver.

Why Pinot Noir? Bill recently has purchased two blocks of land, totaling 2.6 hectares, on the plateau south of Vaseux Lake. Here he intends to plant Pinot Noir, a variety already growing successfully in a nearby vineyard. It is, he says, “one of my recommendations to anyone planting grapes is to see what the neighbours are doing.”

He will begin by planting next year perhaps half a hectare as he feels out the property, which he describes as “very difficult terrain with all the large boulders, so I don't want to go overboard until I have it figured out.”

This is quite a different site from his current vineyard, likely more appropriate for Pinot Noir. “There are bluffs blocking the early and late sun, and reducing the heat units,” Bill says. “I have always believed one should plant the grape that is suited to the terroir.”

“I figured I better get some experience with the grape,” he adds, explaining why he made his first Pinot Noir this vintage. “I don't know if I will release this wine, or hold it until I have some from my own grapes.

If he does release this wine, look for it in about 18 months.

Winemaker Marcus Ansems heads new wine club

In a brief e-mail to friends and associates, Australian-born winemaker Marcus Ansems announced on November 12 that he has left Therapy Vineyards to run Hemispheres Wine Guild, a new wine importing club.

Marcus has been the general manager and winemaker at Therapy for the past three years, the latest stop in a varied Canadian winemaking career.

Born in 1974, he comes from the Australian family that formerly owned Mount Langhi-Ghiran, the producer of one of the top Australian Shiraz wines. After getting a winemaking degree from the University of Adelaide, Marcus launched a career as one of Australia's young flying winemakers. He did crushes in South Africa, Tuscany and the Rhone before joining the Creekside winery in Ontario in 1999. In four vintages there, he took Creekside from start-up to a rising star. He also handled the turnaround of Creekside's sister winery in Nova Scotia.

He returned briefly to Australia but was back in Canada in 2004, this time as the winemaker at Blasted Church in the Okanagan. He moved to Therapy the following year when it was starting up. As he left, the winery had just completed its 2008 crush, producing about 11,500 cases. In a matter of weeks, production moves into a new $2 million winery on Therapy's Naramata site.

The successor in Therapy's Cellar is Steve Latchford, a winemaker who has worked with the Jackson-Triggs winery in Niagara and recently with the Holman-Lang group of wineries in the Okanagan.

In his e-mail, Marcus that his new project "will allow me to travel to interesting wine regions with my family and bring back wine [for our members] not currently available in Canada."

He is president of Hemisphere Wine Club, which describes itself as a subscription-based co-operative. It is currently soliciting for members through its website, www.hemisphereswine.ca. For a $500 initiation fee (waived until January 1, 2009) and either monthly or annual payments, members will get quarterly shipments of imported wines chosen for them by Marcus. The quantities vary between eight and 16 cases a year, depending on what members sign up for.

Level one members (eight cases a year) pay either $209 a month of $2,500 a year. Level two members get 12 cases a year for $334 a month. Level three members (16 cases a year, four of which are ultra-premium and another four are icon wines) pay $500 a month or $6,000 a year.

The approximate model appears to be the Opimian Society, a wine club that was launched in 1973 and now claims a national membership of 18,000. The original general partner of the investor group that started Therapy Vineyards, John McBean, ran the Opimian Society in southern Alberta for many years. McBean and Therapy parted company this summer after an acrimonious dispute among the investors.

Ann Sperling is back!

Ann Sperling, one of the finest of Kelowna-born winemakers, made wine this fall in the Okanagan for the first time in 13 years.

Currently based in the Niagara Peninsula, Ann and Peter Gamble, her winemaker husband, are spearheading her family’s new Sperling Vineyards Winery in Kelowna. At the same time, they are winemakers for Camelot Vineyards, another new Kelowna winery. Both wineries expect to be open in the summer of 2009.

The Sperling winery completes the circle of history. Through her mother, Ann is a member of the Casorso family that planted the first vineyard in the Kelowna area in 1925.

The East Kelowna vineyard that supplied grapes for the new winery is on Casorso Road. The first vines were planted here in 1930 by Napoleon Peter (Pete) Casorso, Ann’s grandfather. When he retired in 1960, the vineyard was taken over by his daughter Velma and her husband, Bert Sperling, who are Ann’s parents.

Ann, who was born in 1962 and has a food sciences degree from the University of British Columbia, stared her winemaking career in 1984 at André’s in Port Moody. She went to CedarCreek in 1991 and then moved to Ontario in 1995. There, she consulted for several wineries before becoming the inaugural winemaker for the well-regarded Malivoire winery. Several years ago, she took over as the winemaker at the new Southbrook winery in Niagara, Canada’s first certified biodynamic winery. Ann Sperling sorts grapes

Peter Gamble started his winemaking career at Hillebrand Estates Winery and ran the Ontario VQA program for a number of years. Over the past decade, he has consulted on the launch of several leading Niagara wineries including Stratus. Currently, he and Ann are the consulting winemakers for Benjamin Bridge, a sparkling wine project in Nova Scotia. They also own a seven-acre vineyard of 1920s-era Malbec vines near Mendoza in Argentina and are working with a winemaker there to make premium wines.

As busy as those careers have been, one thing had been missing in Ann’s life. “I have always wanted to make wine with my parents’ vineyard,” she says. “I got to make wine with some of the grapes when I was at CedarCreek, but not anything extensive.”

This summer, the family agreed to move ahead at long last with a small premium winery to complete the Casorso legacy. The partners in the project are Ann’s parents; her oldest sister Susan and brother-in-law Paul Richardson; and Ann and Peter Gamble.

The Casorso legacy is remarkable. It began when Giovanni Casorso (Ann’s great grandfather) arrived from Italy as an agriculturist with Father Pandosy’s Oblate Mission. One of his sons, Charles, planted the first vineyard in the Kelowna area in 1925. Two other sons, Pete and Louis, planted vines five years later on the Casorso Road property (as the street was named years later).

Rosa, Ann’s great grandmother, was the single largest investor in the consortium that launched in 1931 what later became the Calona winery. Subsequently, the Capozzi family acquired control but Pete remained a shareholder in Calona well into the 1960s.

Today, the 45-acre Sperling Vineyard, which sells its fruit to Mission Hill, includes a 45-year-old planting of Maréchal Foch, a 35-year-old planting of Riesling and another old planting of Perle of Csaba (a Muscat variety), along with Gewürztraminer and Pinot Gris. There are recently planted blocks of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay to support the production of premium sparkling wine.

This vintage, Ann and Peter shuttled alternatively between winemaking duties in Ontario and Kelowna. They have produced about 600 cases for Sperling Vineyards (some grapes still hang for icewine) and about 400 cases for Camelot, all of it done this fall in the Camelot winery, located a five-minute drive from the Sperling vineyard.

Camelot is owned by Rob Young and Denise Brass, two Air Canada flight attendants who have lived on an East Kelowna apple orchard for several years. Two years ago, they replaced the trees with vines and erected a winery.

Then serendipity came into play. They needed a winemaker and learned that Ann and Peter needed a facility in which to make the Sperling wines because Sperling has not yet applied for a licence. The Camelot winery was the ideal facility for Sperling’s first vintage. Ann and Peter also signed a three-year agreement to make Camelot’s wines.

This winter, the Sperling family plans to get a winery licence for the Pioneer Country Market, the busy restaurant, market and deli that Velma Sperling as run for years on Kelowna’s Benvoulin Road.

In yet another closing of the circle, the market is just down the road from the Pandosy Mission where Giovanni Casorso got his start in the Okanagan.

Kathy Malone moves to Hillside from Mission Hill

A second surprise has emerged from the Naramata Bench’s Hillside Estate Winery. The new winemaker is Kathy Malone, recruited from the cellars of Mission Hill Family Estate Winery.

She takes the place of Kelly Symonds. As I reported in this blog last month, Kelly is moving to California Cult Classics in North Vancouver, a super-premium U-Vin that works with California grapes.

Kathy is a long-time Mission Hill veteran and has had substantial responsibility for making many of Mission Hill’s best-selling wines. Her move to Hillside is said to be prompted by a desire to work a small winery environment.

How good is Kathy? Put it this way: John Simes, Mission Hill’s senior winemaker, is advertising for two winemakers to replace her. One position is for a “commercial” winemaker to deal with the non-VQA wines that are made with imported wines.

The other is for a winemaker to take over production of Mission Hill’s growing range of small lot wines, such as the just released Quatrain (red blend) and the Perpetua Chardonnay.

Wade Stark, who has worked with Kathy for the last 10 years, looks after the bulk of the VQA portfolio, including the Prospect Winery products.

In the week that Mission Hill has advertised the positions, the winery has received more than 50 resumes, including applications from France, from Italy, from Napa and Australia.

According to Simes, some of the resumes are quite impressive.

“I think we are going to get someone who will bring some serious experience,” he says. “It has absolutely blown me away. People are noticing that there is real winemaking going on in the Okanagan.”

Tinhorn Creek wines may not follow the price rise trend

Tinhorn Creek’s 2005 Oldfield’s Collection Merlot, just released at $28 a bottle, should be a $35 wine on the basis of its inherent quality.

There’s a good chance that the next vintage of this premium red will also sell for less than $35. Over the next few weeks, the management at Tinhorn will sit down to talk about wine pricing for next year’s releases, just as the economy shows signs of tanking.



“We wonder if this is the time to raise the price,” admits Sandra Oldfield, the general manager and the winemaker at Tinhorn Creek.

That is great news for consumers who have come to expect Tinhorn Creek to deliver value. Indeed, in Wine Access magazine’s recent International Wine Awards competition, the winery’s $18 “regular” 2005 Merlot was judged the best value Merlot.

If a market leader like Tinhorn Creek is thinking of holding prices, look for many of its peers to do the same. If that happens, VQA wine, now averaging about $18 a bottle, should plateau after rising from a $13 average a decade ago. That is not an unreasonable price, given the limited scale of production in the Okanagan compared with, say, the massive wineries in Chile
or Argentina.

By Okanagan standards, Tinhorn Creek is a large winery. Its annual production of about 40,000 cases gives it the financial resources to hold the price line during tough times. Perhaps the owners should have been more aggressive when pricing their Oldfield’s Collection or reserve wines when the opportunity was there a year or two ago. But they didn’t. The Tinhorn Creek fans are going to get relative bargains for a year or so at least.

The Oldfield’s Collection 2 Bench White 2007, the winery’s top white, is only $23 a bottle. This wine has a marvellous tropical fruit aroma, good mineral and fruit notes on the palate and a crisply dry finish. It is a blend of five white varieties: Sémillon, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier and a dash of Muscat. It is an outstanding food wine. 88

The Oldfield’s Collection Merlot 2005 ($28) is a dark red with attractive aromas of red fruit and vanilla that are preserved by the screw cap closure. This elegantly svelte wine has flavours of plums and blackberries. While the tannins are long and ripe, there is a structure here that suggests good aging potential as well. This wine, which has eight percent Cabernet

Franc and two percent Syrah, spent 16 months in new French and American oak and as long again aging in bottle before release. The winery produced 1,551 cases. 90

Tinhorn Creek also released two other reds in October. The 2006 Cabernet Franc ($18) – the winemaker once said this is her favourite red – has the bright fruit aromas and the vivacious flavours of spicy currants and blackberry that are typical of the variety. The wine has a firm texture but is drinking well already. Some 2,566 cases were released. 87

The 2006 Cabernet Merlot ($18) is a blend of 60% Cabernet Franc, 40% Merlot. The varietals were aged separately in American oak before being blended and bottled last spring. The Cabernet Franc contributes aromas of red currants and mint. On the palate, the wine has a generous texture and an easy quaffability. The winery made 1,611 cases. 86