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Nanaimo WinemakersMaking better wines at home on Vancouver Island. |
vol. 13, no. 3
Pressing News—March 2010
Club meeting on March 2nd
The education session is "red wine in progress." Rod Church is organizing a tasting of the Bordeaux varietals we got from the Central Coast in 2008. George Beck, Don Graham, Norm Lemmen, John Taylor, Vern Rogers, James Waring and other wine makers still have some of these varieties separate and have not barreled them yet. So we will get to taste them in their unfinished form. The reactions from this tasting will help determine the grapes we get this year. It should also be interesting to see (i) how well we can distinguish the five Bordeaux varieties, (ii) how well they match their textbook descriptions, and (iii) what we might think about appropriate blends. Appropriately, the raffle wine for March is a Bordeaux style wine. It is a 2006 Meritage from Seven Stones Winery in the Similkameen Valley. This wine, which was selling for about $30, has won several gold medals and is now sold out—a real treasure. Host for the evening is Richard Kuhn. See you at Cavallotti Hall, 2060 East Wellington, 7:00 p.m. Guests welcome.
Photo: Overlooking Bill and Janie Albert's Live Oak Vineyard in Paso Robles. Olive trees are in the immediate foreground, followed by Chardonnay grapes below and Zinfandel (yes, the Zin we got) across the road. I thought "live" oak was a curious term when I first heard it, but it is just a variety of oak tree, one which maintains green leaves all year round.
Things to do now for the Provincials on May 7-8
1. Get your tickets. They are $50 per person this year, but you will get a lot, including an extra round of wine and a dinner at the Meet and Greet on Friday night. For the schedule and menus click here. For tickets, contact Rainer Hocker (see club mailing list).
2. Make a "silent auction" donation. Jan Rogers, the auction organizer, is looking for all sorts of donations. The auction is fun and is an important source of support for the club. Jan is on the club mailing list (see Vern Rogers). Let her know what you can donate.
3. Prepare your wines for entry. Wines for the Provincial competition are due at drop-off points by April 17. There is no club varietal competition this year, so club trophies will be awarded to club members on the basis of standings in the Provincials. For details on entering your wines in the Provincials, click here.
Remember to check out the members section (members only)
You'll find several new things in our members-only section. More pictures have been added to the gallery of members and there are some new bios too. There is a final version, which prints on four pages, of the recently approved revised club constitution and bylaws. Also posted are the draft minutes of the February general meeting.
The collapse of cabernet
Louis Lucas, our most important source of Santa Barbara red grapes, recommends this recent article by by Dan Berger in the Napa Valley Register. Louis says it pretty much accurately describes his own thoughts about what is wrong with the direction the California wine industry seems to be going with Bordeaux grapes in general and Cab Sauv in particular ("go for the brix and screw the acids"). It is a trend that he says his winery has no intention of following.
The Great California Wine Mystery
Read Slate wine columnist Mike Steinberger on why superstar West Coast vintners don't (or won't) put out inexpensive bottles. Snobbery and economics both figure in the picture. I don't know whether this story helps illustrate the decline of California and the United States or helps explain why we can still purchase good grapes on the the Central Coast. Perhaps neither. But it is an interesting article nonetheless.
It’s all rosé for Provence wine cooperative
George Beck recommends this article from The Guardian Weekly, which shows not all French wine production is in the doldrums. Because we freeze our red grapes, it is virtually impossible for us to produce a good rosé. Pity.
Kamloops Wine Competition March 20 looking for entries
Because the KWA is hosting the Provincials next year, it hopes to attract some outside entries this year as a kind of trial run. Wines must be in Kamloops by March 19. Details are on the KWA website, but any Vancouver drop point is still TBA and there is no mention at all of the Island. If you are interested in helping out by entering, you might want to phone one of the Kamloops drop points for advice. Jim Young used to belong to our club.
"Pinot Noir" scandal in France: Gallo and perhaps you got duped
Could you tell the difference between Pinot Noir and a combination of Merlot and Syrah or Pinot Noir with a heavy component of Syrah and Merlot? No, not good Pinot Noir, but the stuff you can buy for about $15 ($10 in the US). Apparently, North American consumers, and even Gallo, the wine giant, couldn't. It took French inspectors to unearth one of the biggest scandals in the French wine industry in a long time. Read all about it by clicking the link above, which will take you to a story in The Guardian by Lizzy Davies. I wanted to find a moral to this story (something like "buy better wine or make your own from good grapes"), but then I decided I didn't know what to say to people who thought they were getting the Sideways Pinot Noir experience but were really drinking that "f***ing Merlot." Who knows what somebody else experiences when they drink as long as they think they are drinking the right stuff.
A second opportunity for corks
If you missed out on Doug Morrison's recent order of DIAM2 corks, George Gibson is ordering some soon for mainland people. They come in bags of 1000. They will arrive in North Vancouver, but if you are not in a hurry, there will certainly be ways to get them over here cheaply in the next couple of months. Contact George Gibson (he is on the club mailing list).
Posted: 26 February 2010
Pressing News Archive (under development)