Articles

Another Day, Another Winery
Wine Access, April 2006.

Keeping up with the number of new wineries in B.C. is difficult. The Okanagan's wine industry is booming and 2006 promises to continue the trend. According to a Nov. 2005 press release from B.C. Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, "the number of licensed wineries in the province has grown from 17 licences in 1990 to 101 in 2005, with a further 22 licences pending approval. Since 1999, independent vineyards have increased from 105 to 229.
Here are some to look out for this spring:

BOUNTY CELLARS

Winemaker Alan Marks, formerly winemaker and still consulting at Summerhill Pyramid Winery, pops up at the new Kelowna winery Bounty Cellars. It specializes in creating customized labels, and grapes are sourced from throughout Canada and the U.S.
Wines under the Bounty label will include Osoyoos Lake Chardonnay and a four-grape VQA white blend called Equinox.

Northwest Palate performs a blind tasting on a variety of submitted wines from the Pacific Northwest. This is what the panel found with our merlot:

Merlot

Bounty Cellars 2003 Merlot, WA - Velvety soft, with an agreeable leafy quality that runs through the blackberry and toffee nose and red-fruited palate. Ripe tannins roll back to yield a generous plummy finish. Drink now with mussaka. (100% Merlot grapes from the Osoyoos Lake bench on the Washington State side.)

A pair of spots that let B.C. wines go wild.
By Jurgen Gothe
July 27 2006

We’re spoiled here, is what we are. Wine-spoiled. Yes, even with the governments ongoing punishments for our drinking sins, with those head-spinning markups, with some still-antiquated liquor laws—even with all that taken into account, we’re spoiled.

Go into any restaurant in the French countryside and look at the list. Plenty of wonderful wines, all of them French. Check a good Trattoria in Tuscany. See any California Cabernet? Any Australian Shiraz? Chilean Pinot, Argentine Malbec, New Zealand Sauvignon?

And now more and more B.C. restaurants? are making more and more B.C. wines available. That’s a trend we should all applaud—and support.

But where they’ve done it absolutely right is with their own house brand. The Wild Fennel bunch got in touch with one of the few B.C. wineries that does small-volume custom- labelling, Kelowna-based Bounty Cellars. (Their debut white blend, Equinox, a tasty and unusual mix of Müller-Thurgau, Kerner, Pinot Blanc, and Pinot Gris, was a big hit in this column back in December 15–22, 2005.)

At Wild Fennel, it’s the house white, now named Bad Dog Blonde. The bad dog in question is pictured on the label, and you can ask Leslie Jensen about it. Each of the three partners in the Wild Fennel project—Jensen, Peter Weis, and chef Kevin Lancaster—named one wine.

Weis, an accomplished painter and caricaturist, put an Edward Munch 'The Scream' spoof on his and calls it Nowhere Near the Bay Chardonnay (the restaurant is, in fact, sans view); the chef calls his Vin Rouge, the first word pronounced to rhyme with “bin”. These are all top-taste quaffing wines, and they’re perfect with the menus.

And they sell. Weis says the volume is tremendous; it doesn’t hurt that he’s designed all the labels to be whimsical, bright, and attention-grabbing. People want to take the empties home.

At Wild Fennel, you’ll sit down to some of the most creative coastal cuisine in B.C. The menu changes at the chef’s whim and at least weekly. A duo of shellfish soups—one was oyster and sweet onion; the other, crab bisque with paprika oil and ebony mussels—made a dramatic appetizer not long ago. Plum-glazed Pacific salmon with house-made udon noodles and dashi broth and water chestnuts continued a strong seafood focus. The recent Crab Three Ways was nothing short of brilliant: Dungeness bisque, a “lollipop” nod to Vikram Vij’s way with lamb, and a salad with asparagus and parsley vinaigrette.

There’s often chipotle-chèvre mac ’n’ cheese as a starch, and pearl onions with bacon and blueberry-oregano sauce hits the spot, too. Save room for the southern apple–sour cream pie if it’s on; otherwise, the pineapple-apple-chèvre empanada with dulce de leche sauce might set you free. Recently there was state-of-the-art Toad in the Hole (!) for breakfast.

No entrées cost over $20; most are around $15. Starters are $6 to $8. There’s music Sunday evenings, no reservations needed, and a side deck so you can sip in the sun. Cool art on the walls, too, all of it by Weis, all of it for sale.

Oh, and he’ll share his tiny allocation of Joie Noble Blend with you. It’s $40 a bottle here, and that’s a little more like it.

Team Work

by John Thomson - Story: 20772
August 01, 2006 / 5:30 am

The Blend Trend, the next revolution in fine wines? Wines blended from several different varietals are the norm in Europe. Here in the New World we do not have the benefits that come with age-old wine regions and vineyards, synonymous with a core of varietals on which their reputations were built winemaking in the U.S. got its start emphasizing single varietal wines... Chardonnay, Riesling, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, etc.

Over the past several Pacific Northwest vintages, however, the observant visitor to associated wine regions and wine shops has no doubt noticed the increased availability of blended wines... Bordeaux-style and Rhone-style blends (both red and white), Super Tuscan-style blends and many other red and white proprietary blends that allow winemakers to balance the structure, flavors and acidity of their wines.

One of our producers here in the valley Bounty Wines from their headquarters in Kelowna produce a variety of wines in their plant from wine they source for all over the Pacific Northwest. When I interviewed their marketing and sales director Wendy Wright last year, she told the story of the new idea in wineries for this part of the world with much enthusiasm. No vineyard, no wine shop but they will produce a personal or company label for you in house, and there are some terrific designs, and you can order a little as a case for your customers and clients or yourself. They are on the right track with a new idea and a quality product . . .