A new wine store has just opened in North Vancouver - Everything Wine. It’s on Marine Drive kitty corner from Indigo’s. It’s HUGE. Jen says it’s almost too big. You walk in and more than 3 000 different labels are staring back at you. If you don’t really know what you want, the sheer variety and selection will be enough to make you skulk over to the corner and just grab the first thing you see.
But take your time, ask some questions and taste. Yes, taste! Last week I lamented we usually have to taste with our eyes before we buy a bottle. We get seduced by the label with no real idea of what’s inside. Everything Wine gives you a chance to taste the wine, every afternoon from 2-6. FREE TASTINGS! Excellent.
They also have weekly special events, last week cracking open the perfect 100 point 2001 Y’Quem for $100 a ticket. Next Tuesday, May 27th, they’ll have a Taste of Italy for $25 a ticket.
This is what I mentioned a few weeks back in regards to Home Depot. They have classes educating consumers on how to use their products. More retailers need to get in the habit of making us confident consumers. A high end grocery store with cooking classes, a fitness store with free workout guides, a wine store with tasting sessions.
If they just tossed in a video blog a la Gary Vaynerchuk, and a website that better educated you on wine, this place would be perfectly set up to conquer.
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Jen’s back at work, so that means the cellar is getting re-stocked for the return of Wine Wednesdays.
Last night Jen was telling me a story about a tasting they had at work earlier in the week. Jen’s company reps Gabbiano. It’s a winery from Italy with a great heritage, and an absolutely horrible label.
And that’s the problem. The wine inside is perfectly brilliant, but in this world where few of us are wine connoisseurs, but all of us are wine lovers - we have to judge the juice by it’s bottle. Gabbiano’s Pinot Grigio is an excellent selection for this smokin hot weekend we’ve got coming up. Floral, crisp and just right for the heat while the kids run through the sprinkler. It’s just $10.99 at the liquor store, but when placed up against Voga, another Italian Pinot Grigio that’s $4 more expensive, it’s getting killed at the till.
Do a blind tasting and you’ll probably pick Gabbiano. Voga isn’t bad, it’s just the Gabbiano is better. However, we don’t do our buying by taking a blind taste test. We taste with our eyes before we taste with our tongue, and just one look at the Voga bottle will have you whipping out $15 faster than you can say “Hey, it looks a lot like the Voss water bottle, doesn’t it?”
So if you’re rocking the bbq this weekend, or just chilling in the backyard and watching the petals fall off the tulips, pick up the Gabbiano, and decant it in an empty Voss bottle. Your friends won’t know the difference.
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We finally got to the wine part of the trip today. Well, we’ve actually been cracking bottles regularly in our room each night, but today we actually got to do a proper degustation in Vouvray, just east of Tours.
Moncontour was the first we hit. Ick. The tasting room was, at first, closed. The woman spoke little english and did even less in french to show off her wines or take us through a proper tasting. She basically asked for us to point to something on the list, she’d crack it and leave it to us to decide if it was any good. It was okay. We bought a couple bottles, out of guilt for having wasted her time.
5 seconds down the road I found the winery that Rick Steves recommended to visit, Marc Bredif. What a difference in approach. A formal, beautiful tasting room with bilingual guides who asked a few questions about our tastes and then took us on a fabulous journey through dry bubble to aged chenin blanc wrapping up with a super sweet nectar. We bought 2 bottles here, wishing we hadnt bought the 2 before.
They even let us wander their caves underneath the winery where I shot this video telling more of the story:
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Actually, Wednesday is the day we do some serious tastings here in the Loire, so expect a longer post then. In the meantime just a quick little video we shot tonight mixing some Nicolas Feuillatte Champagne and Chambord Liqueur Royale.
We visited the Chambord Chateau today, and on the way back to Le Moulin Du Port (our B&B), we passsed the Chambord property - pretty cool.
Once again, our pairings are TOTALLY off, but what are you going to do when you’re in France with a 10mo old and curfew is each night at 7p, and the restos don’t open til 8? Well, you do a quick video with some champagne and Chambord for y’all and then settle in for a few episodes of Dexter on the MacBook.
BTW, tomorrow, we walk the 4k along the banks of the Cher to Chenonceau, a chateau with no moat, because it was built on the river.
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To celebrate our engagement on Monday night, Jen and I opted for a romantic dinner in.
A couple of boxes of takeout from Mezzo di Pasta and a bottle of Tavelfrom the marche.
Again, we’re not pairing this properly, but Jen was so excited to see this half bottle on the shelf, she dropped it (must have been the extra weight from that engagement ring;). It didnt break, we bought it.
This wine is only available in the spring and is ripe for the hot Mediterranean days to sip on a patio with a bucket of mussels. It’s about +2 and raining in Paris and we’re having bolognese pasta. So the pairing is off - way off. But this is Paris, and Jen and I got engaged today, and Zacharie is sleeping. All that makes a perfect pairing.
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If you dont know a lot about wine (like me) you get easily seduced by the labels on the bottle. The pretty colours, the style, the design.
I used to buy music this way. Back in highschool, when I was getting to music, I would go to A&A Records and flip through stacks of wax by bands I had never heard of - if I liked the cover, I’d buy it.
You can’t judge a book by its cover, but let’s be real - we all do.
So what’s in a label for a bottle of wine. Check out these three:
Which are you more apt to buy? The classic art piece on the Gabbiano? The richness of the Rosemount? The simple Penfolds?
The Rosemount label is a redesign, but to me it still looks 80s. It lokos like a rich steakhouse, but to me it’s just a little cheesy. The Lindemans labels are the same for me.. meh. Now that says nothing of the wine inside, because last week I RAVED about the Lindemans Bin 95, but if I just saw that label, I’d scream right past it.
I’m not a fan of the Gabbiano label either. It may be a vintage representation of Il Cavalieri, a representation of the knights who protected the winery castle in the middle ages, but it just looks old to me. Like a 50s version of vintage, not a timeless interpretation. I would walk right past that one too.
The Penfoldslabels are the ones that really make me stop and take notice. Classic, simple and refined. Simple white labels with the red name splash and the varietal beneath. There are a wide variety of wines from the Penfolds house, but they all have the same format on the label, and it’s a winner.
Jen and I were taking it light this week on the libations, no real drinking was done. Next week, however, Wine Wednesday will come to you live from France with the goooood stuff.
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But that’s where the usual link between bricks and mortar and the internet end. Gary’s site is an alive and active blog with stories and tastings and humour and videos as he rolls around tasting wine and sharing his passion with the world.
Gary’s key goals are twofold: “First, I want people to try different wines. How can you have a favorite if you only know a few? Second, I tell people to trust their palates. If a wine appeals to your palate, then it’s a good choice. Don’t feel pressured to like popular brands or what experts recommend. Buy what ‘brings the thunder’ for you.” [source]
Jen and I have described wine as tasting like band aids, musty, fruity etc.
O RLY?
Gary is out to prove it. He recently went on Conan, where he had the host taste some wine, taste some dirt - and realize, “Hey! It’s the same!”
Yesterday was one of those days. Le Grand Monsieur is fighting a stuffy nose and congestion. Yeah, I gave it to him. It took me 3 days to kick it, hopefully the little guy can get it done quicker.
So Jen tried for an hour to get him down, no luck. Then he played for a bit before keeling over for 40 mins at around the time he should just be waking up. Poor guy. Poor Mommy.
So when I got home Jen had a bottle of Lindeman’s Bin 95 Sauvignon Blanc 2007 freshy ‘corked’ and poured on the counter.
From the website: The generous flavours and contemporary, easy-drinking style combines easily with food and most social occasions to deliver maximum enjoyment from the first glass to the last.
From the label: Lifted tropical flavours, with a crisp, dry finish.
The Sav Blanc hit the spot for Jen. Easy drinking, fruity and crisp. You could have it with a salad, mussels, fish - or on it’s own, after a tough day. Green apple and grass without a lip puckering tartness - that’s the difference between the Aussie and New Zealand Sav Blanc’s - the kiwi ones have a bit more mineral and gooseberry tang to go with them.
One other cool thing about this selection is it has a screw top. It’s all good, they’re cool now. Jen preaches the screw top as the best way to have just a glass and keep the bottle in the fridge door - for the next hard day.
Lindeman’s Bin 95 Sauvignon Blanc is “beyond a bargain,” Jen says, for ONLY $12.95 at your BC Liquor Store. You CANNOT get a local wine of this quality at this pricepoint. As we move into spring break, a long weekend and then summer - stock up and get some on standby.
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In September 06, Jen and I went to Onterrible (as she calls it) for a cousin’s wedding. They live in Stoney Creek, just south of Hamilton out towards Niagara Falls.
The Niagara Escarpment is the big wine growing region in Ontario, so we took the opportunity to visit some of the wineries. The one we enjoyed the most and spent the most time chatting with the staff was Thirty Bench. We left with a couple of bottles and this week we cracked one.
Thirty Bench 2002 Benchmark Blend.
From the label: This wine contains 50% Cabernet Franc, 25% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Merlot. The wine was fermented in small bins using various yeasts to gain complexity, was left to macerate for a few weeks to soften its tannins, and was subsequently aged in french and american oak barrels for almost a year. You can enjoy this wine immediately after its release, but it will improve considerably with age.
From the website: Tasting notes of toffee, oak and stewed tomatoes on the nose.
We made the mistake of having it with spicy food, chicken, beans and yam fries. It didn’t stand up very well, not at all. It was fruity for me, exploding in blueberries and plums, and while it was probably fine with roast beef, pork chops, or a flank steak, it just couldn’t handle our spicy food.
Even though we didnt pair it properly, Jen was still disappointed with her palate on the decision. She thinks we should have drank it right away when we got home, or maybe they served us a ‘better bottle’ at the winery. Even still, she says if she tasted tonight what she tasted then, she wouldnt have bought that bottle.
It’s one of those things that happens when you go to a winery, you can get romanced into buying things that just don’t quite taste the same when you get home. We also picked up a Pinot Meunier Rose when we were there that, on site, tasted like Thanksgiving Dinner - cranberries and sweetness and excellence, however at home - it wasnt anything like that.
So we’re 0 for 2 from Thirty Bench so far. Beautiful winery, not so much with the wine.
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However, this past weekend, Jen and I along with a couple of other couples, had our own little wine fest! When you’re married to a wine rep, and head over to a colleague’s house is a wine rep, and also married to a wine rep, you know some grape will be poured and 4 bottles of beauty hit the table on Saturday night.
First the menu: There was a spicy sausage and creamy cheese tray with baguette while we chilled, then dinner was a beef tenderloin that absolutely melted with white asparagus, green beans and potatoes. A roasted tomato and spinach salad was on the side.
Here are 2 of the 4 wines we polished off:
Domaine de Montfaucon 2005 Viognier - Now I don’t recognize this grape right off the bat either, it’s not a big 6, but this Viognier was smooth and easy drinking. Right away I could taste the honey, our hosts said honeysuckle, but I thought it was richer, right to honey. Wiki says: The color and the aroma of the wine suggest a sweet wine but Viognier wines are predominantly dry.
Pinotage - Jen thinks this one tastes like band aids, the South Africans at our table were drifting back home as they talked about the smell being like an African camp fire. After all, it is South Africa’s signature grape. In the end, I agreed with Jen, it had a dusty medicinal taste that just didnt do much.
Some interesting choices there for your weekend sipping, or maybe you’ll head off to the ‘Fest and get your glass on. Before you do that, have a quick look over the Insiders Guide for Wine Festivals.
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But take your time, ask some questions and taste. Yes, taste! Last week I lamented we usually have to taste with our eyes before we buy a bottle. We get seduced by the label with no real idea of what’s inside. Everything Wine gives you a chance to taste the wine, every afternoon from 2-6. FREE TASTINGS! Excellent.
And that’s the problem. The wine inside is perfectly brilliant, but in this world where few of us are wine connoisseurs, but all of us are wine lovers - we have to judge the juice by it’s bottle. 
Do a blind tasting and you’ll probably pick Gabbiano. Voga isn’t bad, it’s just the Gabbiano is better. However, we don’t do our buying by taking a blind taste test. We taste with our eyes before we taste with our tongue, and just one look at the Voga bottle will have you whipping out $15 faster than you can say “Hey, it looks a lot like the Voss water bottle, doesn’t it?”
Thirty Bench 2002 Benchmark Blend. 
Domaine de Montfaucon 2005 Viognier - Now I don’t recognize this grape right off the bat either, it’s not a big 6, but this Viognier was smooth and easy drinking. Right away I could taste the honey, our hosts said honeysuckle, but I thought it was richer, right to honey. 
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