Vinifico! The Original Vancouver Wine Blog

A while back I wrote about Joie Farm Cooking School and noted that they had started making wine (a Chardonnay, a “Noble Blend” white and a Pinot Noir Rosé), but that I had not yet tried them… Well, during our recent spate of summer-like weather I wandered into Kitsilano Wine Cellars and lo and behold, there were the Joie wines.

I picked up a bottle of both the Pinot Rosé and the Noble White. I cracked open the screwcap closure on the rosé a couple of nights ago and was VERY pleasantly surprised. When I spent a weekend at Heidi and Michael’s cooking school a couple of summers back, the theme of the weekend was Provence and we had a rosé tasting… wines from France and elsewhere were popped open. It was an eye-opener for me. Up to that point, rosés brought back bad memories of White Zinfandel and their girl-drink, pop-like flavours. Not the ones we had. They were summer in a glass – crisp, fruity and refreshing, with none of the cloying sweetness of the White Zins of my youth.

Tasting their rosé brought me right back to a table outside in their orchard. I could almost feel the sun. The Joie Rosé is made up of Pinot Noir and there is also Chardonnay in there to “liven the acitidity further”. Strawberries were the dominant taste I picked up on, with bits of the cherry they mention in their spec sheet for the wine. At ~$20, this is a great wine for the warm weather ahead… or if you just want a glimpse of summer on a grey day. Try it. It’s good for you.

Years ago I spent a good deal of time working/drinking in a couple of private wine shops in town. My previous post about how people treat waitstaff reminds me that this little bit of wisdom really applies to how people treat those in the service industry as a whole.

The shop in which I worked was located in a Canada’s wealthiest postal code… Needless to say there were some jerks, but for the most part the people who shopped at the store were friendly and courteous.

When I think back to examples of the other side of human nature, one name stands out. Let’s call him Mr. Woody. Mr. Woody came across as “new money”. You know the sort… the type of person who is obviously enormously wealthy, but feels they have to remind everyone of that fact – like it’ll earn them a gold star or suddenly make everyone around them assume a worship-ful stance. People who come from “old money” wealthy families tend to carry themselves with more class… especially when they’ve reached Mr. Woody’s age, which I’d guess as late forties/early fifities.

A good example of Woody’s attitude towards others would be the time we received a very small allocation of Château Too-Pricey-Pour-Vous. We received something like 2 dozen bottles of this wine and a few customers had reserved their right to shell out ~$200/bottle for a few bottles of the high-scoring wine. Well, Mr. Woody, being one of those (and being well-known for only buying wine that rated above 95 on Wine Spectator’s scale), showed up the day the wine came in and demanded a case of the wine. I patiently explained to him that there were others who had reserved the wine and that we would gladly let him have his allocation of 3 bottles (or whatever it was). He looked shocked that I wouldn’t give him what he wanted and dismissively asked to speak with the store manager. The manager, a friend of mine – let’s call him John, came out and started explaining why Woody could only have his few bottles… Well, the spoilt-new-money-shit hit the fan.

Matters immediately escalated to Woody wanting to talk with the store owner(s) and threatening to no longer patronize the store… He yelled… He stomped… He insulted… Now he regularly came in and dropped as much as $15,000 on wine in a shot, so this would have been a loss, but nothing from which the store couldn’t recover. Nonetheless, the owners tried to placate him by contacting wine reps in order to get Woody more of the wine. Let’s face it, the others who had reserved the wine were also wealthy area residents who wouldn’t appreciate their allocation being handed over to this oversized crybaby with $1,000 bills padding his wallet.

I forget the outcome of that day… I think they may have found him a few more bottles… but was just left with a bad taste in my mouth that someone with so much cash could be such an utter douchebag and have so little class…. and now, to top it off, he actually owns a winery in Napa and produces his own overpriced “boutique” Cabernet. Where is Karma in this world, huh? All I know is that no matter how rich I become (or not) I’m never going to drink that damn wine.

Cheers to you Woody. May you reap what you’ve sown.

One of the rules I live by when I dine out with people is that you can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat the waitstaff in a restaurant. Anyone who treats restaurant staff badly isn’t worth my time or respect. I had an ex who was awful to hostesses and waiters/waitresses… I should have run at the first sign of this. Oh well, life’s lessons learned…

On this subject, check out Waiter Rant, a well-written, hilarious and often touching blog written by a waiter/restaurant manager in NYC.

After all the spending I’ve done on wine lately, it’s time to revisit that all-important wine find: VALUE… and nothing beats this wine for value right now. At $17.95/bottle CDN, this is a FANTASTIC bottle of wine. I’ve tasted many $30 bottles I’ve liked far less. This is so well made and contains such quality of flavour that I can’t believe it costs less than $20. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I think it’s even better than the 2003 I reviewed a while back.

This is a wine I happened on by chance… I went to a great new-ish restaurant in town, Nu on Tuesday night with a friend of mine and our superb waiter saw me looking at the white wines on the list and made a point of recommending this wine. He said it was different and very refreshing. He proved to be right on the mark. It was minerally and full of zesty, grapefruit like flavours with a touch of almond. So tasty!

This is a grape I’ve never heard of, but it reminded me of one of my favourite summer wines, the Ca’ del Solo Malvasia Bianca, with more of a viscous, mineral edge. It’s a great, uncomplicated wine.

From what I can tell, it’s probably from Italy’s Amalfi Coast region. I did get the waiter to save me the label, but it doesn’t even have the vintage on it. Apparently it’s not listed in our city’s liquor stores, but I’m definitely going to keep an eye out for it in the private wine shops. It should be in the $20 – 30 range.

UPDATE: I found this wine tonight at Kitsilano Wine Cellar for $27.90, though I think it may be a different vintage.

When I used to work at a wine store here in town (Dundarave Wine Cellar over in West Vancouver), this was a wine that all of us employees loved. What’s not to like?? It’s sparkling, which is almost always fun… and it’s SHIRAZ, for God’s sake! At that point I had never heard of a sparkling Shiraz.

So, after a few years of having it in town, it suddenly disappeared. There were rumours that the winery, Barossa Valley Estate, had stopped making it… But a visit to their site proved that false. Turns out that it had been de-listed here in BC and no-one had bothered to bring it back in due to limited quantities. I was sad.

Imagine my surprise when, after last month’s Wine Festival (at which I happily tasted it again), I wandered into the main LDB store here in town and there it was… at $69.99! When I used to drink it, the price was in the $40 range! I guess, much like what happened to E & E’s Black Pepper Shiraz (now pushing $100 a bottle) popularity and a decent rating went to their pricing-crazy heads. $70 is petty damn steep for a sparkling Shiraz.

Anyhoo… I picked one up for my birthday and drank it last week. I chilled the wine and then let it warm up to a near-room-Chardonnay-like temperature and sipped away. It’s a fantastic wine. I always used to describe it as a chocolate tart dipped in raspberry sauce… and my memory proved correct. Every sip was a pleasure. Mmmmm.

That being said, I’ve heard the stock has once again disappeared from our fair Province… And at $70 that’s probably a good thing. It’ll save me money.

4 1/2 stars

I picked this one up at the wine festival after being surprised at how good it was… for $27 it’s almost a value for a good Chablis. What made me even happier was that it came with a screw-cap closure.

My fist taste impressions were of flinty mineral notes with a bit of lemon, toast and pineapple. It’s crisp and incredibly well balanced – So bloody good. This is one of those wines that walks the line between being drinkable on its own (check) or working really well with food (check again). I hope I can find it at some store here in Vancouver that was smart enough to order some.

Yeah, yeah, yeah… I like slutty wines. Yadda-yadda-yadda. But holy crap and sweet mother of God, this is a tasty Zinfandel… It’s a big mouthful of dark, sexy blackberry fruit with a briary edge… It’s boozy at 16.2% alcohol, but not unbalanced (though, let’s face it, at that much alcohol, you’ll smell the fumes a little bit). This is no wine for a regular Burgundy sipping pantywaist.

It’s full-on Zinfandel and is almost exactly what I was hoping it would be. It actually gets better with every sip. This is no chug-it-down-quaffing-happily bottle of wine. This is a sip and think wine… what I call a pudding wine – this comes from memories of my childhood where I would eat a little container of chocolate pudding with the smallest spoon I could find so it would last longer. That’s what I find myself doing with each bit of this wine. I’m taking small sips and savouring every taste of it in my mouth. I want it to last forever. This wine is a little bit of heaven right here on earth. This is, without a doubt, one of the best Zinfandels I’ve ever had.

There were only 300 cases of this made and it’s too pricey for me to justify any more. I bought this wine because I did some web work for a friend and she insisted that I buy a good bottle with the money. Thanks Miriam. Any more work??

4 1/2 stars