Mini facts to get you going on Shiraz Viognier

It’s a rainy, fall day here in Vancouver and thoughts of big red sippers are blotting out cravings for summer rosés on the patio.

This afternoon I’m heading to a tasting hosted by Yalumba’s Jane Ferrari, which got me thinking about shiraz viognier wines. I first tried this style of wine at the Yalumba’s tasting room. One of the staff encouraged me to try shiraz viognier along side a straight shiraz. The difference in flavour was quite apparent and I was hooked on the winery’s Hand Picked Shiraz Viognier offering.

What makes shiraz viognier special:

• shiraz grapes are co-fermented (not blended) with about 5% of the white winegrape called viognier
• the viognier brings a highly aromatic nose to the wine; eg. sniff your wine and you’ll smell a lot of interesting smells
• the viognier can also gives the wine a softer texture in the mouth
• it’s European origins rest in the French Cote Rotie region, where syrah grapes are often co-fermented with viognier

Give one a try (why not – it’s wine). Here are a few suggestions from producers that make great stuff:

Yalumba – Y Series or Hand Picked Series
d’Arenberg – Laughing Magpie
Black Chook Shiraz Viognier
Gemtree – Bloodstone
Tatachilla – Keystone
Henschke – Henry’s Seven

Whistler Wines

Toss around the word “Whistler”, and many people think of boarding and skiing down the snowy mountains of British Columbia’s Whistler Mountain (followed by some cold Kokanee beer). Whistler makes me think of the upcoming Vancouver 2010 Olympics, and whether or not I should rent my apartment and skip town, or enjoy the throngs of sport revellers.

In the wine world, Whistler Wines (whoa, that’s allotta W’s) is a family owned winery in South Australia’s Barossa Valley. Whistler Wines planted their first estate shiraz vines in 1994, followed by a range other varietals like delicious grenache and semillon. If you give the winery website a quick read, it’s evident that the whole family is into wine on some shape or form. Not sure about you, but that kinda makes me want to buy this wine over a corporate-y brand any day. 

In fact, one of the ‘fam’ let me know that a couple of the cousins teamed up this year to make an amarone style wine. If you’ve had this Italian originated wine before, you’ll know it’s a big, rich flavourful wine that goes great with food. Amarone is actually made quite a bit differently than other wines styles – the grapes are set out to partially dry on racks before pressing the juice. Lots of work!  

For now, I’ll have to stick to what’s available at stores in Vancouver. At the moment, BC-ers can pick up a bottle of lusciously blended grenache, shiraz and mourvedre called The Black Piper ($24.99). Look for ripe raspberry, plum, pepper, spice and leather from this wine. A decant or short breather in the glass always does great things for full-bodied red wines like this one. 

If you’re planning to be in the Barossa, Whistler Wines has a new project on the go. The winery will soon be home to eight rescued kangaroos in it’s new wildlife enclosure. NEAT.

Sparkling Shiraz aids Collective “Patio Weather” Obsession among Canadians

Living in Canada, as I do, I’m part of a collective obsession with “patio weather”. I’d like to propose that sparkling shiraz is an excellent beverage to see us through our spring patio cravings. (Note to policy makers: a yearly bottle stipend under provincial health care schemes would likely help reduce mental health days). In any case, if you’d like to understand this Canadian patio weather obsession, here’s a rough description of how the attitude is cultivated:  

• many Canadians spend long, warm summers boating and camping, enjoying backyard bbqs with cold beer and wine, spend lazy August weeks reading on the deck at the family summer cottage, drinking pitchers of beer on pub patios with a pile of buddies
• THEN, winter strikes and many months are spent indoors, installing remote starters for our cars (so that it’s warm by the time you get in), repeatedly shoveling the driveway, and not knowing until last minute if you can travel due to dangerous icy highways
• AT LAST! snow melts, early spring daffodils peeks through the soil, the air obtains true characteristics of warmth

That final stage reinfuses ideas of the Canadian summer lifestyle into our heads, and we positively strain toward that season. This leads to inevitable sightings of Canadians in shorts on the first sunny spring day above 10 degrees Celsius. This also leads to premature outings to neighbour patios. In April and May, hardy Canadians can often be spotted dotting the patios of restaurants situated in direct afternoon sunlight and out of the wind. Often this is during work hours on a Friday or on opening day of Major League Baseball. We may also attempt to have a weekend outdoor bbq, which offers upward to two hours of enjoyable warmth before we reach for coats, blankets and possibly toques in order to remain outdoors at all cost.

Enter sparkling shiraz. Clearly rich, red wine does not remind us of summer, and cold beer on a spring patio might result in loss of sensation in the extremities. Sparkling shiraz, however, is great served slightly chilled and exhibits much of the same flavours we love in ‘regular’ Australian shiraz. The frothy fizz tempers rich black fruit, pepper, red berries and oak. The height of summer temperatures might not do justice to something so full-bodied, which is exactly why sparkling shiraz is so good in the patio weather shoulder season. 

As with good Champagne and traditional sparkling wine, the quality of a bubbly shiraz can be judged by its fizz. Have a look in your glass and work out if the bubbles are tiny and fine, or whether larger beads gleam through the liquid. The latter can indicate intentional injection of CO2 into the wine, whereas better quality sparkling is created by actual fermentation in the bottle. (During fermentation yeast eats up sugars and converts it to alcohol and CO2 – voila, fizz.) Maybe it’s not that big a deal, but which wine seems like it’s made with more care:  manually carbonated bottles or naturally formed bubbles? If you want to ensure you’re purchasing better bubbles, bottle fermented sparkling should state “methode traditionelle” right on the label.

Finer points aside, here are some ideas of sparkling shiraz on the market in Canada:

-Katnook Estate, Founder’s Block Sparkling Shiraz, Coonawarra, South Australia
-Majella Wines Sparkling Shiraz,Coonawarra, South Australia
-Peter Lehmann, The Black Queen Sparkling Shiraz, Barossa Valley, South Australia
-Mollydooker, Goosebumps Sparkling Shiraz, McLaren Vale, South Australia
-The Black Chook Sparkling Shiraz, McLaren Vale, South Australia
-Bleasdale Langhorne Creek Sparkling Shiraz, Langhorne Creek, South Australia 

Something a little different - Sparkling Pinot Noir:
-Bird in Hand, Adelaide Hills, South Australia

Wine Stained Cow’s Teeth

Scientific studies generally help us learn that our favourite things are bad. Despite an unwillingness to know this information, we usually we end up reading these news items, in a manner reminiscent of glancing at road kill while driving. I hope you’ll keep reading this article and join me in counteracting a recent ‘road kill sighting’.

Earlier this month I stumbled across an article describing a study that found white wine is a culprit in staining your teeth. Wha? No! Oh well, it’s not as if I’ll really stop drinking white wine (except that my brain will likely point out this possibility until the memory is shelved). Hoping to think of ways to subtly mock these scientific results, I continued to read the article. That’s when I noticed researchers tested the theory by submerging cows teeth in the wine. *dramatic pause* 

Now that we’ve individually formed images of these tests (did you picture cows lined up, standing still with their bared teeth sunk into special trays full of wine?), let’s disregard the results and think about fantastic white wine. 

 

What’s your favourite white wine, any country? Admit anything here folks.

A few of mine:
Howard Park Chardonnay, Western Australia
Peter Lehmann Semillion, South Australia
Yalumba Shiraz-Viognier, South Australia (for a double staining whammy of red and white) 
Viognier, Township 7, British Columbia
Pinot Blanc, Cedar Creek, British Columbia 
Sauvignon Blanc, Kim Crawford, New Zealand 

Food & White Wine Pairing:
Chinese food can be tricky to pair with wine, especially spicy food, which can make oaked wines seem bitter. Give pinot gris from Alsace, France a shot with hoisin pork. 

I’d love to hear your comments on great white wine!  Cheers.