Pass the Appassimento - Pentage Makes Me Lucky!

Sometimes, I'm just lucky.

Earlier this summer, I bought John Schreiner's excellent book, Okanagan Wine Tour Guide (here's a link to his blog). Each page features a different winery in the Okanagan and gives a bit of the low down of the winery, what kinds of wine they produce, and his picks for wines to buy. It's the 5th edition published in 2014 so it's a little out of date (it was in the bargain section of my favourite Kelowna book store) but it gives a lot of great information on the different wineries. I throw it in the car whenever we go up to the Okanagan and refer to it when we talk about visiting different wineries.

One of the wineries that I have visited in the past is the Pentage Winery in Penticton.  A relative of mine helps out with the books at that winery so, when we visit her, we sometimes are fortunate enough to  try one of Pentage's tasty wines. While I was visiting with said relative, I read in John's book that Pentage made a 2011 Cabernet Franc Appassimento wine.

Don't worry, I'm still getting to why I'm lucky.

The appassimento style wine that most people have heard of is Amarome wine from the Veneto region (around Venice) of Italy. Basically, they pick the (mostly Corvina) grapes and leave them on straw mats to dry - usually around 120 days - and then they shrivel up (which is what appassimento translates to). Then the raisin-y grapes are pressed and left to ferment for up to 50 days. It's a bit tricky but if successful, there should be a wonderful wine that is a little sweet and has about 15% or more of alcohol with low acid that has had some aging in barriques.

After reading about Pentage appassimento style wine, I mentioned to my relative that I was curious if they still made that particular wine. I wondered - next time she was at the winery, maybe she could investigate that for me?

Well, she did - and the owner gave her a bottle of appassimento wine. And here comes the lucky part - she gave it to me!

After a lovely family dinner last night, we had mini cheesecake tarts from Hansel and Gretel bakery - just a short walk from where we live. I thought, what would go better with this then that appassimento I had just acquired?

This wine comes in a half bottle and is a 2013 Pentage Cabernet Reserve Appassimento ($35). The back of the bottle had some information but the best was on their website. This is what they had to say about the wine:

The purpose of partially drying the grapes is to concentrate sugars, and thus increase the alcohol and/or residual sugar – as well as to develop more complex aromas and flavors.
Ripe plum, raisin and vanilla dominate this intense nose with subtle herbal notes linger in the background.  The palate is rich and viscous, flavors of sweet dried plum and raisins mingle on the palate with a long fruit finish.  Would pair perfectly with dark chocolate dessert or well aged cheese.

By the way, according to John's book, Pentage dries their grapes for 58 days - at least that's what they did for the 2011 vintage.

It happened to go pretty well with cheesecake, as well!

The colour was a deep ruby and was clear. No little bits in this wine. I definitely smelled the plum and raisin - and a bit of vanilla. There also seemed to be a bit of cherry pie on the nose as well.

On the palate, there was lovely sweetness - not overly so but definitely there. The cherry pie still was evident for me as well as plum jam, raisins, fig and a touch of black currant. There was a richness that was amazing with this wine. There was low acidity, low tannins, and a medium to long finish. I am a big lover of Cabernet Franc wines and this was a great expression of that grape.

Thinking back to my WSET course, the wine was balanced, had a medium plus finish, had intense flavours, was complex and, I believe, was expressive for an appassimento style of wine. Overall, I would rate it as Outstanding - something that doesn't happen all that often!

See how lucky I was?

I haven't had a lot of appassimento styled wines such as Amarone because they are rather pricey. However, after having this tasty wine, I am going to have to investigate drinking appassimento wines a bit more regularly.

Oh, what a lucky man, I am!