Vertical Tasting - Drink Up!

A little over a year ago, I participated in my first vertical tasting, ever. I was at Hester Creek for their first Crush Party and, on the Cellar Tour, we were given the opportunity to try out three different vintages of their flagship blend, The Judge. I loved tasting the differences between the different vintages/ You can read more about it here but the reason I mention it is because I recently got the chance to try another vertical tasting, but on my own terms!

Recently, I was in Kelowna visiting with my daughter and son-in-law (who both work for wineries in the Okanagan). My son-in-law, Dan, is an expert sommelier and has a wonderful wine collection that he and my daughter are very generous to share whenever we visit. On the last night of our recent visit, he suggested that we do a vertical tasting - and it was a very memorable time!

First of all, to do a vertical tasting, it is probably a good idea to have three wines. It's much more fun to go back and forth between the different vintages.

The second thing you need is enough wine glasses so that everyone can have all of the wines in front of them. When we went to Hester Creek last year, we used the same glass so you only had your memory to go by when comparing. With 9 glasses laid out, the three of us were free to go back and forth between the different vintages.

The Coravin in action

The final thing is not necessary but, if you don't want to polish off all of the wine that night, a really good wine extraction system is ideal. Dan has the Coravin which is one that is proven to work well for preserving - maybe not forever but certainly for a several months at least.  Lots of tests have been done on coravined bottles and wine will last upwards of a year. The Coravin works like this - a thin needle goes through the cork of the bottle and allows wine to go out of the bottle while you pump argon into the bottle (thus avoiding oxygenation). The needle comes out and, when you're done, the cork self-seals, and you put what's left in the cellar.

The wines we tasted were all Quail's Gate 'The Boswell" Syrah. There was a 2013, a 2014, and 2015. The list price on all of them is $54.99 but I am not sure if you are actually able to get all of them anymore. Dan collected them over the last couple of years.

Three vintages of Quail's Gate 'The Boswell' Syrah

The 2013 was, at first, a little understated. However, this is the advantage of having three glasses sitting in front of you. Each time I came back to it, the taste and nose was better and better. This wine was a touch garnet on the edges in colour. On the nose was a bit of pepper and fruit and some complex earthy smells that were really interesting. On the palate, there was more of the earthy(almost barnyard) and even mineral flavours with some dark plum as well as an almost meaty flavour that I had a hard time discerning (thanks, Dan!). It was incredible how it opened up as we swirled and sipped (but no spitting with this wine!). Definitely one to decant for an hour or so before drinking!  It also had a great long finish. A wonderful wine!

The 2014, at first, seemed very good compared to my initial taste of the 2013. This, however, started to change as time went on. It had lost it's fruitiness (that the 2015 had) but had not yet fully developed the earthy flavours of the 2013. Sometimes, when you lay down a wine, it has a time where it is transitioning and does not quite taste like a fresh, new wine nor does it quite taste like an earthy, complex classic.  After going back to the 2014 several times, this wine tasted like it was on the road to developing some complex, earthy flavours but was not quite there yet. Still a very good wine, but one that was sort of stuck in the middle. Luckily, thanks to the Coravin, Dan put the rest of the wine back in the cellar for, hopefully, another six to twelve months.

The 2015 was a very nice wine. Although it had fairly strong tannins, thanks to its youth, the black fruits like black plums and black currants were very strong on the nose as well as the palate along with black cherries and pepper. It also had some really nice complexity - you can tell that this wine will be a fantastic, complex wine, comparable to the 2013. I would definitely put this one in the cellar for two to three years - but it was still complex and interesting enough to drink right away.

It was an amazing experience to try these fantastic Okanagan wines. It is incredible to actually smell and taste how different these wines were, even though they were from the same grape - the same vineyard, in fact - but just differed by year. To top it off, after our tasting there was still a half a bottle left in each one which was resealed thanks to the Coravin, waiting for some other wine aficionados to try them out.

Reorganizing the wines in my cellar

It also prompted me to go through my wine cellar. I now have seven cases of assorted wines that I am ageing and my previous method of organization was to go down to the cellar, open up every box, look at every bottle, and decide to bring 6 or 8 bottles up. My new organization required me to bring every box and wine bottle up, take photos of them all, enter them in Vivino, note which box each wine was in, and export the cellar info from Vivino to an Excel spreadsheet. Now I can sort all of the wines by year, winery, varietal, etc. so that I can see if I have wines that could be candidates for a vertical tasting. Lo and behold, I have bottles of Tinhorn Creek Oldfield Syrah from 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014!

All I need is a Coravin!

Hester Creek Crush Party - Passion in a Bottle!

Last year, I went to the first Hester Creek Crush Party at the winery. It was a brilliant time! This past weekend, I was once again invited to this fabulous event. Everything about the day was enjoyable and very well put together.

We arrived about a half hour early (my wife wanted a good choice of parking so we could easily lug our wine home) and wandered into the wine shop. We were offered a tasting but when we declined, saying that we wanted to save ourselves for the party, the wine shop associate delivered three large glasses of ice water while we waited outside on the sun drenched patio. Nice touch!

A half hour later, we walked into the party, greeted by a couple of people including a friendly guy who I would later find out was the manager. In our tasting wine glass, were 2 coupons for glasses of wine and a sample card for their special release, the Garland, commemorating 50 years.

We walked into the courtyard where the party was taking place and, after getting a pour of their rosé, wandered over to the charcuterie section. There were different cheeses, breads, pepperoni, chilled clams, tomato tapenade, rillette, pickles, olives and host of other wonderful savoury foods, all prepared by Rod Bitters, the mastermind behind Raudz in Kelowna as well as Terrafina at Hester Creek.

We sat down at one of the many tables and enjoyed our food in the shade when my daughter noticed the hot food at the other side of the courtyard. Rod, himself, was one of the people serving up a great selection of food including a wonderful pork sausage, beef meatballs, and coleslaw, all which could be made into a slider. There was also pasta, salad and pizza - nicely prepared and very tasty. It was worth being in the club for the food alone!

There was a fairly strong breeze blowing and when I had returned with my food, I had discovered that my quarter glass of rosé had blown over, splashing my daughter's fancy dress! Luckily, it was a dark dress so was well disguised!

By the way, we are "Loyalty" members - all we had to do was make an initial purchase of a case of wine - and now we are in the club! No fees, no yearly commitment to buy wine (although we manage to purchase some every year), and no unexpected deliveries. Plus, you generate points with each purchase which can be used to buy more wine! It's the best wine club deal I've seen in the Okanagan.

At that point, we decided to go over to the Terra Unica section. Terra Unica wines are only available to wine club members (another good reason to be in their wine club) and we tried two whites that were delicious. The first was a 2016 Riesling - an off dry, flavourful wine with tastes of honey, apricot and pear while the second was a 2017 Semillon - refreshingly dry, it had flavours of apple and peach as well as something more substantial. It would be perfect with a nice fish like grilled halibut or even foie gras.

The first event that we had signed up for was the Cellar Tour. The winemaker, Rob Summers, was great the previous year where his passion for wine was so apparent. This year, Rob again led the tour where we escaped the hot sun into the coolness of the winery cellar.

The first wine we tried was a 2017 Old VinesTrebbiano ($24) - an Italian grape that is usually used for blending. Hester Creek is the only winery in the Okanagan to make Trebbiano and the vines that they grow it from are 50 years old. The wine was very pale and the aroma of pears was subtle. The taste was fruity and light - this would make a wonderful patio sipper.  I commented to my daughter that I could drink this one all day long (and got an eye roll in return).

The other wine that I really liked - and I mean really liked - was their 2015 Block 3 Reserve Cabernet Franc ($29). This wine was spectacular - it had everything that I wanted in a Cab Franc. There was a boldness of taste that the last Cab Franc I had was definitely lacking. It was all there - red fruits, plums, strawberry, black currant, and wonderful blueberries and lots of tannins to give this wine some excellent structure.

Rob definitely talked about the wine but what I enjoyed last year, as well as this year, was the stories he told - and he told a bunch. My favourite was when someone asked about how the winery dealt with animals that affected the grapes like birds (they use sound cannons - other than that, there isn't significant loss) and bears.

He first talked about how bears will eat a few grapes from one vine and then, 'squirrel!", will see the nice red grape of the next vine and eat a few there - and so on until they have eaten some of every plant in the row, compromising all of those grapes!

With Rob Summers, the extremely personable winemaker of Hester Creek

Before Rob was winemaker, the common practice was to shoot the bears - not a difficult feat because once the bear had finished eating, it would lay down and go to sleep in the vineyard, knowing there were plenty of grapes for the next meal. Rob found this to be rather cruel so he spend $10,000 to build a fence around his winery - and got the other two wineries nearby to do the same - and now the bears are not a big problem- most of the time. The occasional bear does wander down the main road (where there is no fence) and, if they get in, will be trapped in the vineyard with all those beautiful grapes! Then it's time to play Shoo, Bear!

After our excellent visit,we tried the Garland, which is their special commemorative once-in-a-lifetime wine as the winery is actually 50 years old! A blend of Cab, Cab Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot, and Malbec, the Garland ($60 - named after the owner, I believe) is a wonderful Bordeaux/Meritage style blend.  I'm not sure where you can get it other than the winery, but it is certainly worth tracking down. The taste I had was wonderfully complex but this wine probably needs to age for five years. I purchased a bottle for the cellar - let's see how long I can keep my hands of it for.

I had a full glass of the Cab Franc (did I mention that I really liked this wine?) with my second ticket and then we headed off for our second tour, the Vineyard Tour.

This tour was held by the president, Mark Sheridan. The previous tour had shown a passionate winemaker in Rob Summers and this tour showed how Mark was equally passionate about growing grapes. While we sipped on a tasty 2017 Pinot Gris ($18), he explained the workings of the vineyard, and answered many questions from the group.

Being from Australia, where water has always been a scarce resource, he said that he was initially shocked by the early irrigation practices in the Okanagan where vineyards would basically use sprinklers to water the vines - an ineffective way to do this. Now, with global warming a reality, he has implemented much more eco-friendly practices such as drip irrigation which are effective but also conserve water.

Another topic he talked about was the state of the Okanagan wine industry. I will try to be accurate in my take away although, by this point, I had had a bit of wine and was pleasantly baking in the sun. He said that the great variety of grapes grown in the Okanagan is one of its strengths - that there are so many micro climates and soils types that we can successfully grow different grapes, as long as we are growing the right grape for the terroir.

In the vineyard with Mark Sheridan, president of Hester Creek

The second thing was that the Okanagan wine prices have to be competitive with the world prices for similar wine. He felt that there were wineries in the Okanagan (no, he didn't say who) that charge too much - some, way too much - for their wines, especially when you compare the wines to somewhere like Spain or Argentina. He pointed to Hester Creek's signature blend of Cab, Cab France and Merlot called the Judge.  It has sold for $45 for the past five years - and he said that it can compete with any other $45 bottle of wine from anywhere else in the world. That's both passion and confidence!

After listening to Rob and Mark, I had a whole new appreciation for Hester Creek. What a passionate team! Hunger satiated and feeling good, even if a little baked, we headed for the wine store to stock up on this year's fine release of wines. A marvellous day!