Picnic at Rocky Creek (with a side-trip to Church and State)

Wine Rocky Creek Pinot Noir 2005
From Vancouver Island
Price $19.90 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 11.9%
Seductive (rather than aggressive) peppery, new-world style Pinot scent makes you want to keep your nose in the glass. On the palate, there’s an acid-forward, candy-like opening leading to some nice, tasty oak---too much of it, but tasty nonetheless. The oak unfortunately gets more emphatic and unbalanced the longer the wine stays in the glass. (Later explained by the winemaker as a problem with the wine being aged in Hungarian, instead of the expected French, oak---chalk up another one for Central-European belligerence….)

Wine Rocky Creek Pinot Gris 2006
From Vancouver Island
Price $14.90 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 11.9%
Peach-like colour and peachy, soft-fruit nose. Palate is Chablis-steely, with acid nicely in balance and fruit a bit recessive---certainly true to itself with no attempts to be all things to all people.This is for serious eaters; not a patio wine. Mature winemaking.

Wine Rocky Creek Blackberry Port
From Vancouver Island
Alcohol Content 16%
Gosh, smells like blackberries! Some tannin, but mostly a big, sweet explosion of fruit---jammy to say the least. No port-like complexity, just big fruit and alcohol to show it off, which means you may appreciate it even more over ice-cream than in a glass.


Wine Rocky Creek Ortega 2006
From Vancouver Island
Price $14.90
Alcohol Content 11.9%
Made from grapes harvested at just over one ton per acre to produce 150 cases---a Romani-Conti-like yield which at these prices may just yield bankruptcy for its producers. But the care shows: Emphatic nose with good aromatics; grapefruit notes on the palate; good, almost Muscadet-like weight. Fearless Leader: “I think this is a heck of an Ortega!”


Wine Church and State Church Mouse Chardonnay 2005
From BC
Price $16.90 (BC Liquor stores)
Alcohol Content 14.3
Soft fruit presented in a big (and these days, generic) international style; finish still a bit green and alcohol a bit hot. Nothing unique, but that’s not what’s being attempted, which is ‘we can do this here, too.’ Still, at this price, nobody goes home unhappy.

Wine Church and State Church Mouse Pinot Noir 2005
From BC
Price Stay tuned
Alcohol Content 13.6%
This divided tasters, though not to the point of fisticuffs: Fearless Leader gave it a thumb held reasonably high; others found it mismanaged with an over-oaky nose and palate, and too-green tannins in the aftertaste. In the words of one harsher critic, “When the sweetness comes from the oak instead of the fruit, you’re in trouble.”


Wine Church and State Church Mouse Merlot 2005
From BC
Price Stay tuned
Alcohol Content 14.98%
Fun nose! (Not dull, that’s for sure.) Good fruit lingers on palate; soft tannins and sweet, well-balanced oak---this handles the oaky intervention much better than the Pinot above. Claimed alcohol content more a measure of winemaker ambitions than reality; a bit like James Cameron’s claim that Titanic had a running time of ‘two hours and 76 minutes’.

Wine Church and State Saddle Ridge Vinyard Syrah 2005
From BC
Price $26.- (MSL)
Alcohol Content 14.4%
In a word, aggressive. Rough, persistent tannins make it almost impossible to read, except through the crystal ball. Come back to this space in a couple of years.