The Week in Alcohol

Watch out for those rosé-colored teeth, though A new study claims that in addition to preventing heart disease, inhibiting certain forms of cancer, and making you a swell person to be with, red and white wine can also prevent tooth decay




They then presented a retroactive 1994 Best Actor Oscar to Governor Schwarzenegger Charles Shaw Chardonnay--- infamously known as Two Buck Chuck because of its $1.99 price when introduced at retailer Trader Joe's---recently won a blind tasting as Best Chardonnay from California at the California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition






Meanwhile, it was raining frogs at Vinexpo when Philippine de Rothschild refused to lower prices for 2006 Mouton Rothschild en primeur Large tracts of the Cote Roti and Alsace were recently wiped out by hail




But they were able to agree that billions and billions of neutrinos were passing through their bodies at that very instant The first International High Altitude Viticultural and Winemaking Symposium in California failed to arrive at any agreement as to what "high altitude" was


I turned 21 in prison, doin' life without parole; no one could steer me right, but Mama tried Lindsay Lohan extended her stay in rehab, canceling her wildly promoted and highly anticipated, July 2nd, lost-weekend 21st birthday boozefest at Las Vegas' PURE nightclub


I guess it helps her get through a day with Jamie Burke Actress and philosopher Sienna Miller recently stopped presses around the globe by claiming that the most meaningful relationship she has is with wine.

RSVP Tasting: Italy on $20 a day

Wine Salmagina Verdiccio Classico Superiore 2004
From Italy
Price $18.84 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 14%
Verdiccio is a white grape capable of red-grape seriousness, and this example tastes like it’s been designed to age---the emphatic fruit seems to have seen some oak, and a tannic finish asks for another year or two in the bottle. Still a work in progress; one taster compared the nose favorably to “wet wool flannel”---possibly a flashback to a combination that figured prominently in his youth.


Wine Tommasi Valpolicella 2006
From Italy
Price $18.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 12%
Whoopie! Busy nose is a mixture of butterscotch, caramel and nutrasweet that screams winemaker intervention, although the tasting’s eminence grise swears that Tommasi’s winemaker is above such things. But it’s agreed that the fun, candied-fruit intensity of this wine will easily stand up to any wine-killing food you’d care to throw at it---bring on the garlic-and-tomato sauce. Borderline overkill, but everybody likes it.

Wine Sangiovese di Majo Norante 2004
From Italy
Price $14.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Good Sangiovese fruit (although less of a punch-in-the-nose than the Valpolicella above) is nicely balanced with the tannins; you get all of the grape here in a very pleasant package. Our host sums it up: “this tasted like Italy”. He understates: put this alongside a higher-priced Chianti and see how many eyebrows you can raise.

Wine Bolla Soave 2005
From Italy
Price $14.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 12%
The nose on this Soave had the metaphors dropping from tasters’s lips like so many cans of tomatoes from the shelf: “smells like Sax Point at low tide”; “wet canvas in a greenhouse”; “benevolent socks”. The nose proved the most interesting part---palate was unassuming but not refreshing, with a dusky finish. Consensus seemed to be that this was the wine to drink with crummy food---you’ve got nothing to lose, and there’s nothing to interfere with the taste of the french-fries.

Wine Plozner Tocai Friulano 2003
From Italy
Price $15.99 (Kensington Wines, Alta.)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Mineral nose leads to a palate of an Alsace-like balancing act between sweet fruit and rocks. Sophisticated: One eager young taster wondered aloud “is this the first Italian white I actually like?” First-rate.

Wine A Mano Primativo Puglia
From Italy
Price $16.51 (Spinnakers BC)
Alcohol Content 14%
Almost Pinot-like cherry nose. Uncomplicated, but not, well, primitive. The big alcohol is not a factor; this is not a Primativo parading its genetic brotherhood with Zinfandel. A subtle, dusky fruit-sweetness predominates, with a good dollop of acidity keeping the finish in balance and the tannins under the radar. Made by a North-American winemaker, and has a clean, new-world style. Nice combination.

RSVP Tasting: What our agent had in the cupboard

Wine Concannon Limited Release Central Coast Pinot Noir 2004
From Livermore, California
Alcohol Content 13.2%
Wine is 15% Syrah, which possibly accounts for the slightly gamy nose. Classic pre-steroid era modestly-priced California Pinot taste: sweet-yet-dry, seductive, but not really educated. The nose may be the high point.

Wine Lehman Wildcard Unoaked Chardonnay 2006
From Australia
Price $15.44 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13%
Light, easygoing, a little faceless. No oak means it actually tastes like the grape, with the added virtue that it doesn’t taste like the caricature Aussie chard either. Doesn’t taste like anywhere in particular, actually—which was probably the point. Nice, generic chard.

Wine Gehrenger Estate Classic Dry Riesling
From British Columbia
Price $13.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Floral notes on the nose according to one taster; a punch-in-the-face style hobbled a tiny bit by some greenness on the palate; but helped by acid freshly in balance. Fearless Leader: “Not bad—but why isn’t it in a Riesling bottle…?” Producer trying to sneak this one in under the searchlights?

Wine Orofino Gewürztraminer 2006
From British Columbia
Price $19.22 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13.6%
Big lychee nose! Rich, fruity, unctuous gewurz flavors, in the beat-you-up style favored by this winemaker. A nice definition of the grape, aged in Ontario (!) oak. This wine caused the lead taster to resort even to Southern-Hemispheric complements: “ripper, eh?”

Wine Orofino Riesling 2006
From British Columbia
Price $19.22 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13.8%
Big nose is soft and pleasant; leading to a user-friendly (i.e., acid-muted) attack and bigger-than-usual Ries flavors. This is in line with the style of the house: made to beat you up but keep you smiling. Perhaps tries a little too hard to make you smile, but manages its strength admirably.

Wine Marques de Gelida Brut Exclusive
From A.O. Penedes, Spain
Price $22.99 (Distributor List)
Sparkling Cava is a mix of Macabeo, Xarel-lo, Paradella and Chardonnay. No nose to speak of; very clean attack. A agreeable, non-geographic flavor builds to a mild crescendo and slowly fades. Decent fruit; not too brutal (not cloying either); has a sense of universality in its aspirations; very pleasant.

Wine Lehman Wildcard Shiraz 2005
From Australia
Price $16.58 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 14.5%
Big alcohol on the nose! Tastes as planned as a Soviet-era housing development—cloying candy notes lead to an alarming, tannic finish. (Why didn’t they strip that out as well?) So fruity-sweet and alcoholic that it feels like they’re going after the Gallo Thunderbird market. A sumo wrestler on the cricket pitch.

Wine Cave de Tain St Joseph ‘Esprit de Granit’ 2003
From Rhone Valley, France
Price $33.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content13.5%
Peppery nose; subtle but strong. After a handful of new-world pretenders, this comes on like Serge Gainsbourg proposing to Bridget Bardot. Plenty of happy oohs and ahhs around the table; but there’s skepticism from our expatriate Southern Hemisphere taster: “But is this twice as good as the Lehman…?” Everybody else, as with one voice: “YES!”

RSVP Tasting: Rhone Varietals Abroad

Wine Chateau de Serame 2004
From Corbieres, France
Price $18.21 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 13.5%
New-world style well-managed by an old-world producer: fruit is big both on the nose and the palate, but somehow avoids the kind of steroid-induced muscle that overwhelms you. Designed for the multitudes; the multitudes around this particular table all enjoyed it. One caveat: a bit pricey; but then, this is BC.

Wine Peter Lehman Barossa Shiraz 2004
From Australia
Price 24.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 14.5%
Big, big, big. Did I say big? This is a bulldozer of a wine—forget your meal unless it’s mutton with 1000 cloves of garlic. Or chocolate. Well-made, and the strength isn’t ham-handed either, but you get a dazed rather than lingering finish—you’ve been laid out by what came before. Pretend it’s a dry desert wine and drink it from tiny glasses.

Wine Torres Catalunya Sangre de Toro 2004
From Spain
Price $12.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 13.5%
Slight nose; sweet attack not unlike a more modest version of the Corbieres above, although the tannins are a little harsh; a bit older-world. Our host even found notes of “green tobacco-leaf”; consensus was that it was not bad for the price, although we were reminded by our Godfather (and merchant) that he sold four equivalent labels for less. “Torres hasn’t kept up.”

Wine Chateau de Valcombe Costieres de Nimes 2003
From France
Price $16.40 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 13.5%
Grenache/Syrah blend. A slightly fishy, gamy nose hints at a seriousness of purpose not really followed up on the palate. Biting tannins led to a quick finish in a fashion described by one taster as ‘linear’. No huge enthusiasm from the group, although at least one person wanted to try it with food employing thyme and rosemary.

Wine La Veille Ferme Cotes du Ventoux 2005
From France
Price $13.99 (BC Liquor Stores)
Alcohol Content 13.5
Widely available and widely known (116,000 cases of this were made in 2005) this wine nevertheless repays your attention—especially in the context of the BC reds with which it’s competing. Briefly, their ‘simple and pleasant’ is better than our ‘simple and pleasant’—this is a meant to be a younger cousin to a Chateauneuf-de-Pape, and the Cotes de Ventoux growers and winemakers have enough skill and tradition to draw on that they nail it beautifully. At Ontario prices ($11.65) this is a world-beater.

Wine D’Arenberg The Stump Jump Grenache/Shiraz/Mourvedre 2005
From Australia
Price $16.06 (Spinnakers, BC)
Alcohol Content 14.0%
Nose hints at the big fruit to follow; palate big, but a bit dumb and one-dimensional. Sweet fruit skates along the edge of blandness. Serviceable.


Wine Boekenhoutskloof The Wolftrap 2004
From South Africa
Price $16.06
Alcohol Content 14.0%
Dry mineral nose; lots of fruit on the palate, but not over the top; nicely balanced with some tartness and a more savory fruit style. Comments (everybody had something to say) ranged from “funky” to “rustic—not a techie wine” to “bridges the old and new worlds”. Consensus favorite of the tasting; people hung around to finish the bottle.

The Week in Alcohol

But they gave Jancis Robinson the pull-down baby-changing station in the business-class washroom US Airways will be laminating Business Week articles by Robert Parker into their pull-down tray-tables on their economy-class seats. According to BW Publisher Geoff Dodge, "This unique partnership affords Business Week a great opportunity to place our content in front of a captive audience of potential users."


By the time you get through the bottle, the code on the back of the label looks pretty damn sexy A dating service called Soif de coeur ("Thirsty Heart") puts out a line of wines (one each of red, white and rosé) with a hidden code on the back of the bottle's label. Clients register with the service and provide personal details and biographies to its database. Clients can see the code through the glass of the empty bottle, and that unique code will provide a match with another registeree.


And on the inside of the label is a code that gets you a date with a chicken Wine That Loves... is a new line of table-wines from The Amazing Food Wine Company. It comes in opaque bottles with a picture on the label of whatever food it's designed to pair with.





...And, of course, Lindsay Lohan started her second week in rehab.

RSVP Tasting: New Quails among the Cedars

Wine Cedar Creek Proprietor’s White 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $9.99 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 13.8%
A kitchen-sink blend dominated by Chardonnay, this has a fresh, citrus nose with some herbaceous overtones. Not unexpectedly, no particular fruit-type really steps up, but there’s plenty of it. Aims to be a good $10 patio bottle and succeeds.

Wine Cedar Creek Proprietor’s Red 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $9.99 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 12.8%
Wine is 100% Gamay Noir, and seemingly not potent enough to market as such. No nose to speak of; pleasant and indistinct fruit; not meant to be a big deal—and isn’t. (Too many of the group pronounced it “light” for that to be seen as a complement.) There are other Okanagan producers competing in this price and product range, and so far, they’re winning.

Wine Quail’s Gate Chasselas/Pinot Blanc 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $15.99 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 12.5%
Healthy nose and a palate of sweet fruit on a dry background. A very pleasant patio-mixer, although the winemaker’s agent’s claim that it was “simple and seductive” brought with it unfortunate images of Ellie Mae Clampett. (Not helped by promotional notes describing the acid as “racy”) Still, in the words of the eminence grise: “very refreshing”.

Wine Cedar Creek Estate Select Chardonnay 2005
From Okanagan, BC
Price $20.99 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 14.2%
Wine was barrel-fermented and left sur lees for 11 months. Smoky, buttery oak on the attack dominates the fruit, but is still pleasant. Slightly stemmy finish; one taster noted what seemed a “slight hint of botrytis” (presumably a good thing). All in all, a good, big-style new-world effort.

Wine Quails Gate Chenin Blanc 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $18.99 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 13.5
Mix is 86% Chenin Blanc with 14% Sauvignon Blanc. “Rapier-like acidity” in the words of one hyperbolic taster; some green overtones to the mid-palate. Simple, but as advertised, good with oysters.

Wine Quails Gate Gamay Rosé 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $14.99(MSL)
Alcohol Content 13.5%
Stemmy nose, although what followed on the palate moved one philosophical taster to dub this “a white wine that feels it should be red”. (The consensus was that this meant that the wine had a sense of structure above its place in the food-chain.) Thankfully lacking the over-acidity of so many rosés (which are, after all, largely failed reds.) User-friendly.

Wine Cedar Creek Ehrenfelser 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $15.99 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 13.8%
Big and sweet. (Alcohol-hot as well, but in this case, it brings out the fruit.) “Mouth-watering acidity” in the words of one taster moved to poetic feeling. Almost late-harvest in its strength; fruit is big, dopey and friendly. (Is Ehrenfelser still a marginal grape because at its best it tastes like a mix?) 1427 cases produced; coming soon to a store near you.

Wine Cedar Creek Estate Select Pinot Noir 2005
From Okanagan, BC
Price $26.99 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 14.1%
Smoky nose. Not much fruit—like many Pinots, this tastes like it’s been worked to within a centimeter of its life. (Winemaker Tom Di Bello has developed an interventionist reputation as the Jack Bauer of anti-terroirists.) A strange nutrasweet-burst of sweetness bizarrely appears at the finish and disappears just as promptly; in the words of one taster, “the math doesn’t come together.” After the bottle had been put away, he group’s eminence grise put a fatherly arm around your correspondent and whispered “I didn’t like that at all.”

Wine Quails Gate Dry Riesling 2006
From Okanagan, BC
Price $16.99 (MSL)
Alcohol Content 13.0
Decent Riesling nose; fruit a bit underpowered, but has finesse. One taster, surely near the end of his rope, observed that “salmon makes this wine taste fishy.” Cooler heads noted that the alcohol was overpowering the fruit, and wished that more winemakers making Riesling in the New World would follow the lead of the Germans: “9% alcohol, and this wine becomes a willowy blond.”