Gehringer Brothers Classic Ehrenfelser 2003

Gehringer Brothers Classic Ehrenfelser 2003

We first encountered the Gehringer Brothers Ehrenfelser on a trip to Penticton, B.C., around 1998. We ate at Granny Bogner's, and had what is still, at least in rememberance, one of our best meals of all time. Granny Bogner's featured, as you might expect, a lot of Canadian wines. We picked this one pretty much at random, and loved it. Ehrenfelser, developed in Germany in the 1920s, is a cross of Riesling and Silvaner. It does well in cool climates, and thus is well-suited to the Okanagan. The wine, on its own, did not perhaps "wow" us in quite the way it did in context during a romantic dinner at Granny Bogner's, but it's still excellent, coming across very much like a dry Riesling, which makes it both a pleasure to drink and very food-friendly. Our rating: 7/10.

Sterling Sterling Vineyard Winery Lake Pinot Noir 1999

Sterling Vineyard Winery Lake Pinot Noir 1999

Pleasant, but not outstanding, this Sterling Vineyard Pinot Noir has a bouquet of berry and wood smoke. It had a brownish tinge, but was still pleasantly tannic and probably would have aged longer. It went very well with a strong-flavored roasted-pepper-and-caper tapenade appetizer. Our rating: 7/10.

30-year-old Noe Pedro Ximenez Muy Viejo Jerez

30-year-old Noe Pedro Ximenez Muy Viejo Jerez

While in Calgary we went in search of the Lustau sherry we brought back from last year's trip...and came up dry. Or, rather, with an alternative: this 30-year-old Noe Pedro Ximenez Muy Viejo. At $30 for a half-bottle, it was about the same price as the Lustau. We think we enjoyed the Lustau more...but only slightly. This is still absolutely fabulous wine. Whereas the other made us think "chocolate" on first tasting it, for this one the first note struck was definitely "coffee." Yes, figs and raisins, as you'd expect, but coffee, too, and coffee came through very strongly on the finish. It's so rich that just a little goes a very long way...which, at the price, is a good thing. Our rating: 8/10.

The wines we had at Calgary's River Cafe

Every year for the past several we've gone to Calgary at least once, and every time, we've promised ourselves we would eat at the River Cafe in Prince's Island Park. This year, we finally did it...and wish we hadn't waited so long. It was a beautiful summer evening, and we sat bay wide-open windows with a delicious breeze wafting over us. The food was absolutely heavenly, and the restaurant offered a splendid selection of wine by the glass, with suggested pairings for each of the dishes on the menu (suggestions we followed, mainly).

We don't have label photos, but here are some brief notes on the wines we enjoyed:

Vielle Ferme Costieres de Nimes Grenache, France: On the dry side for drinking on its own, but went well with food--really blossomed, in fact.

Heartland Viognier-Pinot Gris, Australia: A wonderful floral nose and a nice citrusy taste. Very food-friendly, as both Viognier and Pinot Gris tend to be. It was perfect with teh pea puree that was part of the magnificent seared halibut.

Waterwheel Shiraz , Bendigo, Australia: A lovely, inviting bouquet and bursting with berry flavor, this was a reasonable match with the elk and portabello mushrooms but (not surprisingly) did not go at all with the pear that was also part of that dish.

We highly recommend the River Cafe if you're in Calgary. It's the best restaurant we've eaten at in a long time, anywhere.

Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc 2004

Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc 2004

To complete our comparison tasting (it didn't start out that way, but that's the way it developed) of New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs, we bought this Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc before leaving Calgary (this time on our own initiative instead of at the recommendation of a store employee). This one was better than the Craggy Ridge Vineyard one but not as outstanding as the Cloudy Bay. Nevertheless, it does seem to provide evidence that you can't go too far wrong in New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs if you stick to the ones with "Bay" in their names. It has a grassy nose, and is more on the vegetal rather than fruity side of the flavor ledger, as well, so it's quite different from the Cloudy Bay, but it's an excellent wine of its type. It was a good match for the dinner we served it with, chicken/cumin salad on lettuce, corn on the cob, and potatoes. Our rating: 7/10.

Craggy Range Winery Sauvignon Blanc 2003

Craggy Range Winery Sauvignon Blanc 2003

This one was a disappointment. We mentioned to the Eau Claire Wine Market staffer that we had enjoyed the Cloudy Bay and wondered what else she recommended in a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. This Craggy Range Winery Sauvignon Blanc from the Te Muna Road Vineyard (all their wines are single-vineyard wines) is the one she pointed us to, and on the strength of that recommendation, we bought it. And it was...ordinary. And that's being kind. Thin and uninteresting would be less kind. No, it wasn't bad. It was a perfectly satisfactory wine, of the sort hotel bartenders serve to people who simply ask for "a glass of white wine." But after the Cloudy Bay (which certainly cost no more than this one and may even have cost less--we don't have the receipts handy to say for sure), it left us cold. We were most disappointed, however, not in the wine, but in the fact that the Wine Market, which we were otherwise impressed with, let us down so badly. Our rating out of 10: 5.

Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc 2004

Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc 2004

At the International Wine and Food Festival at the Banff Springs Hotel a few years ago, we had the delightful experience of a Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc tasting. We were both blown away by the rich tropical fruit flavours and bouquet. Ever since, we've followed the dictum that any New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc with "Bay" in the name is bound to be good, while figuring, for some reason, that the actual Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc that had so impressed us would be very expensive. We don't see it in Saskatchewan, but there it was at the Eau Claire Wine Market in Calgary--and it wasn't really all that expensive at all. We bought it and enjoyed it in our hotel (we were there for Westercon 58, a major science fiction convention). It was every bit as wonderful as we remembered, bursting with mouth-watering pineapple and citrus flavours. Yum. Our rating out of 10: 8.5.

Zonnebloem Limited Edition Cabernet Sauvignon 1995

Zonnebloem Limited Edition Cabernet Sauvignon 1995

We think we must have bought this one at the International Wine and Food Festival at the Banff Springs Hotel in 1997, the year South African wines were featured. (It was also more or less our honeymoon.) At the age of 10 years, the wine is very brown, with a smokey, "cigar box" bouquet. It's still full-bodied, with cocnetrated berry flavors and a lovely lingering aftertaste. We found it perfectly balanced, but just possibly on the downhill side of its prime. It went well with spaghetti with a rich, vegetable-and-spices-full tomato sauce. Our rating out of 10: 7.5.

Martinshof Kerner Spätlese 2002

Martinshof Kerner Spätlese 2002

Another of those German wines we ordered through the German Wine Society. Originating in the Pfalz region, this wine was (to quote Ed's first reaction) "yummy." Sweet and fruity, it was very German--in a very good way. We ate it with a variety of foods, and found it went well with Thai noodle salad and also with salty ham. It wasn't so great with salami, which overpowered it, but it wasn't bad with watermelon-feta-olive-lime-juice-cilantro salad. (OK, we're sure there's a catchier name for that salad, but it's too late at night to make the effort to look it up.) Our rating out of 10: 7.5.

Catching up...

We were away for a couple of weeks at the end of June and beginning of July, and with one thing or another, we're just now getting around to catching up.

Just in case you were worried about us...