Nichol Gewurtz, Poplar Grove Merlot, & Petales D'Osoyoos

As promised, a report on some of the wines we bought on the trip to the bench. As also promised (threatened?), notes on a meal cooked at home.

On Thursday we had an impromptu dinner party with some friends who we often eat with, but who, for various reasons, won’t be able to join in for a while. This was ‘discovered’ at about 3, leaving me little time to plan. Luckily, while driving back from the Okanagan, I had been occupied (some might say obsessed), with planning (an imaginary) BC wine meal incorporating some of the things we had tasted there. So I had some ready ideas to call upon.

I had been looking for a cheese from Poplar Grove to start out with, but my local cheese place didn’t have any in stock and I didn’t have time to run all over the city, so I went with something new, an ash-ripened camembert from Moonstruck Organic Cheese Inc. (www.moonstruckcheese.com). It was quite good. The rind was a little off-putting, but it was nice and creamy, and got us started off well. Although we usually like to start off with something bubbly, I wasn’t sure that we’d make it through that in time for the first course, so we went ahead and opened the Nichol Gewurtz.

It was a bit of a shot in the dark, but from the winemaker's description, it sounded like it would pair well with what I was making: seared miso and sake marinated scallops, served over a puree of local English peas (with chicken stock, shallots, ginger, and mirin), and topped with carrot and daikon dressed with rice and white balsamic vinegars. The Gewurtz was perfect with it. Nichol makes a drier, less lychee-floral Gewurtz than many places in the Okanagan, which is just what the dish needed. The main course was pomegranate chicken, miso glazed potatoes, and broccoli tossed with sesame oil. (It was what we were having for dinner anyway. Maybe if I get ambitious I’ll post the recipe…if I can remember what I did.) We had intended to have it with Lost Canyon Pinot (from California, www.lostcanyonwinery.com/wines.htm), but the bottle we had turned out to be spoiled, so we quickly opened a pinot a friend had recently brought us from Oregon, Duck Pond Cellars (www.duckpondcellars.com) instead. Another successful pairing.

Dessert was some mixed berry pie I had made the day before. Our guests brought a Late-Harvest wine from Paradise Ranch (www.icewines.com/home.html). It was a Chardonnay/Riesling blend. I’m still not sure what I thought of it. It was the least sweet dessert wine I’ve ever had, and so it was good that my pie was a ‘little’ tart.

The evening didn’t end there. We ended up chatting for so long, that we decided another bottle was in order. Wanting to stay as much with the BC theme as possible, we opened a bottle of Pétales d’Osoyoos from Osoyoos Larose to show them one of our new finds. It was as good as we remembered from our dinner at the inn. Later, it was a bottle of 2004 Merlot from Poplar Grove (www.poplargrove.ca) that we picked up on our trip last year. We hadn’t tried it before, so had no idea what it was going to be like. It was really really delicious! (Although they say the stuff will cellar for years, it seems to us that it would have been well past peak in anything more than another year or two.) We will definitely buy more. Funny that I’m ending talking about BC reds, given what I wrote earlier about the whites. However, I still stand by my position that the whites are generally better. In my opinion, it's really about value for money. You can get really wonderful BC whites for relatively little money, but reds, you have to spend more on, and even that’s no guarantee.

Till the next notable wine or meal, which hopefully won’t be long!