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Saturday May 19: 1-5pm
at
Bowen Island beer and Wine Cellar, 103-996 Dorman Road (under the Ruddy Potato)
Chenin Blanc is one of the under-appreciated white grapes. It can be made into stellar dry white table wines, delectable sweet wines and smashing sparklers. Its spiritual roots are in France’s Loire Valley where it has been grown for nearly a 1,000 years.
This tasting will focus on table wines suitable for a long and, hopefully, hot weekend on the patio or deck. Expect a line up of quality wines, including a couple of Chenin blends, from BC, France, California, and South Africa. Working on adding a sparkling Chenin into the set as well.
Like this:
Bowen Children’s Centre (BCC) is holding a wine tasting at Artisan Eats cafe Thursday May 3, 2012 from 7-9pm.
The event features a guided tasting by BC`s 8th Generation winery. A flight of 7 wines from their selection will be served along with cheeses provided by Artisan Eats.
8th Generation are one my favourite BC wineries so this is an event well worth attending. You will also be able to order the wines at winery price at the event and pick them up from us later.
Please join us this #BowFEAST weekend to celebrate eating and drinking locally. This is our 4th annual BC wine fest featuring FREE samples of great BC wines. Wines will be poured over 3 days starting Friday at 2pm.
Tasting session times:
Friday 2pm-6pm
Saturday 1pm – 5pm
Sunday 1pm to 5pm
On Saturday shop the #BowFEAST Farmers market from 9am to Noon. Have a nice lunch in the Cove, then mosey up to our new store on Dorman Road under the Ruddy Potato and taste some great BC wines to go with your fresh, local food for dinner.
While we end formal tasting at 6pm, if we have wine left you are welcome to come in later and try what’s still open
Big line up this year with totally different wines each day:
Participating Wineries and wines. Tasting order is yet to be determined but over the 3 days we’ll be opening wines from among the following:
The View - Frizzante, Gewurztraminer, Pinotage
Quails Gate - Rosé, Chenin Blanc
Tinhorn Creek - Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay
Stoneboat – Pinotage, Pinot Gris
Ganton & Larsen Prospect winery – Sauvignon Blanc, Unoaked Chardonnay
Lake Breeze - Pinot Blanc, Meritage
Dirty Laundry – Gewurztraminer, Merlot
Hester Creek – Cabernet/Merlot blend
Black Cloud – Pinot Noir
Tantalus – Riesling
8th Generation – Sauvignon Blanc
Blasted Church – Hatfields Fuse (white blend)
Fairview Cellars - 2 Hoots
Plus on Saturday ONLY – Red Roof Okanagan cider
We just received the first of Joie’s 2010 vintage – unoaked Chardonnay and their rather delicious Muscat. Noble Blend and Riesling will be in shortly too.
From Joie website
“MUSCAT 2010
Muscat holds a fond place in our travel memories to the north of Italy. There are many different types of Muscat but we particularly prize the fine white and yellow varieties. For our home vineyard, we chose to plant 2 acres of Moscato Giallo, also know as Goldenmuskateller or Yellow Muscat, depending on from where you originate. The 2009 vintage represents our first crop from our home vineyard. Muscat is an intensely aromatic varietal, both floral and fruity. While most other grape varieties seem to be at their best mimicking a broad spectrum of diverse flavours the true charm of Muscat is that it tastes as though you are actually enjoying the grapes themselves. That is why we call our Muscat “The Pure Grape”. “
I was on twitter a couple of weeks ago talking to Jayson Bryant from New Zealand (twitter: @jayson_bryant) about wine when it struck me that the selection of white wine from NZ relative to Australian white wine on our shelves had changed rather dramatically over the 3 years I have been in the store.
Today, our selection ratio of NZ to Australian wine is less than 1:2. 3 years ago it would have been more like 1:5. I thought that we on Bowen might not be representative of the general Vancouver market so decided to check things out in downtown Vancouver.
Much to my surprise, our ratio is not markedly different to most stores. The 5 private wine stores I visited had ratios varying from 1:1 to 1:2 and then I visited the big BCLDB flagship store on Bute and Alberni. Their selection was very much closer to 1:1 and, checking the BCLDB website, the actual listings in BC for NZ white to Australian whites is 54 to 73 or very nearly 1:1!
This is a dramatic shift in market balance from years ago when the Australian powerhouse dominated the two countries white wine sales in BC. How has this come about?
Firstly, although there have been an increase in NZ wine selection, the primary reason the ratio is closing is that there has been a marked reduction in Australian whites in the market here. This is reflective of the shift away from all those heavily-oaked Aussie chardonnays so popular in the late ’90s and early ’00s. Secondly, here in BC, New Zealand was the theme country for the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival (VPIWF) this year so NZ received lots of local exposure for their increasingly diverse selection of both red and white wines.
Both countries still make great wines but the trend is very much in favour of NZ at the moment. While NZ is hugely strong with their Sauvignon Blancs, I was really impressed with the Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminers and Rieslings I tasted at VPIWF plus NZ Pinot Noirs are coming on in leaps and bounds with Syrahs not far behind.
There are potentially lessons for the BC wine industry here too. Although our industry is younger than NZ’s, the total population of NZ is the same as BC’s and their domestic wine consumption is almost the same per capita as here. NZ is growing now on the strength of its export prowess not so much on its local support. Perhaps it is time that the BC wine industry focuses more on exporting than on local marketing – after all, we should have huge advantages in being next door to the USA whereas NZ is 20ookm away from its nearest large market and major competitor – Australia.
On Bowen, we have already increased our NZ selection in both reds and whites and more to come in our new store (opening January 2011) I think the white ratio will drop much closer to 1:1 then. Maybe we’ll even start to see the selection ratio on the reds starting to shift too.
Is wine the result of winemaking magic or can you taste what it will be like from the grapes that go into it. Well wonder no more.
Tonight (Wednesday 20 October) and tomorrow (Thursday 21 October) we have grapes from Tinhorn Creek just harvested. These are the grapes that are going into next year`s wine.
Come down and try Syrah, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Chardonnay grapes. It`s a fun thing to do.
P.S. if we have enough we`ll carry this over to Friday 22nd too
This weekend is a our annual free BC wine tasting held in conjunction with BowFEAST. Tasting schedule for the weekend is as follows:
- Friday 13 August, 4pm to 9pm: Featured winery: Tinhorn Creek
- Saturday 14 August, 1pm to 5pm+: Featured winery:Dirty Laundry
- Sunday 15 August, 1pm to 5pm: Featured winery:Blasted Church
There’s a very good chance that there’ll be some others too but you’ll need to come in to find out 
*UPDATE* Add Stag’s Hollow to Friday, Cedar Creek to Saturday & Joie Farm to Sunday
We’ll have some draw prizes for tasters over the weekend (every taster gets an entry, no purchase required). Grand prize will be a gift certificate for a 2 night stay at Tinhorn Creek’s winery guest house in Oliver. Second prize will be a copy of Joie Farm’s “Menus from an Orchard Table” signed by author Heidi Noble.
And to encourage you to ‘Drink BC’ this weekend you’ll get the full 10% case discount any purchase of 6 or more bottles of BC wine (this applies from 10:00am on Friday through 10pm on Sunday)
Like this:
In our annual customer survey we asked a series of questions about BC wine. In addition, we put up an on-line poll using SurveyMonkey and asked twitter followers to vote on one of the questions and to nominate their favourite three BC wines. Across the two polls we received 105 responses to this question.
“Compared to wines from other countries, do you think 100% BC wines offer good value for your money?”
39% of voters categorically agree that BC wine provides good value. Another 39% believes that there are some good value wines out there. This is good news for BC wine. On Bowen the ratio of the Yes/No votes (a “No” means the buyer is unlikely to buy BC wine at all) was 4:1 in favour of BC, but on twitter 2:1 against. It would have been nice to know if a larger response on twitter would have changed the ratio but it is a pointer towards the turbulent winds buffeting the BC wine industry in the past year.
Respondents were also asked to name up to 3 favourite BC wineries. Ranking of the responses is the simple count of mentions of the winery name. 51 wineries received a mention, a creditable spread as that accounts for about 1/3 of the total wineries in BC! Of these 51, 19 were unique to the twitter response set and 10 were unique to Bowen Island customers. The rest received mentions from both sets.
So, with a flourish of the drums, let me introduce…
Top BC 10 Wineries – A Popular Poll
#1 Burrowing Owl
#2 (tied) Mission Hill, Quails Gate
#4 Cedar Creek
#5 Joie
#6 (tied) Gray Monk, Hester Creek, La Frenz, Sumac Ridge, Township 7
Tied votes are presented in alphabetical order. Burrowing Owl was #1 on Bowen and Quails Gate #1 on Twitter.
Sundry Notes & Observations on the Poll
- 75% of the total voters are 40+ years old, 42% of the twitter voters are under 40 years old
- Median price of wine purchased is $15-$20 in both sets of responses. 60% of voters say their average expenditure per bottle is in this range.
- 40% of all voters and 77% of twitter voters visited a BC winery in past 12 months.
- Total response was 105 (79 Bowen Island, 26 twitter). While results from Bowen have some statistical accuracy, none can be claimed for the twitter responses – so the outcome does not necessarily reflect an accurate opinion on the BC wine industry.
Thanks for visiting. Please take our quick web survey on BC wine by clicking on the link below.
Note to Bowen Island customers:
If you already filled in our in-store annual customer survey in February, there’s no need to take this version we have your answers already. If you didn’t take part in the survey, now’s your chance to chime in
