For a Good Wine: A New Weekly Wine Column

Hi there everyone! I’ve been invited by Rob to add a weekly column to Kitsilano.ca focusing on unique wines available at local Kits wine shops. The goal of this column is to post once a week – hopefully on Friday morning or early afternoon – on a wine that I think is a particularly great deal. I won’t be writing on wines that aren’t worth getting and I will focus on wines that are out of the mainstream and heavily commercialized world of major wine producers. However, I will also try to keep the prices affordable while recognizing that BC has the highest liquor tax in North America!

The Vancouver International Wine Festival is going on this week and I will be attending the Friday tasting and posting my impressions and wine picks in this column. However, I thought I’d start off today with my first review/recommendation. I’d also note that I am not a fan of numerical scores since wine is so subjective and based on taste. Thus, I will only describe the wines I taste knowing that I won’t recommend anything I don’t think is a great deal. On to the first review:

Plantagenet Riesling Great Southern 2005

Most people think of Rieslings as sweet wines, but they are often also very dry wines that happen to pair fantastically with all sorts of Asian food. Thus, they are a perfect wine for Vancouver. This particular Riesling is from Western Australia and pairs fantastically with sushi, adding the kind of character you typically get from Shiso leaves (usually replaced by plastic green leaves). The Plantagenet Riesling is a pretty citrusy wine with a lot of lime action on the nose and palate. It’s quite well balanced with solid acidity that stands up well to spicy salmon and tuna rolls. The wine has a firm structure with a tart but very crisp finish. After about 30-40 minutes the palate revealed some pretty interesting and flavourful raw clay-like/limestone flavours. Overall, an exceptional value.

$23 at BC Liquor Stores

 

Last modified: February 27, 2008