As promised, a trip report on last night's opening of the Vancouver wine festival, written with bleary eyes. Why did the girl decide to wake up at 6:15? How did she know?
The highlights: Majella was our surprise hit of the show. Their Coonawarra Cab was sublime. The Sparkling Shiraz was great. Yes, we bought the last 3 bottles. They don't offer in the stores yet. Our six bottles will have to do for a while. Tim Angove was a wonderful fellow to chat with. The Inland Trading Company had some outstanding wines: the 95 rated Draycott, 94 rated Cimicky reserve, 94 rated Turkey Flat Shiraz and the 93 rated Rolf binder Heysen. Greg Corra was a real hoot. He told us to go over and tell the "prof" (Brian Lynn) at Majella that he's "an old bastard" and that the prof makes the most awarded Aussie wines. D'arenberg Derelict Vineyard was our favourite Grenache. We loved that there were a number of introductions of Sparkling Shiraz.
Lowlights: We tried again, but we just don't like Sangiovese based and much of Italian wines. Antinori had their best products out, the Tignanello and the Guado Al Tasso but as always they tasted like acidic dirt to us. The liquor store opened for trade folks at 2pm, and maybe even the public (one staff member said public, another said trade only) and had clearly been picked over. Turkey Flat and Dr. Loosen Auslese (93 rated at $19/bottle) were gone :-( There were no trade wines available so I never did get a chance to try the Greenock Creek Apricot Block or the Armagh.
We pretty much held to our plan. We hit 8 of the top 12 booths and 3 of the 2nd tier 18 we wanted and then voila, it was 8:50. Then we rounded out with most of the rest of the 2nd tiers.
Our plans changed a little bit when we showed up at 6:45 and the line-up had already snaked into the lobby for the 7 opening. We went immediately into the liquor store and bought 5 different wines mostly guessing at what we'd like. We were nicely surprised by the Lehmann Riesling with dinner so we bought 3 bottles. That was supplemented by 4 bottles of the Rolf Binder, 3 bottles of Majella Sparkling Shiraz, 3 bottles of Blue Pyrennees Sparkling Shiraz, and a bottle of Kabinett that I can't recall. One box was shipped to Cambie Liquor store, and the partial box was checked.
Then we went in. The chaos, the commotion, it was great. Straight to the Inland Trading Company for the best Shirazes in the room. They were all wonderful. We liked the Draycott best, but thought it a bit pricey - $63 seemed too steep for us. The Turkey Flat was our favourite for the price, which probably explains why it was sold out. I really liked the Rolf Binder as it had a smooth and interesting taste to it. The cimicky was good but I thought a bit overrated. Greg Corra was fun to talk to.
A disappointing pitstop in Katnook followed by a quick chat at Kaesler/Langmeil. I mentioned that we loved the Avignon (not offered there) and that we'd shipped a case of 2004 from Aus and then bought 2 cases of 2005 at Marquis. We also gloated about getting a half case of the Langmeil Freedom 2001 at half price. But we didn't try anything there, I can't remember why..
Last on the row was Majella. The prof aka Brian Lynn was wonderful as were his wines. The Musician and the icon Malleea were the best Cabernets we had at the show. D and him had lots of fun joking around, and she caught him on a couple of good jokes. "No rinsing or spitting" he shouted at one point. He force-fed us chocolate to prep for the sparkling shiraz. I sprinted back into the liquor store to buy the last 3 bottles of the wonderful bubbly.
On the way back, I briefly chatted with Anthony Gismondi and thanked him for his article. For a media personality in his element, I found him a bit of a cold fish but maybe it was just an off night for him.
The D'arenberg Derelict Vineyard Grenache was surprisingly good - turns out Parker rated it 92. We also liked the Laughing Magpie Shiraz. Feeling my drinks by then, I gave the Liberty Wine Merchant rep a bit of flack. IMHO, they overcharge compared to other specialty wine stores and I find the staff often try to convince customers to buy inferior wines. They have tried to turn me off very nice 2001 Barossas in favour of 1999s, and that's just blatantly wrong. I think he was a bit caught off guard and I felt a bit bad about bringing these up. Not too bad but a bit bad.
The next contestants were the modest Elderton wines. Looping around the corner, we ran into my cousin Debbie. We haven't seen her for a long time and did some catching up.
Down to Barossa Valley Estate to try the (sold out!) Ebenezer Shiraz and the divine E&E Black Pepper Shiraz. We mentioned that we have a bottle of their Sparkling shiraz to try. Bleasdale offered the Generations and the Frank Potts. I complimented them on the Langhorne Crossing Shiraz Cabernet. Graeme McDonaugh said that it was being bought before they could even put the sign up and unpack the case, and I said "that was me!" We had a good laugh about that. I had gone into the cambie liquor store and saw it go up and knew that Halliday had given it a 94 so I bought a case right away.
A nice stop at Angove with some quality chatting time with John and his wife. We bemoaned that Parker doesn't rate Angove's and we really like it. John was actually quite happy that Parker doesn't rate his stuff as that would mean the Americans would suddenly snap it up. Very refreshing attitude.. We talked about the Okanagan going from orchards to vineyards to suburbs, and he said in Aus it was orchards to vineyards back to peaches and apples because the glut of grapes in aus. He thought that might change. We talked about the harvest and he was saying that he thinks 2007 will be a very strange year. Yields will be down 40-50% because of frost in the spring. With the drought, they were only about to get 60% of their water irrigation allotment. He thought that the low yields would probably go into the 2008.
We finished the row with Vasse Felix, noted for being in western australia and making fine Chardonnay and Cabernet. They thought 2007 would be a hard year for them as well. We bought a bunch of cheeses for $5 each that was a great deal. Time check said 8:50. Off to the other side for some non-Aus wines.
As earlier said, Antinori was a real disappointment. The first run of Rieslings was at Dr. Pauly Bergweiller. These were good but not as good as we'd hoped. The Wehlener Sonnenuhr Auslese seemed too fizzy to be worth the 93 parker rating. Then we had some very nice Dr. Loosen. The Spatlese Urziger Wurzgarten was great and seemed very worth the $40.
A quick pop across the way to Gustav Adolf Schmidt where we talked about my visit to Nierstein 17 years ago as a smelly backpacker. Things have changed since the time that I got an overnight stay, guided tour and hosted breakfast. Their HQ is now north near Bernkastel.
With 20 minutes left in the show we decided to wend our way back along the last Aus Row. Blue Pyrenees didn't have their sparkling shiraz on ice so we couldn't really tell how good it was. A disappointing try of Rosemount RWT wasn't surprising. I find Rosemount mostly overpriced. The RWT at $120/bottle certainly was less interesting than almost all the mid-range bottles we'd tried earlier.
A great visit with the fabulous Jane Ferarri of Yalumba. We talked about our visit with her at Marc Anthony a couple of years ago. I gave her fun heck about dropping Yalumba D Black Sparkling Shiraz, and she was obviously very frustrated about it. I pointed out that Majella, Lehman, Blue Pyreneess, Seaview etc. were all going to end up doing well in a market that they ought to own. Then the marketing folks would say "hey, we've got to do some sparkling shiraz too!".
Our final visit was with Stuart Blackwell of St. Hallett. We've had laughs with him before at the Aus wine festival and the Aus barbie a couple of years ago. I've got a few great pics of him, and he showed him as the "dr. loosen fan club". We apologized for missing the Old Block vertical the day before, but the 5:30 end time would have meant missing the kids 6:15 swim class and we have different priorities these days. He said the 93 and 97 were outstanding..