This post arrives amid the ongoing saga in New York State, where Governor David Paterson is supporting a bill to join thirty-five other states and legalize wine retail in supermarkets. Motivated by New York’s giant budgetary deficit, Paterson hopes to raise money through franchise fees, taxes, and an increase in wine sales (an estimated 20%). The Governor even intends to tax soft drinks. With our own glooming budgetary situation in British Columbia, is it inconceivable that Premier Campbell and the Liberals would set their sights on slackening the liquor licensing to include grocery stores? This isn’t a completely fair parallel, as unlike New York, our government’s major qualm about dealing out licenses to grocers would be then having to compete with the new licensees for sales. Surely BC’s Finance Minister is sitting in a dark room somewhere, mulling over the numbers, and envisioning how much money they could save by ridding their hands of the great government liquor monopoly.

As a visitor to the US, I always marveled at the novelty of buying alcohol at grocery and corner stores. Why can’t it be like this back home? I’d ponder. Even after I had moved to San Francisco five months ago, I was still overwhelmed by the idea, but it didn’t take long for the reality to sink in. While a reasonable place to grab an occasional six-pack, I’ve yet to see a corner store with a good wine selection or prices I don’t cringe at. One of my nearest mom and pop stores sells Santa Margarita Pinot Grigio for $37. Thirty-seven dollars. Those sir, are strip club markups.

Photo taken from biritemarket.com

While grocery stores tend to be better in the pocket gouging category, the selections are often dismal. The large chains, Safeway for example, need to keep consistent products stocked from store to store and as such, fill the shelves with industrially produced garbage. The best I’ve seen in San Francisco is Bi-Rite Market in the Mission. Clearly their wine buyer is putting a lot of thought into what goes on the shelf, which must be an awesome job, as there is only one store to stock. Whole Foods is another grocer that handles wine sales much better than the rest, but I still have mixed feelings. Although much of their value selection is mass produced table wine and their markups err towards the high side, they do stock some interesting labels including some bio and organic wines. It’s rarely difficult for me to find a bottle of wine to have with dinner. However, as Alice Feiring brings up in her post A Commercial Break: Whole Foods and Australia, wouldn’t it be great if Whole Foods handled the wine aisle with the same respect as the produce department? Bi-Rite and Whole Foods are both the exceptions.

When looking for a good bottle, I still have to make the trek to a specialty wine shop just as I would in Vancouver. The major difference being that on route here, I pass twenty stores where I could have gotten a bottle of Barefoot Pinot Grigio instead. So in the end, would being able to toss a bottle of wine into the cart while grocery shopping be any benefit to British Columbian wine lovers other than convenience? I would imagine not, except the added competition may encourage existing wine shops to reevaluate what they choose to sell, the ones that survive anyways. It would be interesting to see what kind of selections retailers like Urban Fare, Choices, and Whole Foods would build and whose task that would be. In New York, the public seems to be in favour of the proposed bill. How many established, privately owned wine shops will get killed off? Likely plenty.

My latest grocery store buy was from Whole Foods. The Naia ‘08 from Rueda DO, just northwest off the center of Spain and 100% Verdejo. Super fresh blend of tropical and citrus fruit on the nose… verging on being too candied, but the surprising kick of minerality on the palate made everything okay. Not bad at all and good value, even at Whole Food’s markups. $13.99.

The much-lauded and discussed Blood Into Wine (we talked about it here…) finally hits the big screen in Vancouver for a one-week run starting Friday at East Van’s Rio Theatre!  Show-times are on their site’s calendar and, once again, here’s the trailer:

Here’s what I tried yesterday:

1. Zippy  2. Floral  3. Boring

1. Off  2. Cabernet-ish  3. Sings!  4. Textbook

1. Gold  2. Inky  3. Peppered

Bierzo is yesterday’s news. Wine writers have been prophesizing its rise for over four years, but this past week marked the first instance that I understood what the noise was about.

A remote collection of valleys in the Northwestern Spanish province of León, Bierzo lies just above the northeast corner of the inset Portuguese rectangle. Close to 60 wineries produce from 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres) of planted vines on diverse soils (lots of slate and gravel) spanning 23 municipalities including the largest and picturesque town of Ponferrada.

Map credit to pour-favor.com

Admirably, Bierzo DO lawmakers have stuck behind their local grapes instead of allowing the indigenous to be replaced with the popular (Tempranillo, Garnacha, or Cariñena). Mencía is the main red grape, recently myth-busted by DNA testing as being a kin of Cab Franc, and Garnacha Tintorera, a dark fleshed grape also called Alicante. Bierzo law allows “experimental” grapes to make up less than 15% of the blend - Tempranillo, Merlot, and Cab Sauv. Although I still haven’t seen or tasted white Bierzo, the grapes are Doña Blanca, Godello, and Palomino, with experimentals Malvasía, Chardonnay, and Gewürztraminer. Lets keep those at 15%. Selfish, but I haven’t been yearning for new sources of Cabernet or Chardonnay anytime recently.

Like many ancient vineyard regions, Bierzo was first an agricultural and mining hub of the Romans and has been a Spanish recognized Denominación de Origen since 1989.

Image credit spittoon.biz

The prices are creeping up as word continues to get out and high profile producers continue to muddle around here. This isn’t the next well for cheap Spanish wine, but rather something more serious; the next Priorat or Ribera del Duero. Unlike these Spanish greats, Bierzo has something unique - the chance to prove itself with grapes no one else is growing.

Álvaro Palacios is a big name in Spain and especially in Priorat. Teaming with his nephew Ricardo Pérez, they’ve been staking claims here since 1999. Keep an eye out for his Pétalos label. Another name known for quality, Dominio de Tares, became established as recently as 2000 and is now one of the bigger producers in town.

The Dominio de Tares ‘05 Cepas Viejas (Old Vines) comes from 60 year old bush-trained Mencía vines and is fermented and aged for 9 months in both American and French oak.

This wine is a beautiful marriage between fresh vibrant berry fruit and an earthy funk - hay and barns (what I consider to be an attractive stroke of bret). Graphite and some sweet American oak aromas. Medium weight, a belt of dusty tannin, and great complexities that evolve on your palate and in your glass. Ahhh! I now see. Delicious stuff.

Seek it out. Marquis in Vancity is where I found this bottle for $35. Oddly, it’s showing up in the BCLDB for $60. Maybe a different label? Other Bierzos offered by the BCLDB, including the Pétalos here.

Vaynerchuk on Bierzo

As always, please feel free to contribute any information, experience or tasting notes that you feel are relevant and check back next Sunday. Read past Sunday posts here.

My good pal Jeff Curry came by Salt yesterday with Fabian Olaiz, the Export Manager of Prado Rey wines from Ribera del Duero, Spain.  He had a satchel full of fun, from zippy whites to rich, deep reds and it was a great opportunity to revisit a couple things I’d tried before and dive into some new stuff.

First, a little bit about Prado Rey:

Prado Rey own the biggest vineyard (1285 acres) of the Ribera del Douro D.O. just north of Madrid.  Using solar power widely in their gravity-flow winery, Prado Rey also use all aspects of their farmland which also has 800 cattle along with sheep, corn, beets, alfalfa, potatoes, sunflowers and more.

Here’s a crazy tour of their facilities:

The Wines:

Prado Rey 2008 Verdejo

From 50-year-old vines and coming in around 20 bucks, there were honeydew and watermelon notes on the nose with a ton of super-bright lime, cranberry and tart lemon candy zippiness on the palate that went on and on and on.  A bit of that slate-y wet rock thing as well.  Dry, juicy, delicious.

Incidentally, Spell-Check is mad at me for using the word zippiness, and would rather I say nippiness, happiness, sappiness or peppiness.  Whatever.

Prado Rey 2009 Verdejo

New vintage, and we’ve gone from synthetic cork to Stelvin closure.

This one’s violently different, much more feminine with lavender and lychee on the nose into delicate mango, passionfruit and pomegranate on the palate.  Again, 20 bucks, but I prefer the intensity of the ‘08 for it’s typicity, if nothing else.

Prado Rey 3 Barricas 2007 Verdejo

Around $35, this one has a hint of French oak to it and comes from 100-year-old bush vines.  Reminiscent of a fresh key lime pie cooling on the window sill of a quaint farmhouse in the country, the grapes were macerated on the skins for-

Fuck everything, THIS STUFF’S AMAZING!!!  NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM!!

Prado Rey ‘Elite’ 2006 Tinta Fina

A great $45 value that has the density, layers and characters like vintage Dickens.  Single estate Tinta Fina, it’s a little mushroomy, wild and fungal on the nose, but the palate - OH, the palate!  That ‘forest floor’ thing is definitely going on here,  with black cherry, cloves, fresh ground pepper, kalamata olives, cocoa, currants and the tiniest speck of fresh basil. Anything from wood-oven pizza to game to steak, or even on its own.  Run, don’t walk.

Prado Rey’s wines are quite widely available in Vancouver, at Everything Wine, Kits Wine Cellar, Liberty and more.

Unfortunately, the 3 Barricas 2007 Verdejo isn’t available yet.  But bug Jeff, he’ll make it happen for you.

On Tuesday, the B.C. Finance Minister dropped his recession-shaped budget as British Columbians scrambled to stay clear. What at first appeared to be a slight reduction in wine prices (because of everyone’s favourite new tax, the HST!), will actually be made up for by tacking a few extra percent to the province’s 117% wine markup. There may however, be a very small price break for anyone buying local wine.

I’m going step aside and pass the details on to those who know what they’re talking about:

Wineries May Pay for Budget Shortfall - from Wines & Vines

BC’s Budget - Effects on Wine Industry - from Mark Hicken at Winelaw.ca

[ts-VIE-gellt]

Zweigelt in British Columbia? We might be on to something here. Actually, the Zuppiger family behind Arrowleaf Cellars have been on to something since 1999 when they planted 2 acres of the Austrian red grape. The winter hardy varietal was created by Dr. Fritz Zweigelt in 1922 by crossing Blaufränkisch and St. Laurent. Kurtis and I have been scheming and dreaming about drinking Okanagan wine from Austrian transplants for almost a year now. My little make believe plot of Okanagan land is quickly filling with rows of Austrian grapes: Grüner, Blaufränkisch, Zweigelt, unquestionably some Gamay and Pineau d’Aunis crammed in there to represent France. Would anyone buy my wine? Likely not many, but I’d be able to sleep at night. Very well in fact with all the wine I’d have to keep me warm.

The 2006 Zweigelt from Arrowleaf is a shade darker than many I’ve seen from the Austrian homeland. Still below medium in body with pleasingly ample acidity and a creamy texture. Black cherry, cola, baking spice, with a slight meaty black pepper finish. Very tasty stuff and something different than the big marketable French grapes dominating the BC scene. I’ve only tried Arrowleaf’s Pinot Noir before this, but they both deserve attention for value. $18 is a hot deal in these parts. I have seen it at the Liberty stores in Vancouver.

So is this wine a one-off, or are the handful of other Zweigelt producers having any luck? Two wineries practicing organic viticulture offer it: Kalala Estate Winery has one and Deep Creek Wine Estate actually has four labels. Stonehill Estate Winery has a rosé, regular bottling and reserve all from the grape. I’m sure there are others as well. Being unlikely that I’ll be able to sample any of these for a couple more months, I wonder what others’ opinions and impressions are. Jurgen Gothe wrote an article and review on BC and Zweigelt over four years ago. Looks like it still hasn’t caught on.

I can imagine the hardship of selling this to the average consumer in a wine shop. For it to gain popularity, do we need to create a local synonym for the grape or do we just need to talk about it more? Jancis Robinson puts it well in the Oxford Companion to Wine: “The export fortunes of the variety may, oddly enough, be hampered by its originator’s uncompromisingly Germanic surname. If only he had been called Dr Pinot Noir.”

SacreBleu challenge Sid The Kid to celebrate his success, not with beer, but with a glass of wine…

This weekend’s post is inspired from the opportunity Kurtis and I had to try all things Slovakian at the Slovak Olympic house, including wine and beer you can’t normally find around Vancouver. It began with disappointment, as we sprung the pricey entrance fee, set on sampling the list of nine wines, but found them to be pouring only three. When Kurtis plead our case to the organizer, we were invited to return and promised more wine. The next day there were still only three wines, but we did gorge on back-to-back buffet lunches of traditional Slovakian food. I’ve now filled my Goulash quota for the year.

The band, whose members don’t seem to appreciate being photographed.

Slovakia is landlocked in Central Europe with Austria and the Czech Republic to the west, Poland to the North, Ukraine to the east and Hungary below to the south. This is generally a chilly place to grow grapes and the majority of the country’s six wine regions (Small Carpathian, Nitrian, South Slovakian, Middle Slovakian, East Slovakian, and Tokaj, a portion of the same region from Hungary) hug the southern border. They have ancient wine making history and recently there’s more of a move than ever towards both making and appreciating high quality wine.

Map from Wikipedia

There are over forty varietals grown in Slovakia, with popular ones being Rizling Vlašský (Welschriesling), Rizling Rýnský (Riesling), Veltlínské Zelené (Grüner Veltliner), Müller-Thurgau, Rulandské Biele (Pinot Blanc), Chardonnay, Tramín Červený (Gewürztraminer) for the whites and Frankovka Modrá (Blaufränkisch), Modrý Portugal (the Blauer Portugieser grape of Austria and Germany), Svatovavřinecké (St Laurent), and Cabernet Sauvignon for the reds. Along with making wine from over 15,000 hectares (40,000 acres) of their own vines, the Slovaks also import a sizable amount of grapes and juice to keep production up with demand.

Kurtis patiently waiting for more Modrý Portugal.

The three wines the Slovaks were pouring were all from Víno Mrva & Stanko, a winery created by friends Peter Stanko and Vladimír Mrva in 1997. They source grapes from various regions to bottle between 15 and 20 varietal specific wines and 30,000 cases each year.

Mrva & Stanko ‘07 Modrý Portugal
Soft cherry and strawberry fruit with a bit of spice. An easy light-medium body sipper without too much oak. This was my favourite wine of the three and was quite Pinot Noir or Blaufränkisch-like in it’s weight, texture and flavours (this either shows how little my experience is with Austrian grape is or how versatile it can be, as the next wine turned out to actually be made from Blaufränkisch).

Mrva & Stanko ‘08 Frankovka Modrá
The real Blaufränkisch had lots of fleshy purple fruit, but it also had that strange exotic woody spice that I associate with bad wines from Eastern Europe - balsam or cedar wood with a green ferny character. Not my favourite.

Mrva & Stanko ‘08 Cabernet Sauvignon
Some of that dark purple Cab fruit, but overall a fairly blah and meek wine.

This jovial photo was obviously taken before the quarter final hockey match up between Slovakia and Canada.

There doesn’t seem to be bountiful information available on Slovakia’s wine scene and the wine itself is  pretty scarce in North America. I’d love to get a chance to taste through a good cross section of the country’s wines before making any judgment, but I’m sure I’d need to actually visit Slovakia for this to happen.

As always, please feel free to contribute any information, experience or tasting notes that you feel are relevant and check back next Sunday. Read past Sunday posts here.

Here are a few of the better wines I’ve tried this week:

Domaine Richard Rottiers ‘08 Moulin à Vent
Anyone who still thinks Beaujolais is bubble gum and candy should give Richard Rottiers‘ Moulin à Vent a whirl. This is serious Gamay from Rottiers’ 3 hectares of old vines and has plenty of Pinot Noir qualities. Dark fruit - black cherry and cola, with a light embrace of tannin. The aromatics improved the longer it sat in our glasses and the wine would probably be happy with another year or so in the bottle. Good Cru Beaujolais for $30 at Marquis.

Azienda Agricola Palari ‘05 “Rosso del Soprano”
The Rosso del Soprano is one of two labels from the producer Palari and winemaker Salvatore Geraci. He works from within one of Italy’s smallest DOC’s, Faro, tucked in the northeastern corner of Sicily and overlooking the strait towards the mainland. The grape blend is dominated by Nerello Mascalese, Nocera, and Nerello Cappuccio. The nose is a beautiful blend of ripe berry fruits which are carried through on the palate with licorice and a malty character. Medium weight, soft and stunning. We all need to drink more good wine from Sicily. I picked this bottle up in San Francisco where it runs $37-$45 retail. It’s available at a couple K&L stores.

Alice and Olivier de Moor ‘06 Old Vines Aligoté
I had my first brush with a de Moor Aligoté at Terroir in San Francisco, and did a double take when I spotted the natural producer on the shelf at Marquis in Vancouver. This label comes from vines planted in 1902 and unlike their regular bottling of Aligoté, spends some of its life in barrel. The nose was honeyed with grapefruit and some petrol. The mouth was concentrated, a touch waxy and much richer that I expected - apple and caramel with a dry chalky finish. Interesting and definitely a different take on Aligoté, but I yearned for some of that searing acidity synonymous with the grape. I suggest giving the regular label a try for $25, a crisp and citrusy wine that could cleanse your palate of anything. The old vines runs for $30. Check out more from Alice and Olivier de Moor on Wine Terroirs.

More good stuff to come…