Tag: chile

Beside the theme country every year in the Festival Tasting room of the Vancouver International Wine Festival, there are all the other wineries from countries around the world offering their wines for you to try.  Below are 15 wines that I thought were excellent.  Some may be in BC liquor stores and others may have only been available during the Festival….

One of the great things about the Vancouver International Wine Festival is that in the big Festival Tasting Room at the Conference Centre is that you can meet a winery principal and talk to him or her about their wines.  You can often find out info that is not widely known, such as how they decided to plant an obscure…

This past year I tasted a tremendous number of wines from around the world, but some wines really resonated with me.  It may have been the great balance of fruit, sugar, acidity for a white wine, or the fruit, tannins and minerality in a red wine, or something else. Something that made the wine stand above the other wines.  Could…

Have you ever read the winemaker’s notes that is sometimes on the back label of a wine bottle or from the winery’s website then try to see if you can pick up the same aromas and flavours?  Or even more challenging, to taste the wine first on your own; making your own notes, then reading what the winemaker says about…

The 2015 New World Winery of the Year from Wine Enthusiast magazine is Santa Carolina Winery from Chile.  To say they are New World though is quite interesting as the winery has been in existence since 1875.  But of course, we are discussing more of New World style in wines. Chile is blessed with the perfect climate for wine production…

In conjunction with TED2016, held here in Vancouver, the Wines of Chile participated by bringing some wines for us to try.  These wines though represent sustainable initiatives taken by these wineries. In Chile there is a sustainability code that a winery can be certified for through a 3-tier qualification process.  While not all Chilean wineries are sustainable, the goal is…

At the Import Vintners & Spirits Association (IVSA) tastings, held most months, gives the Trade a chance to try the latest wines and spirits coming to Vancouver.  There are always a few gems that people come across and spread the word, so that you have to find that table and try that wine.  At this tasting, the whispers were to…

It is always a special time when a wine agency opens their portfolio of wines for you to taste, review, and recommend.  This past week I had a chance to try the wines from Select Wines’ annual portfolio tasting.  With any tasting of this magnitude there will always be more wines than time to taste them.  I try my best…

After summer holidays are over and you are all relaxed from the sun, food, and wine with family and friends, September comes around.  For the wine trade, this is the start of the busy season leading up to Christmas, and with this there are many agency portfolio tastings.  I attended two portfolio tastings this past week, and I’m here to…

Chile, eventhough it has been making wine since the 1500’s, still holds surprises.  One more recent surprise was that some of the Merlot grapes that they thought they were growing was actually the Bordeaux variety, Carmenere; a grape that was long forgotten in Bordeaux as it was too difficult to ripen.  Carmenere and Merlot look very similar but ripen differently. …