Recent tasting
Dennis and I were out for a quiet snack after a meeting a couple of weeks ago and stopped into one of our favourite places: Buchanan's, tucked into the northwest end of downtown.
We split a salad and seared scallop appetizer, and washed them down with a bottle of the 2004 Grey Monk Odyssey Pinot Gris. I'd almost forgotten why I love their PG, and the Odyssey line is just wonderful. It's available here in town (at Willow Park, I think), but only $42 at the restaurant. A real deal for a wine like that....
We split a salad and seared scallop appetizer, and washed them down with a bottle of the 2004 Grey Monk Odyssey Pinot Gris. I'd almost forgotten why I love their PG, and the Odyssey line is just wonderful. It's available here in town (at Willow Park, I think), but only $42 at the restaurant. A real deal for a wine like that....
posted by Linda | 9:59 p.m.
2 Comments:
Linda, nice to hear that you had a good meal at Buchanan's. It has been years and years since my last meal there during visits to "C-Town".
I have had mixed experiences with Grey Monk's wines in general and their Odyssey line of PG in particular.
I usually find their wines a tad too sweet for me although I used to enjoy their Alsatian Clone label of gewurtztraminer which is next to impossible to find locally [Edmonton]. I think it may now be marketed as part of their Odyssey line as well.
I had a bottle of their PG a couple of years ago that was simply outstanding. Lots of fruit but with sufficient acidity that I did not find it cloying.
Cannot remember what vintage that was because a subsequent one was disappointing being more like what I had remembered and disliked.
I really enjoy BC pinot gris. My current favourites are the "copper hued" salmon-berry coloured bottles [the "look" suggests sweet but the taste is dry] from Alderlea on the Island and Kettle Valley in the Okanagan.
I have most of the case left of the 2004 pinot gris from Nichol that came in at a whopping 16%. I have not had any of it for quite awhile as it was way too "hot" for me. It is even a darker colour. More burnished copper in nature.
Will this alcohol ever subside? Someone suggested that it would develop with time into a delicious wine. I have my doubts. My experience has been that the fruit and acid might dissipate but the alcohol remains. Have had the same experience with big alcohol driven zinfandels from CA for example.
Also in the other "school" of BC PG...That which is very lightly to the point of no colour...I really enjoy the bottles from Burrowing Owl and Blue Mountain to name two.
Bob, I agree that their wines have grown sweeter recently: ever since George Sr. passed the reins over to Jr., I've especially noticed it. It's not that there's been a change of winemaker (at least, that I know of: comments Tilman?), just a shift of paradigm.
That being said, one could almost mistake the wine we had for a Chard, with the sort of rich butteriness you get from serious malo-lactic fermentation.
Like you, there are BC Pinot Gris that I do like, particularly Nichol's -- I think we still have a 2002/3 one left in the cellar -- and the Alderlea as well. I want my PG to have that "perdrix" colour to them!
Not that there's anything wrong with Burrowing Owl or Blue Mountain, although I must admit I prefer the latter, but when the label says "gris," I want "gris"! ;-)
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