Last week was another week for drinking wine, we enjoyed three different bottles, two from BC and one from Spain. It seems that we go in cycles; a few weeks with no wine and no cooking at all and then three wine nights in the same week. Again, we do not claim to know very much about wine but it is a good thing that we have a growing collection at home to practice with. Our first bottle was a 2004 Mission Hill Family Estate Select Lot Collection Syrah. This was one of the varieties that we purchased during the previously mentioned visit to the winery last fall. The wine is barrel aged in French Oak. This wine was great! It had a very deep color and the flavor was full of dark fruit and a bit peppery. The upgrade in price from the Reserve to the Select Lot Collection was definitely noticeable in the taste.
The next bottle was a 2006 Quinta Ferreira Estate Merlot that we purchased at the BC Wine Information Center in Penticton. Quinta Ferreira Estate Winery situated on the famed Black Sage Road in Oliver, BC recently opened its doors in June 2007. Quinta means estate in Portuguese and Ferreira is the owner’s last name. Quinta also means five and there are five members of the Ferreira family. The family began growing Malbec, Viognier, Merlot and Syrah grapes on the site in 1999 and focus on limited production concentrating on quality. We thought that the wine was very good. It was rich in color with the aromas of dark fruit and vanilla. It had a full bodied flavor that was peppery with a bit of chocolate. The wine was a Silver winner at last year’s Okanagan Wine Festival.
We tend to stick primarily with wines from BC but the last wine of the week was one that was listed in a ‘great wines under $20’ list that we had come across. It was a 2005 Osborne Solaz Tempranillo Cabernet Sauvignon. Osborne is one of Spain’s most distinguished wine and sherry producers. They are family owned and operated and place an extremely high value on quality and consistency to offer consumers exceptional wines with equally attractive pricing. The Tempranillo Cabernet Sauvignon is an 80/20 blend. It was a light fruity wine but with a deep color.
It was good but as expected not as good as the two previous wines that were two and three times the price.
Let’s see what happens next week.
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