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Wine Recommendation
Quails' Gate Estate Winery
2005 Limited Release Pinot Noir(Okanagan Valley)
With 40 acres and seven clones of Pinot Noir, Quails’ Gate is the single largest producer of this variety in the Okanagan. Winemaker Grant Stanley, a Vancouver native who trained in New Zealand and worked there for a Pinot Noir specialist, has said that he spends “80 percent” of his time thinking about Pinot Noir.
Limited Release is the middle tier among Quails’ Gates wines, usually involving significant volumes of wine distributed widely and at accessible prices. Stanley, now having done three vintages at Quails’ Gate, has refined the Pinot Noirs in general and raised the quality of the Limited Release range.
This is a wine that begins to show its terroir, reflecting the complex volcanic soils in the vineyard and Stanley’s bold use of wild yeast during fermentation. The wine has a fine dark colour. The aromas include hints of cherry but also the alluring forest floor aromas that Pinot lovers sometimes dub “barnyard.” The flavours deliver earthy cherry notes and the texture is full and robust, like a full-bodied, artisanal Burgundy. 88 points.
Reviewed May 17, 2007 by John Schreiner.
Other reviewed wines from Quails' Gate Estate Winery
 2006 Stewart Family Reserve Chardonnay (Okanagan Valley)John Schreiner 3/19/2008 |
 2005 Family Reserve Pinot Noir, Estate (Okanagan Valley)John Schreiner 5/23/2007 |
The Wine
Winery: Quails' Gate Estate Winery |
The Reviewer
John Schreiner
John Schreiner has been covering the wines of British Columbia for the past 30 years and has written 10 books on the wines of Canada and BC. He has judged at major competitions and is currently a panel member for the Lieutenant Governor’s Awards of Excellence in Wine. Both as a judge and as a wine critic, he approaches each wine not to find fault, but to find excellence. That he now finds the latter more often than the former testifies to the dramatic improvement shown by BC winemaking in the past decade. |