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Wine Recommendation
Mission Hill Winery
2006 Five Vineyards Pinot Blanc(Okanagan Valley)
Pinot Blanc’s future as a white varietal rests primarily with the wines of Alsace – and those of British Columbia. Perhaps because it is too often made much like Chardonnay, the variety does not garner much interest in other wine regions that already have Chardonnay.
Pinot Blanc was one of the 40 or so varieties planted in the Okanagan in the late 1970s under the guidance of Germany’s Geisenheim Institute. Weissburgunder, as it was called at the time, proved to be one of the best adapted of the vines recommended by the Germans. Today, it is among the five most widely grown whites.
It is vinified here in every style imaginable, from Chardonnay wannabe wines to icewines. Wines like this one from Mission Hill remind consumers that unoaked Pinot Blancs might just be the best way to go. Fresh and crisp, this wine shows off Pinot Blanc’s classic flavours of green apples and grapefruit. 87 points.
Reviewed April 10, 2007 by John Schreiner.
Other reviewed wines from Mission Hill Winery
 2006 Reserve Riesling Fritz Hasselbach Collection (Okanagan Valley)John Schreiner 10/4/2007 |
 2006 Reserve Pinot Blanc, Lakeshore Vineyard (Okanagan Valley)John Schreiner 10/4/2007 |
The Wine
Winery: Mission Hill 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. |