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Wine Recommendation
Pentage Wines
2006 Riesling(Okanagan Valley)
The 18 acres of vineyard owned or controlled by Pentâge grow eight or 10 of the Okanagan’s mainstream grape varieties – but not Riesling, even though that was one of earliest of the classic vinifera grapes to be planted in British Columbia. Paul Gardner, one of Pentâge’s proprietors, and assistant winemaker Dwight Sick, have had to make do with purchased fruit.
The trick, obviously, is buying grapes from good sites. They’ve found two: God’s Mountain Vineyard, which has also supplied grapes to Wild Goose Vineyards for its award-winning Rieslings; and the 8th Generation Vineyard, which will become a winery in a few years, and is operated by Bernd and Stefanie Schales, a young German couple. Bernd’s family have grown grapes and made wine there for eight generations. He knows how to grow good fruit.
All that good breeding comes together in Pentâge’s first Riesling, which starts with the aroma of pink grapefruit. Refreshing and zesty, the wine tastes of grapefruit and peaches, with good notes of mineral woven though. The finish is dry. This is a seriously interesting Riesling, with aging potential. 88 points.
Reviewed May 1, 2007 by John Schreiner.
Other reviewed wines from Pentage Wines
The Wine
Winery: Pentage Wines |
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. |