Wine Recommendation
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Wine Recommendation

Burrowing Owl Vineyards 2005 Cabernet Franc  (Okanagan Valley)

Burrowing Owl Vineyards

2005 Cabernet Franc
(Okanagan Valley)




It is so hard to find fault with this delicious wine that I found myself grizzling about the winery’s use of synthetic corks. I share Jancis Robinson’s aversion to this closure because it is hard to extract, even harder to get back into the bottle. That was not an issue here. Two of us finished the bottle at one meal, and wanted more. Like most of Burrowing Owl’s wines, this is on allocation.

Dark in colour, the wine begins boldly with aromas of currants, blackberries and chocolate. On the palate, the wine is rich and intense, with flavours of prunes, black cherries, black currants and chocolate. This is a mouth-filling red wine with a long, lingering finish. It has 14.6 percent alcohol but the fruit and the texture are so rich that the alcohol is well in balance. 91 points.

Reviewed August 2, 2007 by John Schreiner.

The Wine

Winery: Burrowing Owl Vineyards
Vintage: 2005
Wine: Cabernet Franc
Appellation: Okanagan Valley
Grape: Cabernet Franc
Price: 750ml $26.90

Review Date: 8/2/2007

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.