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Wine Recommendation
Stoneboat Vineyards
2005 Pinotage(Okanagan Valley)
Stoneboat Vineyards is a new Okanagan winery operated by Lanny Martiniuk and his family. A one-time technician in nuclear medicine, he has been growing grapes since 1984. He has become one of the leading vine propagators in British Columbia and that helps to explain why he is able to release the Okanagan’s second Pinotage.
Lake Breeze was the first with Pinotage. That winery’s original owner, Paul Moser, was from South Africa, where Pinotage was created. He imported a small number of vines and had Martiniuk propagate them. Trying to keep the variety exclusive, he refused cuttings for Martiniuk’s own vineyard. However, Lanny had kept one of the vines. Through tissue culture, he replicated that vine and today grows slightly more Pinotage than Lake Breeze. For this vintage, he harvested a total of 6.25 tons and produced 416 cases.
Plum purple in colour, the wine begins with rich aromas of red berries, cassis and chocolate. On the palate, there are mouth-filling flavours of black cherries and boysenberries, with a touch of vanilla (the wine spent 10 months in French and American barrels). The tannins are long and ripe and just firm enough to provide structure and aging potential. The finish is long, with a hint of spiciness. 88 points.
Reviewed August 29, 2007 by John Schreiner.
Other reviewed wines from Stoneboat Vineyards
The Wine
Winery: Stoneboat Vineyards |
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. |