Wine Recommendation
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Wine Recommendation

Blue Mountain Vineyard and Cellars 2006 Chardonnay Cream Label  (Okanagan Valley)

Blue Mountain Vineyard and Cellars

2006 Chardonnay Cream Label
(Okanagan Valley)



Right from its opening in 1992, Blue Mountain has enjoyed a cult following in British Columbia. Its wines are always on allocation, either to restaurants or to clients who cling to their place on the mailing list by never skipping the annual invitation to order. The winery tasting room is open only by appointment. The owners are not reluctant to turn away visitors without appointment, usually because few wines are available for tasting at any one time.

Blue Mountain gets away with its aloofness by offering solid wines that are well-priced. It starts with exemplary grape growing. Owners Jane and Ian Mavety have grown grapes here since 1972. Beginning in 1986, they converted the entire vineyard primarily to Burgundy varieties. They opened the winery with a range of dry table wines when nearly all their peers in British Columbia then offered off-dry Germanic whites.

The winery has been consistently successful with Chardonnay, capturing pure, clean fruit through gentle processing. The hand-picked grapes are whole-cluster pressed with the stems still attached, thereby avoiding the mangling of a crusher-de-stemmer. A portion of the juice is barrel-fermented in French oak, which leaves subtle oak backing up toasty and citrus aromas and flavours. The wine, moderate in alcohol, is full on the palate but not heavy, with an elegant balance. 90 points.

Reviewed September 12, 2007 by John Schreiner.

The Wine

Winery: Blue Mountain Vineyard and Cellars
Vintage: 2006
Wine: Chardonnay Cream Label
Appellation: Okanagan Valley
Grape: Chardonnay
Price: 750ml $20.90

Review Date: 9/12/2007

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.