|
|
Wine Recommendation
Hillside Estate Winery
2006 Muscat Ottonel(Okanagan Valley)
British Columbia’s only Muscat Ottonel, this has been Hillside’s flagship white wine almost since the winery opened in 1990. Bill and Kathy Carpenter, the winery’s third set of proprietors, grow enough on the Naramata Road estate vineyard to produce about 1,000 cases a year (plus a modest quantity of late harvest dessert wine). The winery likely has capped the production of this variety because the Carpenters recently grafted some Muscat vines over to Malbec and Petit Verdot.
Carpenter notes that this is one of the few varieties where the wine echoes the flavour of the fresh grapes. Hillside winemaker Kelly Symonds preserves the fresh fruit flavour with very cool (about 5C) fermentations.
This aromatic wine begins with fresh floral aromas, recalling rose petals and spice. It charms the palate with mouth filling flavours of spicy apricot and pear, lifted by a delicate touch of residual sweetness. But the wine is well balanced, with a refreshing, crisp finish. 89 points.
Reviewed December 14, 2007 by John Schreiner.
Other reviewed wines from Hillside Estate Winery
The Wine
Winery: Hillside Estate 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. |