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Wine Recommendation
Joie Wines
2005 PTG(Okanagan Valley)
This is the first red wine from this boutique winery, which began with only whites and a rosé in its debut vintage of 2004. The owners and winemakers, Michael Dinn and Heidi Noble, opened this winery after careers as sommeliers and, in her case, as a chef. Shaped by that background, they make some of the most original wines in British Columbia, perhaps because their models are not their peers but rather wine styles they came to admire while travelling in Europe or serving European wines.
The influence here is Burgundy. PTG is their shorthand for Passetoutgrain, the name given to Burgundy blends of Pinot Noir and Gamay. Dinn and Noble handcrafted a mere 22 cases of PTG, starting with a sorting table to select only the healthiest fruit to be crushed. The grapes were fermented in small 600 litre bins with twice-daily punchdowns of the cap. The wine then went into French oak for a year and was then bottled unfiltered and unfined.
The result recalls a good Beaujolais Villages from an excellent vintage. The wine is pale ruby in colour, and medium bodied, with a bright acidity that bodes well for the wine’s ability to age. Dinn and Noble think it will improve over five to seven years and “hold for 10.” Now, the aroma and flavours recall cherries, with an attractive spicy finish. 87 points.
Reviewed January 31, 2008 by John Schreiner.
Other reviewed wines from Joie Wines
The Wine
Winery: Joie 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. |