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Wine Recommendation
Saturna Island Vineyards
2004 Pinot Gris Gulf Islands(British Columbia)
Opened in 1998, Saturna Island was the first of the wineries to be established on one of the Gulf Islands in the strait between the British Columbia Mainland and Vancouver Island. While its 60-acre vineyard was developing, Saturna also bought Okanagan grapes. That practice stopped in 2004 since enough grapes are now grown on the island to yield 12,000 cases of wine annually. Swiss-trained winemaker Daniel Lagnaz, the winemaker at Mission Hill from 1981 through 1991, now makes Saturna Island’s wines.
This Pinot Gris presents an interesting expression of the island’s cool terroir. By limiting production to just two tons an acre, the winery gets good ripeness and vivid fruit. This wine is fresh and crisp, with zesty lemon flavours and a lean mineral structure – quite a contrast to the soft, peachy Pinot Gris wines that sometimes emerge from the Okaganan. This is a wine for shellfish, quite appropriate since one can see the ocean from the vineyard. 87 points.
Reviewed July 27, 2006 by John Schreiner.
Other reviewed wines from Saturna Island Vineyards
The Wine
Winery: Saturna Island 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. |