Pentage Wines

Paul Gardner and Julie Rennie came up with the rather singular name for their winery partly as a play on nearby Penticton but chiefly because it reminds them of Latin for five, the number of red varieties grown in their Vista View Vineyard. As you might guess, the vineyard commands one of the Okanagan’s finest panoramas. The Skaha Bluffs, popular with rock climbers, rise behind the vineyard, which is on a westward-sloping bench high above Okanagan Lake. Gardner and Rennie are completing a winery dramatically set in a rocky cleft at the highest point in the vineyard.

Now open only by appointment, Pentâge has a lower profile than is merited by the solid wines that Gardner and associate winemaker Dwight Sick are producing. But the winery has quietly built a large enough following that most wines on the web site are sold out soon after release. The flagship red, however, currently is available.

The wine, also called Pentâge, impresses with elegance rather than power. It has a delicate aroma of cherries, red currants and vanilla, showing a bit of spice as it opens up. On the palate, there are flavours of currants, a touch of cherry and plum. The seamless texture, with its fine tannins, shows considerable polish. There is an intriguing cerebral character to this wine. It will show its best savoured slowly with a nice piece of cheese. 88 points.

Reviewed November 16, 2006 by John Schreiner.