Staff tasting

For the last 5 years, I have been working at a local Italian eatery called Agostino's. For most of those, I have been a part-time server for them. The owners, Agostino and Julie, are truly wonderful people to work for.

This last winter they moved from downtown Kelowna to the Shannon Lake Golf Course in Westbank and I along with them. This makes for a much easier commute since I live with my wife Sarah in Glenrosa about a 10 minute drive from the golf course.

With the larger location and higher traffic that the venue of a golf course provides, comes new and more staff. At the 2nd staff meeting (1st I was able to attend), I wanted to try and raise the staff interest in promoting wines.

Anyway, BLAH BLAH de BLAH. Long story short ... I held a wine tasting at the end of the meeting. The feature wine was Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc from NZ.

If I recall, this wine is one of the principle reasons that NZ whites, most especially Sauv Blanc, are known worldwide. It was at the forefront of the quality exports from that country.

I had suggested Villa Maria for the wine list but I could not find any at the closest LDB outlet so I went with this to give the staff some idea of the style and taste of the wine. I have never tried the Villa Maria but have heard many great things about this producer.

The nose of citrus zest, gooseberry and sage were almost like an awakening of old and forgotten muscles. A satisfying reminescence of love and longing. Heady, to be sure. To be able to smell and explore that for the longest stretch of diaphragm possible, exhale and do it all over again. I love white wine!! To me, most reds can be great to drink but a lot of it is so bloated and overabundant that it is overwhelming. I guess that is what makes red more food friendly, or maybe more main course friendly, in my eye. The food can tame many of the elements of red where whites are best when austere, fragrant, demure and drunk without food. The palate showed sparkling acidity with lemongrass and pink grapefruit notes; exactly as I had hoped the wine would show. It is easy to see why this wine was probably the showcase export from NZ back in the 90s and is good to great value at $18 at the LDB here.

The plan for the tasting was to do a red and a white but I felt it necessary to go over tasting technique and proper service of wine before the tasting. So we only got through the white. Which left me with the bottle of red.

The red was the Finca Flichman Syrah, a wine I recall had been rated as one of the top values reds in the world by either Decanter or Wine Spectator back when I used to subscribe to both. A wine that I finally convinced Agostino could replace the Yellowtail Shiraz. Not a hard sell since he hates Yellowtail. A couple of nights later and 2 ribeye steaks thawed. I made a mushroom and red bell pepper risotto to go with the steaks that I marinated in a little truffle oil, garlic and S&P. I had everything timed for the return of my wife Sarah from her commute. She walks in the door the risotto finished, wine decanted with Riedel stemless waiting and the steaks just about to go on our oh so high tech grill.

The wine showed extremely well in my mind. The luscious fruit of the Shiraz style was not there. I find this masks the finesse of the grape. The Syrah had nice blackberry and cherry fruit, peppery smoke notes, subtle but present tannin and good balance. A very good match for the Ribeye and Risotto. I think a heavier more full bodied or even more tannic wine might have shown better since the Risotto is very rich. At $10 a great value ... and made me glad that I had chosen it for the wine list.