More bocce and wine on a warm day in Bill Spohn's garden:
Okay, to start, we toasted Bill's birthday (today) with a splendid sparkling Limoux that David and Nadine brought. I did not catch the name but perhaps Bill can fill it in. It was a light coppery pink color with expressive, but not over the top, fruit, the kind that's not wedding annivary-serious but serious enough for knowldegeable wine geeks to crave as a summer apperitif. Absolutely delicious.
2007 La Frenz Riesling
I've tasted La Frenz's rieslings in the past and always found them a bit too off-dry, and perhaps lacking in acid, for my taste, but this was neither. Firm with lots of fruit character, it most prominently featured white grapefruit supported nicely by little bits of white flowers, coconut and fresh cut grass. Very good.
2007 Lawsons Dry Hills Pinot Gris
I bought this awhile back on Sue Courtney's reccomendation, and I brought this because Lawsons wines are so good and they're not, I believed, distributed in Canada. Pale pinkish-gray pearl colored, we all agreed that had this been served to us blind, we'd have gone straight to Alsace. At the very least, none of us has ever had a PG from New Zealand that suggested that the lightly off dry, heavily perfumed Alsatian style was possible there. Bill said something like, "I'd like to pour this for all the winemakers in the Okanagan Valley to show them it CAN be done."
2006 Huet Lieu-Dit Sec Vouvray
Not sure how to describe this after the fact (none of us took notes) except to say that it's obviously very good dry chenin blanc from an obviously good year.
2006 Blue Mountain Gamay Noir
Fresh on the heals of my final disappointment with a Blue Mountain pinot noir the night before comes this splendid little example of the good Blue Mountain can do. Polished cherry and red currant fruit with no detectable oak, this is made in a very restrained, pure beaujolais style and it makes a perfect afternoon red.
