The Sipster's Pocket Guide to 50 Must-Try BC Wines: Volume 2

Whether you’re feeling dramatic or drill sergeant, high performance or home sweet home, with Sipster’s you can choose a wine to suit your attitude.

Amicable 93

Amorous 37

Anticipatory 61

Antique 117

Carefree 15

Ceremonial 39

Cheeky 47

Chill 109

Clarity 65

Commemorative 45

Disciplined 111

Dramatic 85

Drill sergeant 27

Elegant rustic 89

Elusive 113

Exotic 33

Faithful 83

Familiar 101

F*ck it 81

Fun fun fun! 73

Grapes gone wild 99

Hidden 107

High performance 25

Home sweet home 87

Homey 105

Kissy 119

Loving 23, 67

Mentoring 63

Merry 17

Night at the opera 103

Outdoorsy 75

Paisley 41

Patient 39

Playful 19

Quiet forcefulness 57

Rancher 91

Rebellious 41

Rejuvenating 95

Relaxed 21

Self-care 121

Shy 55

Slow 71

Spiritual 51

Sprightly 59

Trailblazing 53

Wild 79

Vol.

2

The

Sipster’s

Pocket Guide

To 50 Must-Try

BC Wines

Luke Whittall

For John Schreiner,

my mentor in this amazing world of

bc

wine who has, to my knowledge, never had a wine book dedicated to him.

sipster

sip·ster | \ sip-stər \

: one who observes, seeks, and sets taste trends of sipping beverages, such as wine, spirits, tea, and coffee, outside of the mainstream.

Contents

Introduction

Sparkling Wines

White Wines

Rosé Wines

Red Wines

Dessert Wines

Sipsters’ Code of Conduct

Grape Varieties of British Columbia

Sipster’s Top Crus of British Columbia

Acknowledgements

Index

Introduction

Celebrating Things That Matter

Welcome to Volume 2 of The Sipster’s Pocket Guide. The unofficial subtitle of this volume should be What a difference a pandemic makes! Sipsters are always aware and appreciative of the things that they eat and drink, but in the post-pandemic world, I believe that appreciation is much more widespread. When social gatherings, large or small, are taken away, it makes us appreciate them even more once they’re possible again. Wine is a social product, and those who work in the industry are often highly social people. Even though I never really liked the crowded nature of the huge, noisy tastings at the Okanagan Wine Festivals or the Vancouver International Wine Festival, I really missed them when they were absent.

Our attitudes toward wine, especially local wines, and local food have also shifted noticeably since before the pandemic. If you saw wine as a luxury indulgence before Covid, it likely became more of a necessity during the worst of the lockdowns. When we were isolated in our homes, alcohol was rightly considered as essential as toilet paper and bread. Just as grocery stores remained open, so did liquor stores. People placed orders for wine online, perhaps for the first time, and had it shipped or picked it up curbside. Maybe they joined a wine club or two. Companies purchased virtual tastings for their employees, and many people gathered for tastings on video calls with friends. It was a busy time for the wine industry online.

The first volume of Sipster’s was conceived, written, and published during the pandemic. I hoped that reading about wine would also be deemed essential for those missing the in-person tastings and the experiences that normally come with the wine lifestyle. The aromas and flavours of a special wine can transport us back to memories of the Before Times. It is my hope that all of these experiences, coupled with a new-found appreciation for the essential elements that wine can bring to our lives, will help us to get further past the point scores and tasting notes approach to learning about wine: Did someone give that wine only 86 points? I had that wine with my parents during our last visit, and we all thought it was fantastic. I guess those points don’t mean very much after all.

Covid also brought a real fear to many who work in the wine industry, particularly the possible symptom of losing one’s sense of smell. Losing, or even compromising, that sense is a serious threat to the professional lives of those working with wine. It can seriously impede a winemaker from doing their job for weeks. It can be a safety risk to cellar staff, who have no way to detect a developing fault in a barrel or, say, a propane leak from the forklift. Even those in wine sales can have great difficulties doing their work with their olfactory senses compromised (for example, not being able to detect a faulted bottle). Hopefully more research into this aspect of the virus will take place in the near future. Perhaps it will help us understand more about this generally undervalued sense.

Our Relationship with Alcohol

Following the first set of pandemic lockdowns, many people began re-examining their relationship with wine and with alcohol in general. As Edward Slingerland notes frequently in his fantastic book Drunk, drinking alone can be dangerous. Unless your partner is a bartender, there’s probably nobody serving you drinks or, more importantly, monitoring how much you’re drinking when you’re working from home. As we all know, self-monitoring means something entirely different from being aware of how many glasses of wine you’ve had in an evening. Slingerland suggests that societal pressures and obligations often act as a kind of safeguard against overconsumption of alcohol. In cultures where wine is treated like a food and enjoyed only with meals, alcohol abuse in general is reduced. When those societal pressures are removed due to isolation at home, what are our safeguards?

For some people, societal pressures (or encouragement) come from social media, which can be a lifeline for human interaction and information (although that is certainly debatable). In the past, organized religion had a hand in guiding morals; social media has taken on that role today. Slingerland notes that our age is moralistic to a degree not seen since Queen Victoria’s day.* It is difficult to discuss topics constructively with the binary I’m right and You’re wrong of social media platforms. Shades of meaning go out the browser window and arguments tend to become all or nothing. Just like in Victorian times, you are either a good person or you are branded as a witch. There is no in between. Similarly, at one time you were allowed to consume alcohol, or you weren’t. This moralism resulted in the total prohibition of alcohol in bc and the rest of North America just over a century ago.

Being self-aware of our consumption habits, personally and as a society, should never be belittled or ignored. I have close friends who have given up drinking altogether, and I will always support them in this. The trend toward no- or low-alcohol wines illustrates a positive corrective measure to the laissez-faire attitudes toward wine depicted in many memes and bedazzled wine-shop T-shirts over the past decade. Sipsters enjoy wine more for what it is than what it does. It is the act of enjoying that is the appeal. Having too much seriously impacts our ability to enjoy wine, which is ultimately just a food and, for some, an important part of life. Pairing wine with food is the best way for sipsters to take the time to appreciate the nuances of wine, the skill that it takes to make it, and the places it comes from.

For sipsters, wine is a journey that’s all about the senses, the mind, and the time spent with friends.

The Sipster’s Approach

If you read Volume 1, you probably noticed that Sipster’s takes a unique approach to wine write-ups. The book is a two-way conversation about wine in book form, not a book of wine reviews. I don’t proffer my opinion about a wine and then pronounce my score based on the years of experience or accreditations that I have. It is me writing about my experiences with wines that I hope you will enjoy as much as I have. It’s as simple as that.

To be clear, I am not trying to sell any of the wines in this book. That is the wineries’ job. My job is to provide you with something interesting to read that encourages you to appreciate and enjoy your wines in new ways or reaffirms the way that you have been doing it all along but may never have seen represented