Welcome to the Sipsters Icons! This is where I will be featuring the absolute best and most iconic Canadian wines and experiences. These are wines that are consistently at the top of their game. These are the wines that you need to know about because they are pushing the boundaries of quality in this country. These are the wines that future generations will refer to as grand crus.
In my journey through Canadian wine while writing the Sipster’s Pocket Guides, I have experienced some utterly fantastic wines that I am not able to include because of the guidelines that I set myself when writing those books. The wines I choose for the Pocket Guides must consistently be produced each year and must retail for under $50. I am also limited in my word count because only a single page is devoted to each wine.
With Sipster’s Icons, I am able to remove those restrictions and speak about each of these wine experiences in much greater length and with more detail than I am able to in the Pocket Guides. The wine world is exciting. It is even more so in Canada, where the industry is adventurous, unassuming, and sometimes unpredictable.
There are wines you need to know about. Onward with our journey…
Icon Wines
What is an ‘icon wine’?
You might have your own definition for this, which is great. If you haven’t thought about it though, I will offer up my own definition that I will use to determine if a wine is truly iconic, or if it just another bottle on the shelf.
An Iconic wine is a gesamtkunstwerk, a total work of art, in the form of a wine created by a single winery that shows a deliberate and concise artistic statement matched with consistently superior quality, complexity, and nuance from vintage to vintage.
Please keep in mind that this definition is fluid and may change as I work this concept through at higher levels as time progresses. I see wine as art and applying rigid definitions to it is not going to benefit anyone.
I must explain a few jumping off points that started me on my journey in trying to understand and define iconic wines. There are three things – an award, a tasting, and a book.
The book is still on the store shelves as I write this, even though it is now 7 years old.
John Schreiner’s 2017 book “Icon: Flagship wines from British Columbia’s Best Wineries” is his definitive statement on British Columbia’s wine that uncharacteristically includes his opinions, rather than just observations, about the wines that he’s included. Reading through it is a tickle trunk of tasting notes on wines that are still relevant today – Nota Bene, Osoyoos Larose, The Judge, and Signature – from wineries that are steady in their approach to wine making. There are more than just creative and meritage blends: There are Pinot Noirs from all over the province, some of the most amazing Chardonnays ever produced in Canada, and Rieslings that have received international attention.
The tasting event sadly is no longer. Simon Wosk’s Sip Wines VQA store in Richmond provided the backdrop for the “Iconic Reds” annual tasting from 2008 to 2016. Though I never got to attend one of these tastings or meet Simon or John personally, the results were always something I awaited eagerly. As I recall, the wines were not voted on by a panel of wine judges, but rather by all of the people who attended the events. This fascinated me even more because the people judging the wines were the very same people for whom the wines appealed most – well-moneyed wine-enthusiasts. Presumably, they knew what they were looking for and could afford the steep (for the time) ticket price to attend it. The competition was also held at a time when BC wine was still not being taken seriously by the greater wine world. The argument against BC wines at the time were that they did not have “good value” (which I always found a bit vague), or that they didn’t have the same depth or complexity. Both of those arguments were largely from Eurocentric wine snobs, who were clearly grasping at straws. The wines chosen for the first tastings were researched and selected by John Levine, founder of the Vancouver International Wine Festival, and a “passionate collector of wines from France and California”. It stands to reason that he knew great wines when he tasted them.
The award is the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Excellence in British Columbia Wine, which is now called the BC Lieutenant Governor’s Wine Awards and is currently administered by the Okanagan Wine Festivals Society. Referred to as “the LGs” in the wine industry, they were the most prestigious awards from 2003 until 2017. These awards differed from traditional wine competitions in that there were no tiered results – no gold, silver, or bronze medals. Wines either won an award or not - no second place or honourable mentions. The awards were conducted in the spring and presented to the wineries by the Lieutenant Governor in person later in the summer. The presentations happened over a couple of days in a large show of diplomatic pageantry as the Lieutenant Governor, their entourage and security detail, and the large consular corps on large motorcoaches, went from winery to winery presenting the award. It was the a special occasion and often the only time I got to see any of my wine industry coworkers get a little bit dressed up in the daylight hours. As I wrote in my first book, “Valleys of Wine”, the awards were given out with “no axe to grind, advertisers to appease, or products to sell other than pride in their own domestic wine industry”[1]. This had a validating effect on the wine industry, as if to say, “What you do is important. Thank you.” The wines awarded an LG were from a cross-section of styles and varieties and more closely represented the diversity of BC wine’s landscape at the time.
This is only the beginning of the journey to discover iconic wines in Canada. What makes a wine truly iconic? What qualities should you be looking for? Find out in the next post, coming soon.
[1] Valleys of Wine (2019) page 352