The Vancouver International Wine Festival

(This is what it looks like when you pour a glass of wine.)

It may come as no shocker that I'm no expert in wine. However, in the past I've put a lot of effort out to try to put together some good blog articles for your reading pleasure, about the various wine tastings I go to. A lot of the time, I'm simply just too overwhelmed by all of the products, so I take a step back to tell you my personal highlights.

This time, is no different!

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I have it on good authority that the Vancouver International Wine Festival, is the largest wine festival in North America; sadly though, I don't seem to be encouraged enough to fact check that claim. I'm just going to roll with it. I was pretty excited to bag a free ticket to go this last Thursday. And boy, was I glad to go!

(This is what we people in the real world call "schmoozing".)

The main theme of the festival were French wines. French wines have taken on a legacy all of their own. France is well known as the place to go for great wines, and I'm happy to announce that I couldn't agree with the stereotype, any more. The truth is,  I haven't had all that much exposure to French wines, so this tasting opportunity was a real treat.

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Where to begin? Well, first of all, let's talk regions. I found a new friend in the Alsace region of France. Previously, all I knew about Alsace was that it was a disputed territory between France and Germany for over one hundred years. Today, I know that they have some pretty darned good Gewurztraminer, Muscat, Pinot Gris, and Sparkling Wines, among other varietals. As with most men (an assumption, granted), I normally prefer to go with red wines, and can find at times that whites simply don't have what I'm looking for. After tasting wines from Alsace, I can totally say that I've found my niche in white wines. Like me, you may have noticed a lot of the varietals from the Alsace region have German influence - such as Riesling and Gewurztraminer. With my limited wine knowledge, I've figured out that this translates to a much different wine region than the other regions of France.

(I'm guessing the region shown above is Loire. Truth be told I was somewhat inebriated, but judging from the "L" and "e", unless the planet, Lahsbane, from Star Wars is a wine region, then Loire is a good guess.)

This isn't to say, the other regions aren't great either.

I was pleased to taste many a Champagne, Loire or Southwestern France product, but I'll stick to the claim that Alsace was the highlight for me. I of course got the opportunity to see a lot of the local sommeliers partake, who are normally behind the counter themselves. I was also pleased to chat about some French fortified wines, that were comparable to Port (pictured below). The ABV was less than Port, which was also of interest. Being somewhat of a lightweight, I can't finish a bottle of Port in one night, and that leads to the question of it going off. Some of these French fortified wines seem to have fixed that problem for me, being much lower than the 20% ABV of some Ports.

(This is not Port, but I'm fairly certain it's the fortified wine I was talking about, above.)

Unfortunately, I didn't have nearly enough time at the event, and as I saw my timer counting down, I ran off to try a few of the other international wines I was interested in. In the process I got to listen to some cheesy non-truths by a perhaps, too intoxicated Sommelier manning the Israeli table - unfortunate, as I would have liked to know more about the wine, and less about 'True Blood' (that's a joke referring to the TV show of the same name, that probably won't make sense to anyone other than me... let's just say the guy had a very strong sense of imagination).

Goofy assessments aside, the Israeli wines I tasted were quite delightful. Even while I was waiting to get into the event, and flipping through the brochure, my attention was piqued with the realization that there are wines from Israel at the event. Unfortunately, as these things are, I didn't get to try a lot of the other foreign wines I was interested in, but of the ones I did, this was the table that I wanted to share.