Evolve Cellars, Summerland

Contributed - Dec 17, 2017 / 5:00 am | Story: 214210

Photo: Contributed

For Canada’s 150th birthday this year, Castanet is featuring an Okanagan wine each week, celebrating the bottles of our Valley and the diversity of the Canadian wine industry, including suggested food pairings and Canadian music artist to listen to while enjoying a glass. For current availability, consult the winery.

Wine: Elevate, 2016 (red blend)

Winery: Evolve Cellars, Summerland

Why drink it? A new release from Evolve, this Cabernet-Shiraz blend delivers some excellent fruit upon a swirl and sniff: fresh blackberries, plums, and if you close your eyes for a moment, hints of white pepper and sage leaves. The winery describes this bottle as “juicy”, which it certainly is, with lush layers of dark berries – those blackberries from the aromas, plus huckleberries and dark currants. Mild toasty oak flavours with some vanilla bean round it out, but this is a young vintage. Pleasant to drink now, but if you give this a couple of years on the wine rack it should soften and be even more gratifying.

Price: $30

Pair with: A red that can be enjoyed when a surprise guest pops in and you can grab a couple of glasses and catch up. Even better when that friend brings leftover chili that’s not too spicy, or you have enough time to run out for the makings of a plate of antipasto.

Classic CanCon music pairing: Rise Up, The Parachute Club

Have a wine you'd like to suggest? Contact us at [email protected], and we will put you in touch with our wine writer.

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About the Author

As a kid, Shelley Boettcher often found herself in the back seat of a pick-up, exploring the back roads of the Okanagan Valley with her parents. They’d occasionally leave her and her brother in the car while they stopped at mysterious addresses to buy wine. They would emerge, clearly happy, as they stuck a box or a few bottles in the vehicle. Then they would continue on their journey.

But it wasn’t until a trip to Spain in 2000 that Shelley herself fell in love with wine. She came home from the holiday and promptly told her editor she wanted to become a wine writer.

And she did.

An award-winning food and wine writer and editor, Shelley holds her master’s degree in journalism and her advanced WSET certification, as well as her level 2 International Sommelier Guild certification. A wine columnist for the Calgary Herald, she spent a decade as CBC Radio’s national syndicated wine columnist and she has written three books about wine, including two that were Canadian bestsellers. Her byline has appeared in magazines and newspapers around the world, including the New York Times, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail and Postmedia newspapers across Canada.

Shelley has travelled throughout many of the world’s wine regions and countries, including Niagara, Oregon, Washington, California, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Australia, Germany, Argentina and the Republic of Georgia. A few years ago, she even tracked down and visited a winery in Denmark.

Shelley has also served as a professional wine judge regionally and internationally, including the Okanagan Wine Festivals, Vinitaly and the Chianti Classico Consortium. For more than a decade, she has been a restaurant wine list judge for the Vancouver International Wine Festival, too. She still teases her parents for sparking her love for wine, especially BC wine.

And her favourite? Whatever she's drinking at the moment.

You can follow Shelley on Instagram @shelleyboettcher or Twitter at @shelley_wine.

If you have a BC wine you’d like to suggest, email Shelley at [email protected] with the name of the wine and a short note about why you enjoyed it.

Evolve Cellars, Summerland

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