Quinta Ferreira, Oliver

Allison Markin - Aug 12, 2018 / 5:00 am | Story: 233678

Photo: Contributed

Join our wine writer, Allison Markin, every week for a wine review complete with food and music pairings. Featuring Okanagan and Canadian wines, with an occasional international bottle, Castanet celebrates the bottles of our Valley and the diversity of the Canadian wine industry and influences from around the world. For current availability and pricing, consult the winery. Unless indicated, international selections are generally available at government liquor stores or private wine shops.

Wine: Malbec, 2012

Winery: Quinta Ferreira, Oliver

Why drink it? Malbec typically has a deep purple-inky colour making it easy to spot in a lineup of reds, and also slightly softer tannins than other deep red wines… just like this one. The winery smartly holds back its reds to age a bit and integrate its flavours before releasing bottles for purchase, and while this bottle can rest for another couple of years, it’s drinkable now. A swirl in the glass releases dark cherry and ripe blueberry notes with a hint of vanilla bean. A sip? Raspberry, some plum, spice notes from the oak treatment, and a very subtle note of mint on the finish.

Price: $35

Pair with: Even with its smoother tannins than other bold reds, this wine pairs well with most meats — lamb, leaner cuts of red meat like skirt steak, and even slow cooked pulled pork sandwiches. Anything with blue cheese (including veggie burgers, or in a salad dressing), will be tasty.

Music pairing: Pipe Dreams, Nelly Furtado

Have a wine to suggest? Email Allison at [email protected].

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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.