Black Widow, Naramata

Contributed - Jun 4, 2017 / 5:00 am | Story: 198634

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: Hourglass (red blend)

Winery: Black Widow Winery, Naramata Bench

Why drink it? Black Widow very smartly has been conducting “en primeur” tasting of its forthcoming reds, which means you try the wines now – sometimes right from the barrel – and buy now, knowing that you will have your wines before they are released to the public. Given that this Bordeaux-style blend regularly sells out, you might want to consider an advance purchase. Dark cherry colour, an elegant aroma of cocoa, plum, and stewed berries, it this is a bold blend. Flavours of red fruits, a hint of vanilla mixed with toasty notes from oak aging, and a long finish.

Price: $42 (varies by vintage and availability)

Pair with: This wine needs some aging to reach its full flavour profile and let the tannins relax. After patiently waiting or opting to decant a younger vintage an hour or two before dinner, pair with steak, bison burgers, venison…really, just get some good red meat on the grill.

Classic cancon music pairing: Rock Me Gently, Andy Kim

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.