Black Hills Chardonnay

Allison Markin - Apr 14, 2019 / 5:00 am | Story: 253958

Photo: Contributed

Wine: Chardonnay 2017

Winery: Black Hills, Oliver

Why drink it? Just released, a lot of love and care went into this well-crafted chard. A good transitional white wine with medium body and weight to get you through a cool spring until summer hits. Notes of lemon rind, fresh pears, and pie dough with a bit of tropical fruit on the nose. The oak treatment is present but nicely balanced, with minerality, vanilla bean, and clarified butter rounding out the citrus flavours and a long finish. Lovely to drink now, or put it on the wine rack for a couple of years to let it rest and fully develop its complex layers.

Price: $30

Pair with: A pear and gorgonzola tart. If adventurous, anything with lemon curd including buttery breakfast pastries and a side of crème fraiche to mix and match. Fettucine alfredo, or a creamy version of mac’n’cheese with lots of butter and seasoned bread crumbs on top.

Music pairing: Remedy, The Black Crowes

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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.