Blue Mountain Vineyard and Cellars 2022 Pinot Blanc

Blue Mountain Pinot Blanc

Shelley Boettcher - Sep 24, 2023 / 4:00 am | Story: 447810

Photo: Contributed

Wine: Blue Mountain Vineyard and Cellars 2022 Pinot Blanc

Winery: Blue Mountain Vineyard and Cellars

Why drink it? This medium-full-bodied white wine has pretty floral and wet rock aromas combined with stone fruit flavours: think peaches and nectarines. The grapes are hand harvested and the wine spends five months in neutral oak and stainless steel before bottling. Genetically related to Pinot Noir, Pinot Blanc is an often under-appreciated white wine grape in Canada but it really deserves to be in our glasses more often.

The Mavety family, who owns Blue Mountain, planted their first vineyards in 1971 and sold their wine grapes to other wineries until 1991, when they created Blue Mountain Vineyard and Cellars. Since then, they have developed an almost cult following amongst wine lovers and for their quality and limited availability. They make some beautiful other wines, too, including one of the Okanagan’s best Gamays which, similar to this white wine, would be a brilliant addition to your Thanksgiving or Christmas table.

Pair with: Thanksgiving turkey, roast chicken.

Price: $29

Music pairing: Aujourd’hui by Bigflo & OliC

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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.