Moon Curser Vineyards 2021 Syrah

Moon Curser 2021 Syrah

Shelley Boettcher - Oct 15, 2023 / 4:00 am | Story: 451691

Photo: Contributed

Wine: Moon Curser Vineyards 2021 Syrah

Winery: Moon Curser Vineyards

Why drink it: Syrah grows so well in the Okanagan, and Moon Curser makes an excellent wine with it. Well-balanced, savoury and bold, it has flavours of blackcurrant, dark chocolate and blueberry, with notes of cinnamon and vanilla on the nose.

Want to do a cool comparison? Sign up for the Moon Curser wine club to get access to a bottle of the Contraband Syrah — a slightly more expensive Syrah — and taste the two side by side to see if you have a favourite.

I’m always interested in seeing what’s going on at Moon Curser. This former orchard-turned-family-owned winery is located on the East Bench of Osoyoos. It makes an incredible array of wines, including some made from really uncommon grapes in Canada: Carmenere, Arneis, Dolcetto, Touriga Nacional. These grapes may be famous elsewhere in the world, but we very seldom see these grapes grown here and turned into single-varietal Canadian wines.

Pair with: Spicy sausages, spicy red pasta sauces (arrabbiata or puttanesca, perhaps), lamb or charcuterie.

Price: $33 for 750 mL, $80 for a magnum

Music pairing: Moondance by Van Morrison

Back to Homepage

Typos News Tips Forums

More Wine Reviews articles

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.