Vancouver International Wine Festival - tickets now on sale and going fast! Don't miss it! Feb 24 - Mar 2, 2014

UPDATE - 7 events already sold out!  

Vancouver International Wine Festival - best wine event in North America - starts soon 

Wine tasting at Vancouver International Wine Festival - Andrew Chin photo

UPDATE: The Vancouver International Wine Festival is reporting that seven events for this year's big bash have already sold out just days after tickets went on sale!

Those events include: #1: Nothing But Burgundy, #2: Dine Italia, #3: 25 Under $25, #4: Viva Espana, #5: Insatiable Rhone. Those are some of the best dinners with wine principals in attendance, sadly, but there area still lots of great events - don't delay is my strong advice!

ORIGINAL POST

It's Vancouver International Wine Festival time - and this year with France as the theme country - and a global focus on bubbly!  

Tickets are now on sale for Canada's biggest and best wine and food event - and I'm looking forward to attending for my 24th year in a row!

The Festival has grown from humble roots in 1979 with a single winery - Robert Mondavi - to 178 wineries from 14 countries, attracting 23,000 participants to 54 events over eight days.

About 780 different wines will be available for tasting at the Festival Tasting Room events, with another 800 wines featured in a multitude of other special events during the  35th annual Festival!

If you have never been and love or even like wine, you simply have to go!  

The four major tastings are a great place to start - Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday afternoon - a new event - and of course the big Saturday night tasting - which sells out early.   

Tickets are available for each tasting at $89 each - or just $80 if you buy for a group of 10 or more - and believe me, you will more than get your money's worth from the excellent wines served.

My suggestion is simple - go Thursday night, when attendance is guaranteed to be about 30% less than Friday or Saturday - and you will see me there!  

Bill Tieleman - the Wine Barbarian - at Le Comptoir in Paris, 2013

It's a much better opportunity to talk to the principals of wineries - that's one of the stipulations of the Festival - you have to have a key staff member, from winemaker to owner - in attendance.  And Thursday night is simply less crowded and more congenial.

But there is an enormous range of other wine events - from as little as $30 to as much as $395 a ticket - and from fine dining dinners to hour long specialty tastings.

And - perhaps best of all - you can purchase wines tasted at the Festival that are not otherwise available anywhere.  [That said, you can be disappointed when the single case of wine shipped in disappears before you even arrive, sadly.]  

Whatever you do - don't miss the opportunity to expand your wine knowledge and your horizons - by attending some of the Vancouver International Wine Festival events.


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Puddifoot store - a Vancouver institution for wine and food fans - is sadly closing December 31 - but hurry to Kerrisdale for fantastic deals!

PUDDIFOOT NOW CLOSED!

Original item: The fabulous Puddifoot store in Kerrisdale that has served Vancouver wine and food fans for over 60 years is sadly closing after December 31.

I recently spoke with Jason Puddifoot about the retail institution and the good news is that their wholesale business serving the restaurant and food service business is booming and will continue.

But those of us who depended on Puddifoot's multi generation store for the fabulous Riedel and other wine and whisky glasses and carafes, cutlery, plates, candlesticks and much more for the kitchen and dining room will be out of luck.

The brief bright spot is that everything is on sale now through December 31 at remarkable savings!

I've already bought my wine glassware for the next year or two, depending on breakage!

I encourage, if not urge you to head over there and help Puddifoot clean out the store with fabulous savings to you. 

Best wishes to Jason and John Puddifoot, their family and the many dedicated staff that have served me over many, many years - good luck continuing the wholesale business and see you at the Vancouver International Wine Festival again this year!

Call 604-261-8141 if you need to check hours.

CORRECTION: I mixed up Jason with John in an earlier version - now fixed.

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A modern Shiraz Fable - launch at Fable Restaurant of George Wyndham Founder's Reserve Shiraz 2010

3 courses - 1 wine - a case study in delicious simplicity

2010 George Wyndham 
Founders Reserve Shiraz

Most people on most nights open one bottle of wine to accompany their dinner.  

And while chefs, sommeliers, restaurant critics, foodies and others will rightly argue that each separate course of a meal should have a different wine to match it, that's really not possible 99% of the time.  

Especially when it's dinner for two at home. 

Enter George Wyndham Founder's Reserve Shiraz 2010 and Fable Kitchen's famed chef Trevor Bird to show how it's done right.

Winemaker Steve Meyer from Wyndam Estate was guest of honour and explained his approach to creating a reasonably-priced Shiraz that goes with a wide variety of dishes - without overpowering them, as some massive, high-alcohol Australian Shiraz is apt to do. 

This tasty wine is widely available across the province at BC Liquor Stores at $18.99 with over 800 bottles in stock and likely many private stores as well.

Steve explained his craft and the style he uses with the George Wyndham Founder's Reserve Shiraz 2010 - which comes from the Langhorne Creek region in South Australia, which has been producing wine grapes since the 1860s.

Steve that in comparison to some other wine regions of Australia, Langhorne Creek wines have softer tannins with a bouquet of mint and eucalyptus notes.

The George Wyndham Founder's Reserve Shiraz 2010 features a palate of fresh plum and blackberry fruit flavours, along with notes of black olives and aniseed.  The bouquet also has a touch of cedar, cinnamon, chocolate and spice.

Winemaker Steve Meyer and Bill Tieleman
- Shirley Ross photo

What I really like about this Shiraz - and I drink a lot of them from Australia and other countries - is that it is not a take-no-prisoners wine - it is actually very food friendly.

That was proven by Chef Bird with an excellent meal built around the wine.

We started with canapes of blue cheese, dates and bacon that were simply excellent, followed by a parsnip and apple soup shooter - very imaginative - and the Shiraz went very well with both.

Our first course was one close to my heart - rabbit!  Chef Bird prepared rabbit legs with red curry squash agnolotti and fall gourds in a very rich sauce - excellent!  

Rabbit legs, squash agnolotti dish - Bill Tieleman photo

The George Wyndham Founder's Reserve Shiraz 2010 was clearly a handsome match for this dish - complementing it rather than attempting to bully it as some other big Shiraz wines would.

Chef Bird said this Shiraz goes very well with rich dishes, adding: "You could have it with a stick of butter!"   We didn't try that but I would guess a lot of butter was used in the kitchen that night!

Next up was an unusual dish - and a cut of beef you just won't find anywhere unless you are a restaurant chef with a great supplier.

Braised Beef Stiletto came with triple-cooked potatoes, fresh grilled porcini mushrooms, carrots, pearl onions and porcini foam with Shiraz jus.  The beef was also braised in the Shiraz.

To call it delicious would be an understatement!  And it was as rich as a new lottery winner!

Braised Beef Stiletto w potatoes, porcini

But once again, the George Wyndham Founder's Reserve Shiraz 2010 was an excellent partner that added to the beef's strong flavours.

As for the "Stiletto" - Chef Bird explained that the cut is from the back calf muscle - the one that would get used if you were wearing stiletto heel shoes.  

Chef Bird - a competitor in last year's Top Chef Canada show, coming in second place - clearly knows his meat and wine. Before opening Fable Kitchen [formerly Fuel and ReFuel] at 1944 West 4th Avenue in Vancouver's Kitsilano neighbourhood, he was chef de partie at the Shangri-La hotel in Vancouver and worked as a chef at Truffert and sous chef at Restaurant Garcon in Montreal.

Steve Meyer at home in Langhorne Creek

Our dessert course was - guess - rich again!  A dark chocolate terrine was paired with a highly unusual olive oil ice cream.  Again the George Wyndham Founder's Reserve Shiraz 2010 rose to the challenge, matching a completely different taste than all that came before.

Steve Meyer was very impressed with the results of the wine and food pairing.  Steve also noted in response to questions from the wine and foodie writers in attendance that Wyndham is using mostly screwcaps instead of corks with their wine and that this wine will age 10 to 15 years if well stored.  He said they first tested screwcaps in 1998 with their Riesling and immediately saw big advantages.  

Steve, who has previous winemaking experience in the Mudgee region, Georgia in eastern Europe and Spain, said he believes his role is to express the fruit flavours as they occur in the vineyard, not use a lot of tricks in the cellar to change the wine.

It was a great event and many thanks to Dana Sissons and Kristine Driedger of Hill + Knowlton Strategies and Rae Gibson of Corby Distilleries for the inviting and gracious hosting!

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