The
Fort Wine Company
By Jenise
Stone
“You
get to select three wines to taste,” our hostess
at The Fort Wine Company’s tasting room, located
about five minutes from the old fort at Langley, B.C.,
cheerfully announced. I, who up until last Tuesday
hated non-grape fruit wines, eyed the menu trying to
figure out  which
would involve the least suffering. To stall for time,
I whipped out my business card. “Oh, you write?,” she
said, “then you get to taste everything.” My
tongue recoiled in horror.
Needlessly,
as it turned out, as years of dislike formed by run-ins
with sugary, sometimes oxidized or bretty or sulfurous,
sometimes badly fortified (vodka, anyone?) made by
well-meaning friends and family members, as well as
numerous unimpressive commercial efforts, just melted
away. These wines tasted like real wine because they
ARE real wine. Expertly so.
Originally
just a working cranberry farm (still is), the winery
started six years ago with wines from that fruit and
slowly built on its success with other local fruit
(the blueberries come from two doors down) and tree
fruit from the warmer Okanagan Valley. Derek Powen
was the founding winemaker but the reins have recently
been handed to Richard Roseweir, whom we got a chance
to chat with. He makes six dry to off-dry wines, and
six sweeter dessert wines. The dry wines all report
in at a light 11% alcohol, where the stickies (that’s
geek talk for dessert wine) are 16%.
I
liked every single one of them. So much so that I came
home with the white cranberry, cranberry and blueberry
dry wines plus a sticky.
The
white cranberry is the palest pink, made from juvenile
cranberries picked in early August when some of the
berries start turning pink, and it tastes of cranberries
and pink grapefruit. It’s tangy with a hint of
a semillon-like floral note and a pleasantly bitter
finish. The red cranberry is medium rose in color and
true to the fruit, with a fruitier mid-palate. The
blueberry, in spite of being made only from 100% blueberries,
had a nose of sweet fruit and aged white cheddar, and
tasted of blueberry and raspberry. I’m going
to save this for an after dinner cheese plate. Additionally,
they make dry wines from apple, peach/apricot and strawberry.
All
the same fruits show up in the fine dessert line (fortified
with grain alcohol). I limited myself to three wines
here and followed my hostess’ recommendations.
First, a brilliant blackberry “port”. This
is the one wine made here that sees oak treatment,
and the wine tastes of blackberry crumble and walnuts.
An apple ice wine (they freeze the fruit to remove
water and enhance concentration) tasted of both red
and green apple skins plus a lovely streak of cinnamon.
My personal favorite was the wine they call Gold Rush.
Made from peaches and apricots, this orange-gold nectar
tasted of peach, apricot skin, hazelnuts, celery seed
and brandy. Very complex, very impressive.
So
who doesn’t like fruit wines? Not me!
You
can visit the:
The Fort Wine Co.
26151 84th Ave
Langley, BC V1M 3M6
(604) 857-1101
or on the web at www.thefortwineco.com
-----------------------------------------------
(10-21-2006)
Jenise
Stone is a wine enthusiast and avid foodie who lives
in Birch Bay, Washington. She can be reached by emailing jenise@tasteofwhiterock.com.
We
would love to hear your comments
on this article.
Make your comments by emailing us at info@tasteofwhiterock.com.
Back
to Top
|
