review

GEHRINGER BROTHERS AUXERROIS (2011)—Good grapes, good vino

My Fellow Inebriates,

The only item you’re less likely to find in our fridge than white wine is Canadian white wine. Regardless of nationality, any white wine wanting entrée into LBHQ has to get past my parents’ childhood-instilled preconceptions. My mum’s first glass of white wine, homemade and therefore Canadian by definition, came courtesy of a neighbor who brought a jug of weirdly viscous who-knows-what varietal over to condole with her on her dad’s burial that day. The neighbor proceeded to fill and refill my then-16-year-old mum’s glass with it until she threw up.

Oddly though, my dad is more resistant to white wine than my mum. Perhaps this is because my mum is more firmly on the path to full-on alcoholism; perhaps it’s because the Fubar-type pub crawlers of my dad’s youth would have kicked his ass for ordering white wine—who knows? Personally, I don’t care for white wine’s typically lower alcohol content, but I’ll still get on board for it if I hear the corkscrew operating.

Canadian wine’s second hurdle as far as my parents are concerned is the notion they harbor, misinformed in the face of simple chronology, that Canadian vines are too young to produce good grapes. Now, this may have been true in my parents’ mosh-pit days, but OMG, 20 years have passed since either of them saw Skinny Puppy perform, and Canadian vineyards have spent those 20 years maturing very nicely, nudging Canadian wine from risible to…admirable.

This is even more true of Canadian whites than reds, although global warming may assist the latter over the next few decades. For now a $15 wine-shop gamble is best placed on a white, and with this in mind we chose GEHRINGER BROTHERS AUXERROIS (2011). The oldest winery in the South Okanagan Valley, Gehringer Brothers put itself on the map with Rieslings and ice wines but has escaped being pigeon-holed as a producer of strictly sweet German-style wines, earning rafts of awards for its 22-wine line-up. The PINOT AUXERROIS certainly proves the Brothers can do off-dry very well indeed.

Pale and straw-colored with shy citrus and granny smith hints, GEHRINGER BROTHERS PINOT AUXERROIS is appealing from the get-go. It glances the palate with bracing crispness and astringency—delicious while being a massive departure from the mouth-filling, long-finishing ZINCK PINOT BLANC we enjoyed on Mother’s Day (and suffering just the tiniest bit by comparison). The body is light, the fruit chiming with delicate high notes, the finish lightly sweet. And at 12.5% alcohol the entire bottle can be pounded with minimal consequence (so I argued to my mum without success).

GEHRINGER BROTHERS AUXERROIS has obviously been crafted with great skill and attention. More than a simple summer sipper, it offers intriguing flavor and structure with good acid balance. It was a delightful experiment for LBHQ, but I don’t anticipate a repeat purchase after my dad gets back from his naked golf week, especially if he has any cheap Scotch left over, in which case this entire review will escape my two brain cells, never to be remembered except perhaps if someone searches for “Skinny Puppy.”

PAUL & PHILIPPE ZINCK PINOT BLANC (2009)—On the agenda, if not P’s Show-and-Tell program

My Fellow Inebriates,

Even though my dad is too cool to tuck me in at night, I miss him when he goes away. So does my mum, although we both agree it benefits our beer inventory.

My dad wasn’t going to share his team-building golf week agenda with the bears but, when I snooped around in his luggage the night before his departure, I found a cheap bottle of Scotch (unopenable), oodles of electronic gadgetry, and no clothes. Either there is another bag (full of who-knows-what goodies) or this week’s team building will be done naked.

I also found a printout of a PowerPoint slide for a presentation my dad’s doing to explain his new role at the company. It has four quadrants:

  1. Current activity
  2. Upcoming activity
  3. Challenges
  4. Opportunities

Like a flash it struck me that I could justify my own activities similarly. Justifying the LBHQ enterprise might get me closer to the bar of my dreams.

These ideas were pinging back and forth between my two brain cells when Miss P proposed taking me to Show-and-Tell. This coaxed my mum’s head out of Facebook to ask pointedly: “What exactly would you tell your class about LB?”

Giggle giggle. “About how he loves wine.”

Damn straight I love wine. This kid knows me well and I’m sure she’d have done me proud at Show-and-Tell, advertising the existence of Liquorstore Bear to the spawns of a parental demographic often described as “Bible Belt.”

Alas, my mother killed the idea. “Why don’t you show your new bike helmet?” Then hastily: “But don’t let any other kids try it on! We have to be careful about lice.”

Killjoy! We might love lice! Maybe if we brought home some lice my mum would vacuum! Bleach the sheets! Wash the—OMG!—wash the stuffies, AAARRRGHHHHH!!! No!!! My brain had misfired again with that thought, but there was no changing things now.

So P brought the helmet, which was or was not a hit with her cohort—she didn’t say, having moved on by end of day to other notions.

“LB, your blog is utterly, utterly narcissistic.”
—my mother

Had I received my 15 minutes of Grade One fame I would have told the class about PAUL & PHILIPPE ZINCK PINOT BLANC (2009), purchased by my mum in a typically petulant “do it myself” Mother’s Day mood. She wanted something that would pair with peanut-lime pork and coconut rice, and my dad is flummoxed about white wine period, never mind white-wine/food-pairing puzzles. Since my mum is almost as much of a white wine rube, she leant upon our local booze shop consultant to recommend the pinot blanc.

Billed as creamy and structured with orchard/citrus notes and lingering spice, ZINCK PINOT BLANC is a no-brainer complement to delicate flavors. Now, if only my mother produced delicate flavors in the kitchen…

She doesn’t, so let’s talk about the pinot on its own merit.

ZINCK PINOT BLANC doesn’t disappoint the nose, although if anything the notes are more tropical than orchard-like. As it sits, deep straw-colored in the glass, it wafts faraway scents that suggest humidity, scorching heat and heady refreshment, sun-soaked naked bodies that don’t resemble my dad teeing off in his birthday suit… There is, in the distant background, a hint of ginger perhaps—just enough to make you wonder whether you imagined it.

My parents’ prevailing fear of trying white wines no doubt harkens back to surreptitious childhood sips of Domaine D’Or and Sommet Blanc. If their parents intended to poison them against white wine, it worked. So whenever we do get a white in the house, they’re gobsmacked if it’s any good. The main thing they suspect white wines are missing is substance. This made ZINCK PINOT BLANC a good choice, weighing in at a respectable 12.5% alcohol and exhibiting both heft and depth. Slightly off-dry, this pinot’s character develops as the wine edges up from fridge temperature, revealing mineral subtleties and a satisfying mouthfeel.

It was perhaps a little too substantial for a Thai food pairing. Definitely beyond my philistine parents—but nonetheless a hit all around.

The newest agenda item: get more of it.

POWDER MOUNTAIN LAGER—Refreshment for a cruel world

I had a rare ride-along with Miss V today after while her sister was in school. These outings take ages; V likes to examine everything minutely and scatter every dandelion in sight. Nothing escapes her notice.

About halfway home she stopped to watch a centipede being attacked by ten or so ants. Completely beset, the victim struggled to wriggle away from its tormenters, which were presumably trying to incapacitate it, eat it, and/or take it to their queen.

Watching that centipede thrash helplessly from belly to back was pretty gross. I wondered how long the battle would last. Were the ants biting it? Would it eventually pass out in agony or remain unconscious while they vivisected it? The process seemed extraordinarily cruel and drawn out—and for animals with short lifespans, I wondered morbidly, is there a time-dilation effect? Does a day feel like a month to a centipede, being such a large percentage of its lifetime compared to ours? How protracted, then, is its perceived suffering?

V said she hoped the ants would win. She watched intently as the belly-up centipede failed to right itself while the ants went at it mercilessly. There was no help for it.

Only when V remembered she’d been promised a cookie at Save-On Foods did she, still rooting for the ants, acquiesce to leave the inundated creature.

You almost have to have a four-year-old tour guide to notice stuff like this. The insect world teems below us in unfathomable populations. For every ant-on-centipede onslaught above ground there must be trillions below—uncountable insect cruelty and indifference. For every beleaguered arthropod or unenviable piece of spider prey there must be further infinities of predation, pain, and suffering.

I suddenly felt very small and overwhelmed. The whole planet seemed churning with barbarism, mostly going on unnoticed.

OMG!

And the hard reality dawned on me:

If the whole world—universe even—can remain indifferent to the excruciating death throes of one small creature, how can I expect anyone to give me a beer just to assuage a few tremors?

The thought swept me up like a bus full of evolutionary biologists. Not only did I feel very small; I felt very alone.

In a world of impassivity toward suffering, who would even think to give me a beer?

It wouldn’t even have to be a special beer. Whistler Brewing Company’s POWDER MOUNTAIN LAGER, one of the four offerings in its Travel Pack, would do just fine.

Pale straw-gold with bright white foam and firework effervescence (think Pop Rocks), this lager was an unlikely beer in our fridge. My parents never buy lagers except when they’re part of exciting mixer packs, and invariably those lagers get drunk last. But they’re certainly welcome at LBHQ, particularly as Langley enters earth-scorching season and the sun proceeds indifferently to flash-fry earthworms on the ground.

POWDER MOUNTAIN LAGER has a light and slightly hoppy aroma with a touch of background sweetness, all of which is practically unnoticeable amid a refreshing carbonation frenzy. It’s a party in the mouth, this lager, berserk with fizz, but unlike some lagers and particularly some other Whistler Brewing Company products, it has a surprisingly substantial mouthfeel yet finishes cleanly.

There are plenty of unsatisfying lagers on the market offering simple CO2 pyrotechnics as a fill-in for flavor, but POWDER MOUNTAIN LAGER deserves credit for being a bit more. I bet a crisp, icy-cold glass right now would alleviate my anxieties about being a small bear in a big, cold universe, plus it would take care of my DTs.

I did propose this to my mum, who said, unfeelingly:

“Get a grip, LB, it’s 9:00 a.m.”