Tasting Note: 2009 Chasselas-pinot blanc-pinot gris, Quail’s Gate, Okanagan VQA

As vacation time finally hits, I hope I’ll be able to catch up on my posts from all the trips I took this spring in various wine countries. There is much to be told about the Finger Lakes, Cahors, Oregon, Washington and the Okanagan.

In the meantime, here’s a little note on a wine I was particularly happy to find during my first foray into the Okanagan Valley, last week.

Just before leaving for the Pacific Northwest, I saw a picture posted through Twitter by Quail’s Gate. It showed two bottles of chasselas, one from 1989 and the other from 2009. It was the first I’d heard about chasselas being produced in Canada. Seemed appropriate to find it in the Okanagan, however, since the best expression of chasselas is Fendant, the classic white wine made in the Swiss Canton of Valais, right in the middle of the Alps.

Mountain grape in other mountains? Should be good, right? Or at the very least, an interesting comparison.

Fendant is a fresh, crisp wine made from 100% chasselas, often with a touch of CO2 that makes it an easy sipper – and also the perfect drink with cheese fondue or raclette, as the acidity cuts nicely through the fat of the melted cheese.

With the very first sip, at Quail’s Gate’s tasting bar, very nicely perched above Lake Okanagan, in West Kelowna, I recognized the grape’s character, with lemon and white fruit and a light, fresh texture. Only there was something else in there, too.

Indeed, after having long been a varietal bottling, the chasselas is now combined with pinot blanc and pinot gris to give it a little more depth and intensity. Brian, the extremely nice guy who conducted our tasting at Quail’s Gate, indicated that local preferences were for more powerful wines, and that the wine did better this way. So 50% chasselas and 25% of each pinot is now the working blend.

And it works fine, too. The pinots give an extra layer of pear williams and some spicy notes, as well as a rounder texture to the wine, without sacrificing the basic, refreshing character that makes chasselas so pleasant to me. The bottle I brought back home was just as much fun as what I’d tasted at the winery, and went down well during a recent heat wave. So here’s a toast to chasselas from the mountains, wherever those mountains may be.