Unfussy Wine Enthusiasts | Wine Reviews & Articles

In an interest twist of fate, we picked up this Romanian wine.  That's right Romanian wine on a trip to our province next door, New Brunswick. In an Alcool NB Liquor store we found a bunch of cool non-traditional wine country wines.  Greece and Austria were among the choices. This particular wine had a vinifera grape variety on the label and was $12.49 so we snapped it up. In a repeat of our recent Georgian wine review, the Oaks of Romania will be in the same Pool as Canada in the 2015 Rugby World Cup so the intrigue went up a notch. We poured a glass of the wine and immediately we knew we weren't going to be disappointed at our choice as it looked like pure Pinot Noir.  Light, thin, and watery.  The heartbreak grape looks to be a winner with cool climate Romanian Pinot Noir.  It is worth trying. The nose is full of plums and cocoa nibs, sharp little bits of raw cocoa.  Once you gets passed that it transitions into a bit of wood and...

Courtesy  montecristomagazine.com This past Friday we were fortunate enough to be invited to a wine tasting event at the Halifax Club for Sandhill Wines from British Columbia.  The event featured Howard Soon the Master Winemaker for Sandhill and what followed was an awesome display of great wines from the Okanagan Valley. Howard gave us a really great run down of the vineyards they draw their grapes from and it was really interesting to see the variance of temperature, climate, and varieties being grown.  He was very generous with his time talking about the challenges of growing grapes like Sangiovese and Barbera in the Okanagan.  He showed us pictures of the cliffs at the base of the vineyard that hold in the heat to allow the Italian varieties to ripen.  Really interesting. We tried a number of their wines, all listed locally, and found out that Sandhill has made a very thoughtful point of ensuring that their wines are the same price across this varie...