Miss Jaq is Back

Regular readers of the blog may remember that Miss Jaq is one of our all-time favourite drinking buddies. The girl leads one of the most interesting of lives and we love getting to catch up with her over a bottle or two (or three) of wine whenever we get the chance. The small kink in our being able to do that on a regular basis is that she's been living in the Middle East for the last decade or so. As you might imagine, she has some stories that could rival Scheherazade and her tales of the Arabian nights.

She's also the one that released the hidden passions that have created the "Carpet Queen" that Boo is today. I won't hold that against her though - especially since it only takes one new little silk carpet on his part to loosen my "No Buy Leash" enough to pick up a nice little assortment of new wines.

Seeing as how it's hitting 50 degrees Celsius in Abu Dhabi nowadays, Miss Jaq is making her annual pilgrimage to visit friends and family in Vancouver. Still fighting her jet lag, we managed to coax her over for a bit of a garden dinner.

Miss Jaq enjoyed a bit of a layover in Amsterdam on her way to Canada this time around. Knowing that - and having read that there are Dutch wineries now producing wines - I had asked to pick up a bottle of Dutch wine if she had the opportunity because I rather think it will be some time before we ever see a bottle for sale in our market.

She recounted that she did drop by one of her favourite wine shops in Amsterdam; however, the proprietors gave her a wicked stink eye when she asked to buy a Dutch wine. Upon telling the owners that she wanted to bring the bottle with her to wine lovers in Canada, they flat out refused to sell her a bottle. They offered to sell her any one of a number of lovely French wines (as they put it) but, in good faith, they were unwilling to sell her one of the local wines because none of the wines had reached a level of competence to be anything more than a bad novelty. Not even her feminine wiles could convince them otherwise.

Accordingly, we're still sharing stories over wine. It's just not going to be a Dutch wine.

878. 2005 CedarCreek Platinum Reserve Pinot Noir (VQA Okanagan Valley)

Years back, CedarCreek's Platinum Reserve Pinot was one of the first wines that Boo declared as "one of his favourites." Ever since, I've tried to have a bottle or two in the cellar. In making sure that the 2005 vintage isn't already on The List, I saw that I had previously added the 2002 and 2004 vintages and that we actually drank the '04 way back at #142 WITH Miss Jaq.

Pulling out some nice wines when enjoying times with Miss Jaq is pretty much guaranteed. Guess this just goes to show that the Platinum Pinot really is a "go to" around here.

We'll just have to hope that we're lucky enough to get a number of chances to do so before she has to head back to the UAE.