A New Series of Playoff Wines

With all of the changes and upheaval happening last year, I'm not so sure that I expected to see the Canucks make the playoffs this time around but here they are and they actually made it in fine fashion. I know it's early, but hopes are pretty high that our boys could even make a bit of a run of it.

For the first so many years of this blog, I had a bit of tradition of picking a BC winery and opening one of their bottles during each of the Canucks' games when possible. The team didn't make the playoffs last year and Boo and I were vacation both of the two previous years that the Canucks made the playoffs. So, the tradition has fallen a bit out of sync.

But the boys are back in the playoffs this year and I'm ready to roll. I've decided on a slightly different twist this year around. Instead of featuring wines from only one winery during each series, I'm going with a different varietal for each series that the Canucks make it to. Seeing as how there have been a whack of awards given to and heads turned by Okanagan Syrah/Shiraz lately, I figure this is a great place to start.

1899.  2006 Burrowing Owl Syrah (Okanagan Valley VQA)

Much like your team entering into the playoffs, you never really know what you're going to get when you open a bottle that's got a bit of age on it. The jury is still out on the ageability of BC wines; so, for an '06, we were off to an excellent start with this bottle. There was a brilliant, fruit-filled nose and the wine was still exhibiting nice body and an integrated structure - not all that bad as descriptors for a hockey team as well.

To add to this good start, the Canucks were up 1-0 over the Calgary Flames after two periods.

Unfortunately, the nose started to diminish the longer the bottle was open even though the wine was still intact. More unfortunate, however, was the fact that the Flames tied up the game in the third period and it appeared that we'd all be heading off to overtime when the Canucks gave the Flames a second goal and the win with less than a minute left in the period.

The loss on the ice left a far more sour taste in my mouth than the Burrowing Owl did but we'll have another Syrah in our glass come the start of Game 2.

Here's hoping that I'll be adding a lot of hockey-related wines over the next couple of months.