Christmas Day

"For Our Twelfth Wine of Christmas, My True Love Drank with me,

As Kiddies Played with Presents."

As mentioned in the previous post, Boo had to work Christmas Day and wouldn't be able to make it to my sister's until around 8pm that evening. So, my day was spent finishing up the wrapping and even blogging a bit. Mid afternoon, I headed out to Vixen's home to do the family gathering - and have a couple seasonal tipples.

Only problem was, when I arrived there, I realized that I'd left two of my three bottles of wine laying on the kitchen counter. Now, my sis doesn't exactly have a wine cellar going on. She's like the vast majority of BC residents. The most aging her wines see, on average, is the 20 minutes it takes to drive the bottles home from the liquor store. Nothing wrong with that - it just meant that my mistake could have left us high and dry for Christmas dinner. Luckily, Vixen had been given a couple of bottles for Christmas by clients. So, we'd be able to manage - especially since my Dad's more partial to beer anyhow.

299. 2008 Jackson-Triggs Proprietors' Edition Chardonnay (VQA Okanagan)

As can be seen in this blog and The List of wines that we've enjoyed thus far, I don't tend to be the first person to reach for a Chardonnay. I guess to borrow one of wine personality, Gary Vaynerchuk's, catch phrases, I can be very wary of the "oak monsters" that are out there. Nothing to worry about here.

The bottle refers to some oak aging, but the oak wasn't front and centre. The fruit still came through and it was an enjoyable glass as the kids tore away at wrapping paper and I ate more cheese than I likely needed to with a big dinner coming up.

300. 2007 La Frenz Small Lots Riesling (Naramata Bench)

I may not sprint to Chardonnay, but I do love my Rieslings - and this is one of my favourite BC versions of the versatile varietal. In fact, this was one of the wines that Boo and I served at our wedding reception/anniversary party a couple of summers ago. I'll likely come back to a posting on the wines we chose for our second go at getting hitched. For the moment, we fortunately still have a couple of bottles left from the party.

I figured that Christmas dinner is as good an occasion as any to open one of the remaining bottles. This was one of two white wines that we served at the wedding, with the La Frenz offering just enough of a hint of residual sugar to please those in the gang (like Mom) that like their wine on the sweeter side of things. I thought that the Riesling would be a nice counter to the turkey and stuffing spices - and, I mean, what could go better with brussels sprouts? I'm glad this was the wine I didn't forget to bring.

301. 2006 Nk'mip Qwam Qwmt Cabernet Sauvignon (VQA Okanagan)

Admittedly, I'd left a Pinot Noir behind on the counter and a Cab likely isn't seen as being most folks' first choice for turkey, but there was no missing with this bottle. Vixen's to be thanking her client for this bottle. I'm a long time fan of Nk'mip, although I can't say as I've had much of their Cab over the years. I'm still not convinced that BC has a climate all that suitable for producing nice, big Cab's.

BC Cab's can often have that overall "green" aspect that happens when the grapes don't fully ripen. I suppose that if anyone is going to have the heat units to ripen Cab Sauv, it will be the Nk'mip vineyards located right down at Osoyoos and the southern end of the Okanagan Valley. The winery's website says that they found 2006 to be good year for fully ripened fruit and that appeared to have been captured in the bottle.

For having left the dinner wines behind, I think we did pretty darned well. And, in the Christmas spirit, we even made sure that there was some wine left for Boo when he arrived.

There was no seasonal good will present, however, when it came to playing Cam's new Mario & Sonic's Winter Olympics on the Wii. Despite being the skip in the family, I found that my sport may really be the Downhill Cross-Ski or Short Track Speed Skating. I lost all three of my curling matches (our games were only two ends though) but I won all my ski races or skating events.

Cheers and all the best of the Season to everyone!