Photo: Pentâge Winery's current releases include Icewine

Six years after opening in 2003, the Pentâge Winery in Penticton has yet to open an onsite wine shop and tasting room.

However, that does not mean the wines are hard to find. The winery’s website lists an astonishing number of British Columbia restaurants and private wine stores in which one can get a Pentâge wine (aside from ordering it directly from the winery).

Proprietors Paul Gardner and Julie Rennie have had other priorities. One was nurturing the new vineyard (not far from the winery’s original vineyard). Those vines will yield their first fruit this fall, enabling Pentâge to extend its already interesting portfolio of wines. Coming in a year or two is Zinfandel, Mourvedre, Malbec, Petite Sirah and Petit Verdot.

Paul’s other priority has been completing the new wine cellar. He has dug an immense cavity into the hard rock on the highest point on the Pentâge property. Think of a small airplane hangar which now houses tanks, barrels and cases of wine at a temperature that is cool the year round.

Some time next year, a huge door with glass panels will be fitted on the side where the cavity emerges from the rock. This will afford views across the vineyard and toward Penticton’s Skaha Lake beaches to the north. And in good time, a tasting room will rise from the roof of this magnificent cellar, offering some of the best winery views in the Okanagan.

Of course, visitors want to come here for the delicious wines made by Paul and Adam Pierce, the winemaker who joined Pentâge last year when Dwight Sick moved to Stag’s Hollow. The current releases reflect the work of both of these fine young winemakers, along with Paul’s effective work in the vineyard.

These are notes on current releases, except for the Icewine, which will be reviewed later.

Pentâge Gewürztraminer 2008 ($18). Fermented entirely in stainless steel, this is a textbook example of this popular aromatic variety. The wine invites you with aromas of spice, lychee and peaches, leading to all of those flavours on the palate. Packed with fruit, it has a rich finish. The fruitiness creates an impression of sweetness but the wine has a crisp, dry finish. 90 points.

Pentâge Riesling 2007 ($19). Here is another solid serious dry Riesling. It begins with aromas of lime and a bready note, suggesting it was aged a bit on the lees to add texture. On the palate, there are flavours of lime. The wine has a backbone of minerality, an important character of good Riesling. The lively, but well-balanced acidity, gives the wine a crisp and refreshing finish. 89-90. It was a silver medal winner in last year’s Canadian Wine Awards.

Pentâge Viognier 2007 ($23). The winery is moving from corks to screw cap closures. It is too bad the move did not begin with this vintage, for my sample suffered a cork taint – slight enough, fortunately, that one could taste through it to the flavours of melons and apricots. The aromas had been killed by the cork taint. I am confident that a sound bottle would easily score 90.

Pentâge Rosé 2008 ($19). This is a vividly ruby-hued wine with tons of flavour – cranberry, cherry, raspberry, spice. It is made with Gamay grapes, cold-soaked for 48 hours on the skins before fermenting, a technique that explains the colour and the flavours. The fresh acidity gives the wine a good tangy finish. This wine would be excellent with barbecued salmon. 88

Pentâge Cabernet Franc 2006 ($28). Another silver medal winner at last year’s Canadian Wine Awards, this is a generous wine, tasting of blackberries, cherries, and spiced currants. The long ripe tannins give this wine a firm, chewy texture. It is drinking well now but has the structure to develop even more complexity over the next four or five years. 88-90.

Pentâge Syrah 2006 ($26). Here’s a powerhouse with a colour as dark as the Ace of Spades and classic white pepper in the aroma. On the palate, it delivers peppery flavours of prunes, black cherry, cocoa, even spiced meat. This satisfying wine is generous in texture, with a Rhone-like elegance on the finish. 91

These wines should create a sense of anticipation among Pentâge fans for the additional wines that the new vineyard will add.

posted by JohnSchreiner at Goodgrog @ 11:42 AM

The Vancouver Sun - Friday, February 8, 2008

January 12, 2008

WINES AND SPIRITS: WINE
A craving for B.C. whites and southern Rhônes

Ever go through phases with wine? Does one region or style sometimes capture your fancy more than others?

There are wine enthusiasts on lifelong Burgundy and Rhône binges, of course, and I can't say I blame them. But even for those of us cursed with adventurous palates, who see a time and a place for every style and region (except maybe sparkling merlot), there's still a tendency to play favourites from time to time.

I can remember my California zinfandel craze. I'm sure it had something to do with the Bobby Flay cookbooks I was chargrilling my way through. Zinfandel and zesty Southwestern cuisine are the Newman and Woodward of food, a classic American pairing.

For what it's worth, I'm on a regional kick now, a bi-regional one, to be exact. I'm loving the parade of gorgeous B.C. whites and southern Rhône reds on the market. Winemakers all over British Columbia seem to be capturing deliciously pure flavours and, more impressively, scintillating balance in their white wines. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the maturity of the vines, which produce more concentrated fruit as they age. Maybe it's the evolving expertise of the winemakers, keenly applying the best global practices to their vineyards and cellars. Maybe it's just my good fortune in getting to try so many in recent months.

One of the most memorable, not just because I tried it only this week, is Pentâge Winery Riesling 2006 ($18). It's hard to find it unless you live near private stores in British Columbia and Alberta or like to dine in some of the West's better restaurants. But B.C. residents can order it from the Okanagan winery's website, http://www.pentage.com.

The first riesling from Pentage, an excellent boutique producer, it's light but bursting with flavour, dominated by notes of green apple, grapefruit and apricot, with a hint of minerals and a lively, crisp, perfectly dry finish. It's a terrific white for people who like theirs crisp and fruity, without the herbal character of sauvignon blanc.

Another great wine available from the same website is Pentâge Winery Pentâge 2004, ($29), a flagship red made from merlot, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, syrah and gamay noir. The soft merlot comes through clearly, with nuances of fresh cherry, violet and milk chocolate and a warm finish.

--BEPPI CROSARIOL, globeandmail.com

More than any other important grape variety, Gewürztraminer is misspelled routinely on restaurant wine lists. This wine shows how easily that happens: the label reads "Gerwürztraminer“ one of the more common erroneous spellings. Paul Gardner and Julie Rennie, the owners of this winery, need to have a word with their printers.

But they don't need to apologize for the glorious wine inside the bottle. With 13.5% alcohol and a rich, almost oily texture, this is a fat Alsace-style Gewürztraminer. If it came from one of the big Alsace producers, it would easily fetch double the price.

It begins with a dramatic spicy aroma. On the palate, the fruit flavours are intense, showing grapefruit rind and more spice, with a lingering, dry finish. 89 points.

Since opening in 2003, Pentâge Winery has maintained a surprisingly low profile, secluded on a cliff-top vineyard just south of Penticton, without, so far, a public tasting room. Owners Paul Gardner and Julie Rennie have not had much time to market their interesting wines (she has a heavy financial job in Vancouver and he has been tied up with vineyard projects for himself and for a neighbour). As the word gets around, consumers find their way to the Pentâge website and the wines sell out anyway.

The winery's profile is about to jump. Gardner has just completed a massive cellar for the winery, blasted into the rock at the highest point in the vineyard. He can be expected to want to show off one of the Okanagan's more remarkable winery structures, along with exposing more consumers to Pentâge's interesting wines, such as this barrel-fermented Chardonnay.

It is a fresh, crisp wine with the fine acidity that recalls a good Chablis. Lightly tinged with green and golden hues, the wine has delicate citrus aromas with a hint of oak. On the palate, it has flavours of citrus and pineapple with good mineral notes. The wine is elegant and restrained - so much so that too much chilling mutes the fine delicate flavours. It becomes more and more attractive as it warms in the glass, showing a touch of spice and a refined lightness on the finish. This definitely is a Chardonnay that should be cellared for a few more years, allowing maturity to enhance the complexity. 87 points now; higher with age.

The 18 acres of vineyard owned or controlled by Pentâge grow eight or 10 of the Okanagan’s mainstream grape varieties – but not Riesling, even though that was one of earliest of the classic vinifera grapes to be planted in British Columbia. Paul Gardner, one of Pentâge’s proprietors, and assistant winemaker Dwight Sick, have had to make do with purchased fruit.

The trick, obviously, is buying grapes from good sites. They’ve found two: God’s Mountain Vineyard, which has also supplied grapes to Wild Goose Vineyards for its award-winning Rieslings; and the 8th Generation Vineyard, which will become a winery in a few years, and is operated by Bernd and Stefanie Schales, a young German couple. Bernd’s family have grown grapes and made wine there for eight generations. He knows how to grow good fruit.

All that good breeding comes together in Pentâge’s first Riesling, which starts with the aroma of pink grapefruit. Refreshing and zesty, the wine tastes of grapefruit and peaches, with good notes of mineral woven though. The finish is dry. This is a seriously interesting Riesling, with aging potential. 88 points.

Pentâge Wines
2003 Pentâge, Vista View Vineyard
(Okanagan Valley)

Paul Gardner and Julie Rennie came up with the rather singular name for their winery partly as a play on nearby Penticton but chiefly because it reminds them of Latin for five, the number of red varieties grown in their Vista View Vineyard. As you might guess, the vineyard commands one of the Okanagan’s finest panoramas. The Skaha Bluffs, popular with rock climbers, rise behind the vineyard, which is on a westward-sloping bench high above Okanagan Lake. Gardner and Rennie are completing a winery dramatically set in a rocky cleft at the highest point in the vineyard.

Now open only by appointment, Pentâge has a lower profile than is merited by the solid wines that Gardner and associate winemaker Dwight Sick are producing. But the winery has quietly built a large enough following that most wines on the web site are sold out soon after release. The flagship red, however, currently is available.

The wine, also called Pentâge, impresses with elegance rather than power. It has a delicate aroma of cherries, red currants and vanilla, showing a bit of spice as it opens up. On the palate, there are flavours of currants, a touch of cherry and plum. The seamless texture, with its fine tannins, shows considerable polish. There is an intriguing cerebral character to this wine. It will show its best savoured slowly with a nice piece of cheese. 88 points.

Pentâge Wines
2004 Pinot Noir
(Okanagan Valley)

This is the first Pinot Noir from Pentâge – and it is a fine debut with this demanding variety. In a word, it is a pretty wine, with a delicacy and grace that brings a ballet dancer to mind. By a remarkable coincidence, a snippet of The Nutcracker Suite was on the radio on the day this wine was being evaluated. Perhaps it is time to move beyond food pairings and talk about music pairings.

In fact, Julie Rennie and Paul Gardner, who opened Pentâge in 1999, are ahead of this reviewer. The winery’s web site includes numerous images of their spectacular site, assembled in a slide show accompanied with mellow keyboard music.

Barrel-aged for 10 months in new French oak, this Pinot Noir wine begins with aromas of raspberry and white pepper. The light pepper note carries through to the palate, with flavours of strawberry and a subtle note of oak. The silken texture accentuates the sensual charm of the sweet fruit while also giving this elegant wine the substance to pair with a variety of foods, to say nothing of your favourite ballets. 88-90 points.

2003 harvest maybe one of the best

Pentâge

Many of the Okanagan's better sites are well concealed, such as the steep acreage of Pentâge Winery, tucked away high on a bluff on the east shore of Skaha Lake. Owners Paul Gardner and Julie Rennie, who planted their first vines in 1996, currently make small quantities of Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris and Syrah with more to come (including a Bordeaux style five varietal blend, which inspired the Pentâge name). Initial tasting suggests very good things to come from this neophyte winery (visit by appointment). Watch for their wines on better restaurant lists only, for now.
--Tim Pawsey, August 2004