Anthony Gismondi: B.C. wine for the week of March 17, a bottle to cellar and calendar items

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Vancouver’s new guidelines for its public patio program amounts to little more than a cash grab for city coffers and local engineering companies.

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According to the B.C. Restaurant and Food Service Association, the new 34-page guidelines, will see small businesses “required to pay increased fees, retain a structural engineer, and prepare scaled architectural drawings, totalling at least $5,000 for a patio as small as 6 square metres.”

It’s a painful decision for a city made for out dining, pandemic or no pandemic.

Growing up in Bordeaux, France, Pénélope Furt-Roche was familiar with the artist labels of renowned Château Mouton-Rothschild.

Pénélope and husband Dylan Roche of Roche Wines on the Naramata Bench have created a similar artist/winery collaboration concept to Canada. The resulting Vig collection of wines, shortened from the French word for winegrowers, vignerons, will feature cutting-edge artists on their newest bottle labels.

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The couple sent 16 artists totalement nues, naked wine bottles to paint their sensory experiences of tasting and drinking the wine. The art was not influenced by descriptions or price — just what was in the bottle leaving the label art to be an honest sensory expression of the wine. You can check out the label art and artist bios at rterroir.ca/vig-wines.

B.C. wine of the week

Liquidity Pinot Gris 2020, Okanagan Falls, Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, Canada 

$21 I 89/100

UPC: 626990442622

Winemaker Amy Paynter crafts this 1575-case Pinot Gris that goes to bottle in mid-January after a short time on its lees. The fruit was picked over the last two weeks of September, fermented at different temperatures (20 per cent in French barrels) and kept separately until the final blend. The style is Kiwi-cool, with green fruit aromas and flavours, a dusting of honeysuckle, ripe peach and Okanagan sagebrush finishing with a salty, stony, mineral wash. The vines come off many sites, including the own-rooted 457 clones planted on the Allendale site in 1994. Dry and fruity, it can match most seafood dishes from shellfish to seabass to sushi.

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Wine for the cellar

Le Volte dell’ Ornellaia 2018, Tuscany, Italy 

$29.99 I 90/100

UPC: 00818201020235

Le Volte is made by Bolgheri-based Ornellaia, a legend among Italian wines. Le Volte is a blend of two-thirds Merlot, 20 per cent Sangiovese and 12-14 per cent of Cabernet Sauvignon. The attack is typically generous, with a darker Bolgheri-style red coming to the fore with blackberry, blackcurrant mixed with an intensely savoury, dried herb character and touch of balsamico. It’s just a baby, but it will blossom over the next five to seven years. The grapes are fermented separately in small steel tanks before spending ten months partly in used Ornellaia barriques and cement tanks. There is no stone left unturned. Drink or hold through a decade and beyond. Good value.