Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival: A Trade Tasting and Rosé-Rama!

Thursday is the day that the festival really starts for most people. It began with the Opening Plenary on Australian and New Zealand wines, which was followed by the Trade Days Lunch (sounds a little lofty but it is basically an industry lunch with welcome speeches and a chance to meet new people,) and the Trade Tasting.

The Trade Tasting kicked off at 1:30 and ran until 5:00 pm. It is possibly the quietest tasting session to have a normal conversation with friends and connections from across Canada and the world…and to maybe taste some wine. Over the next few days, I would spend about 15 hours in the tasting room - schmoozing, tasting, and standing wines from the 2 feature regions (New Zealand and Argentina,) and elsewhere.

After the tasting, I ran off to my first seminar of the show, Rosé-Rama! Exclamation mark included. Since Rosé wines were the feature wine this year, several of the tastings were focused around these beautiful pink treasures. This one was hosted by DJ Kearney and showcased a few from all around the globe.

Pink wines have fallen a bit on the respectability scale in the last few decades with the prominence of White Zinfandel, the overly sweet blush wine that probably introduced an entire generation of wine drinkers to wine. That said there are a number of tasty wines, most quite dry, or if not, well balanced and made from a variety of grapes.

The top wines at Rosé-Rama! were probably the LA Cetto 2008 Rosé Zinfandel from Baja, Mexico, the Henkell Rosé NV from Germany, and the very tasty Innocent Bystander Pink Moscato 2009 from Australia.

I’m not going to get into it here, but I firmly believe we will start to see a lot of Pink Moscato from Australia in the near future. It’s fruity and grapey, has a touch of bubble to offset some of the sweetness, and packs about 5% alcohol. It might not be “serious” wine, but it is damn tasty.