A few weeks ago, I attended a wedding outside of Barcelona, Spain with many of my friends from around Europe that I went to school with. When they get together, they some times have a wine tasting competition for wines from their country.
Being Canadian, I was competing against Italian, Spanish, French and American Red wines. Others brought white wines and sparkling but I only enjoy red.
I walked into LWM with little to no knowledge about Canadian wines as I preferred Italian red Primitivo wines. The stipulation of the competition was only a 50 euro max limit.
Rose and I sat in the store for about 45 minutes (yes this was that competitive with my friends!) and we discussed my tastes and I learned of various types of grapes and that Zinfandel grapes were a descendent of Primitivo grapes originated in Croatia but were being used in the Okanagan Valley.
The funny thing is is that when I mentioned the competition to Rose, one of the first choices, if not the first choice was the bottle I ended up taking overseas!
The bottle she suggested and that I eventually went with 45 minutes later was Sunrock Vineyards Illumina 2016.
It tied for FIRST PLACE with my friend's wine he brought from the USA which was from Napa Valley! (The waiting staff chose the American wine as a tie breaker but I was told after the competition when we were drinking the wines again, that if my choice "breathed" a little longer, it would have won as it tasted better sitting out while the competition was going on)
I tried getting the names of the competing wines but they don't want to talk about it!
A big thank you to Rose for her help and a congrats to Sunrock for producing a wine that helped beat "old world grape/wine countries!"