Best Value Italian White Wine

Italian Whites

Terredora
Falanghina 2009

September is the month for ripe, juicy B.C. tomatoes. Splurge on a ball of sweet, creamy, buttery southern Italian burrata—mozzarella gone to heaven—add olive oil and basil, and serve with our 2012 Wine Awards medium white star performer, the Terredora Falanghina from Campania, a region not far from Naples. The Falanghina grape has been growing there for the better part of 3,000 years; this one from the Mastroberardini family is racy and delicious, with no oak to get in the way of the crisp apple, quince, and orange peel flavours.
A favourite in Vancouver’s best new pizza joints.

Inama
Soave Classico 2010

Like tankerloads of Pinot Grigio, Soave comes from the Veneto, the flat plain behind Venice. Most of it is anemic and anonymous, but not this Classico. (The Inama family who makes it reckons it comes down to old
Garganega vines, good sites, and careful winemaking—which also explains the price.) A big, bold, rich white chock full of apricot and peach fruit and streaked with the lemony acidity that makes it a fine food wine, it’s good with the forthright flavours of late summer.
Serve with grilled salmon and fresh corn salsa, while you savour the remaining hits of sun and warmth.

Naramata Bench Wineries Tailgate Party

Catch one of the Okanagan’s best wine events on September 8, or go at the end of the month for the fall festival and a case or two of brilliant, hard-to-find wines from favourites like Laughing Stock, La Frenz, and Poplar Grove. Or screw up your courage for releases from less familiar producers like D’Angelo, Moraine, Serendipity, and more than a dozen others.

Sept. 28-Oct. 7, $89. 800-663-1900.
Naramatabench.com

SPOTLIGHT: Mike Bernardo

Sommelier,
Vij’s and Rangoli

The brains behind the selections at both rooms, Bernardo chooses wines to match the sophisticated spicing of turmeric and tamarind, fennel and fenugreek

How is the list set up?

Five whites, five reds, plus one rosé—each $9.75 a glass, $39 a bottle. Vij’s also has a Sommelier Picks list that’s grown from a few bottles to about 65, mainly $50 to $100, and Rangoli has about 35. Same principle for both: unusual or funky B.C. wines that most people have never tried.

 What’s fantastic with your menus?

Riesling and Champagne.

What doesn’t work?

Anything with a lot of oak and high alcohol. With every sip our food gets hotter and hotter until there’s
no taste left.

Favourite match?

Our famous lamb popsicles, of course, with Zeltinger Himmelreich Kabinett Riesling Trocken 2009.

What do you drink at home?

Riesling. I have to stop buying magnums of it.