Viva Italia, and Langley too.

Two interesting wines we had recently.

1999 Township 7 Seven Stars sparkling wine.
The colour of honey and a really nice candied ginger, bergamot tea nose with some dried fruit hints.
Beautifully balanced (25 years old) and lifted a bit with some oyster shell.
50/50 Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from the Okanagan.
The website says they were incorporated in 2000 so the 1st vintage?
A pleasant surprise.

The other wine was a 2018 Matteo Correggia Roero Arneis.
Greenish yellow colour. Yellow fruited nose with white flowers and almond.
Medium bodied (20-30% macerated on skins), and a bit of waxiness.
The Barbera D'Alba is nice too.

[Jenise]

Wow on the Township 7, Bob. Friends of mine were in their club for a time and so I've tasted a number of their wines. The wines have been very inconsistent: overripeness, over-oakking and early oxidation have all been problems. For that reason I wouldn't have bet on a 25 year old bubble from them being good, let alone stellar!

I agree for sure.
But it was one of Marks wines and he has a cold cellar.
Even so, it was an eye opener.
Their bubblies are quite expensive now, with prices in the $70.00 range.
Interestingly, I discovered that Township 7 was the original name for Langley.

Haven't had a Roero wine in a long time but I recall some of them Arneis.....

I wrote off the Township 7 wines years ago as they never seemed to produce anything memorable and they did sell a lot of indifferent stuff - Jenise nicely summed it up. The killer was that when I tasted the wines at their tastings, they said that they thought they tasted great even though it was clear to any experienced taster that it was anything but. Their drive to sell wine vastly exceeded their ability to make good wine. For them to have a fairly old wine that performed that well is interesting. I wonder if that was a one-off?

[Jenise]

Bill and Bob: here's a pair of TNs I posted awhile ago, made me laugh:


2014 Township 7 Chardonnay Reserve Okanagan Valley
Township 7's wines have always, no exception, presented as overripe, overoaked, extracted, and low-acid (many friends around here buy them, the winery's about ten minutes from the border nearest my home), all things I hate. So I cringed when I saw this come out and then felt much surprise and relief when this turned out to be a pale colored, balanced wine with good varietal character. Enjoyable.

2016 Township 7 Chardonnay Unoaked Okanagan Valley VQA
Decent, and neither overripe nor extracted, but a plain Jane quaffer nonetheless, especially after the '14 above. Put the oak back!