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With the holiday season approaching, retailers such as the LCBO are encouraging customers to wrap things up early. The Ontario liquor board’s current release includes various gift packs and party-friendly selections, including a number of large format bottles suitable for entertaining a crowd, to kick-start the festivities.
While I’m inclined to let Thanksgiving, Halloween and Remembrance Day have their turn, I admire anyone who plans ahead. Specialty items can wait for another column, but recommendations for stylish wines to have on hand for special dinners or occasions are always useful. These five bottles offer flavour and flair in the glass while offering good value for their price.
The Aveleda Solos de Xisto and Blue Mountain Estate Cuvée Pinot Blanc stand out as exceptional values considering their impressive quality versus price ratios. Since these wines aren’t readily available at liquor stores, it’s worth picking up multiple bottles when you find or order them.
I’d also recommend buying a couple bottles of the red wines featured this week. These are exceptional wines with the potential to develop beautifully with age, so setting a bottle aside, even just until later this year, will give you another chance to enjoy its profound flavour.
Four Canadian wines for October entertaining
This Italian family’s fortunes are tied to the sangiovese grape
Aveleda Solos de Xisto 2024 (Portugal), $24.95
Rating: 93
While Aveleda produces Canada’s bestselling Vinho Verde, Fonte, known for its crowd-pleasing fruity and effervescent character, its team also makes more focused, refined white wines from its vineyards in northern Portugal. Solos de Xisto is made from alvarinho grapes grown on schist soils, resulting in a different flavour and character to wines made from grapes grown in the region’s more common granite soils. They are fresher with more stony and citrus flavours. As the wine opens in the glass, it reveals white pepper and nutty notes that linger. This is a surprising and engaging white that works as an aperitif or food-friendly bottle to bring to the dinner table. This has 12-per-cent alcohol by volume and 2 grams of residual sugar per litre. Drink now to 2030. Available at the above price in Ontario, $25.15 in Quebec (2023 vintage)
Blue Mountain Estate Cuvée Pinot Blanc 2025 (Canada), $25
Rating: 91
This impressive pinot blanc is made from 40-year-old vines grown at the Mavety’s family estate winery in Okanagan Falls. Fermentation took place in a mix of stainless steel tanks and oak barrels of various sizes. The wines in barrel were aged with the lees (dead yeast left over from fermentation) for five months to contribute texture and depth to the finished wine. The result is a fuller bodied with a layered flavours profile suggesting floral, pear and apricot notes. The pinot blanc grape isn’t usually considered serious, but this balanced, complex and persistent white wine is. This has 13.5-per-cent ABV and 0.9 g/litre r.s. Drink now to 2030. Available at the above price direct, bluemountainwinery.com, various prices in British Columbia and Alberta.
Castello di Ama Montebuoni Riserva Chianti Classico 2022 (Italy), $59.95
Rating: 94
One of the leading Chianti Classico producers, Castello di Ama produces an exceptional array of wines from its estate in Gaiole in Chianti. The vineyards stretch across four valleys, which allows for different conditions for sangiovese and other grapes to ripen. The Montebuoni Riserva label features a blend of sangiovese with 5- per-cent merlot to produce a polished and ripe red wine that suggests a mix of dark fruit and spice notes at this early stage of development. The style is supple with soft tannins and vibrant acidity that lifts the generous fruity character. This has 14-per-cent ABV and 3 g/litre r.s. Drink now to 2035. Available in Ontario.
Château L’Hospitalet Grand Vin La Clape Rouge 2023 (France), $45.95
Rating: 92
Château L’Hospitalet was purchased by winemaker Gérard Bertrand who turned the sun-soaked spot in Narbonne, France, into a five-star wine resort. The vineyards are farmed biodynamically, a supercharged organic farming method that’s influenced by the lunar and astrological calendar, and produce a range of red and white wines, including this flagship red blend. You can taste the warmth of the sun in the ripe and heady character of this syrah, grenache and mourvèdre blend, which offers intense berry, cherry and roasted red pepper flavours with spice and floral accents. Thank your lucky stars that as big and bold as those flavours are, this seamless wine doesn’t lose its freshness or focus. This has 15.5-per-cent ABV and 3 g/litre r.s. Drink now to 2035. Available at the above price in Ontario, various prices in Alberta.
Martin’s Lane The Oregon Project Hyland Vineyard Riesling 2024 (Canada), $65
Rating: 94
Winemaker Shane Munn looked to vineyards in Oregon for suitable grapes to replace Okanagan crops lost to frost in January, 2024. He spent much of the growing season there, monitoring the health and ripeness of the fruit, and produced an array of rieslings and pinot noirs that complement Martin’s Lane’s traditional labels. The Hyland Vineyard Riesling is a standout, produced with a 40-per-cent portion of botrytis affected fruit that contribute to the wine’s pronounced ginger spice and honey notes and its mix of dried and fresh citrus and apricot flavours. “We embraced the botrytis – something we never see in the Okanagan,” Munn explains.
The existing relationship between Canada and the United States could make this a hard sell for some, but the Oregon foray happened prior to Donald Trump’s election. Martin’s Lane was one of 90 wineries in B.C. that produced replacement wines to maintain inventory and their businesses while waiting for their vineyards to recover. This has 14-per-cent ABV and 6.5 g/litre r.s. Drink now to 2034. Available direct, martinslanewinery.com.