The Globe and Mail - The sun shines brightly on these B.C. wines

Some highlights....

"Moon Curser Dead of Night 2016, British Columbia

SCORE: 93 PRICE: $39.99

An uncommon, if not unique, blend of equal parts tannat and syrah. This is Moon Curser’s flagship red, a luscious, velvety cuvée with ripe fruit, cedar, dark chocolate and spice notes supported by tannat’s substantial, astringent tannins. The acidity is well-balanced, and there’s a savoury oak quality reminiscent of gran reserva Rioja. Marvellous for grilled lamb. Available direct through mooncurser.com."

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The Globe and Mail - Wine, unplugged: 10 electric bottles without the heavy bass notes of toasty oak

Some highlights....

 

"MOON CURSER ARNEIS 2017, BRITISH COLUMBIA

PRICE: $22.99

RATING OUT OF 100 - 89

Almost effervescent, this zesty white based on Italy’s underappreciated arneis grape (and an oddity in the New World) comes across with nuances of tangerine, pear, honey and raw almond. Aromatic and vibrant. Available direct through mooncurser.com."

 

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Western Living Magazine - 5 Italian White Grapes You’re Mispronouncing

"For years I didn’t order wine made with the Ribolla Gialla grape in a restaurant because I wasn’t 100-percent sure how to say it. Ditto the grape Grillo from Sicily (which I love): do I pronounce either of the Ls? But never fear – we’re hear to knock of few of your fears from their perch.

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Arneis The pride of Piedmont, this nearly extinct grape is now back in vogue thanks to its full bodied nature that channels soft pears and apricots. It’s pronounced Ahr-NAYZ

The Bottle Moon Curser Arneis $23 If you can find Vietti, it’s the pinnacle of the grape (and the winery was, along with Bruno Giacosa, the saviours of the grape), but it’s pricey and tough to locate. So let’s go for the wonderful homegrown version from Moon Curser – a treasure and a steal at the same time."

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winebc.com - FOUR BC WINE LABELS. FOUR COOL STORIES

"Behind every wine label, there’s a story. Some, however, are better than others.

Below I list a handful of wines featured at the recent Chef Meets BC Grape festival held in Calgary on May 7, 2019. Each wine is memorable because it’s delicious; some even won awards. And every bottle has a passionate, fun, or quirky story to share at your next dinner party or afternoon on the patio.

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Moon Curser 2017 Arneis

https://m.mooncurser.com/

“Moon Curser is a synonym for ’smuggler’ and is meant to reflect history of Osoyoos, the small border town in the South Okanagan where we are located,” says Beata Tolley,  who is Moon Curser Vineyard’s co-proprietor.

“Back in the gold rush days, many gold seekers would travel to this area from California, looking for gold, and then try to smuggle the gold back without paying duty or taxes. Hence the concept of cursing the moon — darkness was definitely a friend when trying to cross the border.”

American artist Andrea Dezso, who specializes in hand-cut paper, mosaic and embroidery, designed the Moon Curser label illustrations. Each contains references to South Okanagan wildlife: deer, fox, even a tiny bat. “The gold pick, the mule, the saddle bags on the Arneis label all reference the gold mining and smuggling activities of days past, as does the wide swath of gold and the little gold nuggets in the corners of the front label,” adds Tolley."

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The Daily Courier - Five wine events you can’t miss

"Moon Curser Winery in Osoyoos launches its Something Old, Something New tastings of new releases and library wines; and Summerland fruit winery Sleeping Giant invites you over for complimentary tastings."

 

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The Globe and Mail - Moon Curser Dead of Night 2016, British Columbia - 92 points

"Full-bodied, velvety and luscious. Generously fruited with blackberry and cassis, joined by dark chocolate, cedar and spices. An unusual 50/50 blend of syrah and tannat, matured in French oak (30 per cent of the barrels new). Serve it now with saucy red-meat dishes or cellar it for up to eight years. Available direct, mooncurser.com.

Year: 2016
Region: Okanagan Valley
Varietal: Red blend
Price: $39.99

RATING OUT OF 100 - 92"

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The Globe and Mail - Tannat or arneis, anyone? Canada’s grape crusaders embrace offbeat varieties

Some highlights...

"Moon Curser’s rich, ripe tannat is, in my opinion, far superior to many produced in France."

"Moon Curser may be the most ambitious grape crusader in Canada, but there are others breathing fresh air into an industry that for arguably too long has hitched its star to the secure familiarity of France’s big-name, blue-chip varieties, including not just riesling, cabernet and merlot but also chardonnay and pinot noir."

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Western Living Magazine - If You See This Bottle on a Wine List the Somm Has Impeccable Taste

"One of my tasks at our sister publication of Vancouver Magazine is to pour over the city’s wine lists and parse them up based on selection and price (mostly price) in a column called the Wine List Once-Over. And you quickly learn there are certain hallmarks on every list that are illuminating: How much do they charge for a bottle of Veuve Cliquot? Do their mark-ups go down as the wine becomes more expensive? And so on.

One thing you also see are a few sleeper bottles that end up finding their way on to a disproportionate number of lists. I’m not talking about the big names like Dom or Oculus that are there because people expect them. No, I’m talking about the small production gems that the somms hand pick out of love so that they can turn their customers on to something unexpected. That’s where this bottle comes in: I spied it most recently on the list at Yaletown’s Provence Marinaside (where it’s very well priced at $55).

For starters it’s an oddity—a Canadian wine, made with a Italian grape (and a relatively obscure grape at that). Arnies is native to Piedmont, the home of the great reds Barolo and Barbaresco, and it was almost extinct four decades ago until the producers Vietti and Bruno Giacosa brought it back from the brink. But it’s still a nice grape and given it grows in the very pricey real estate of Piedmont, when we do see it here it’s quite pricey.

Enter Moon Curser. I think it’s fair to say the Osoyoos-based to team of Beata and Chris Tolley push more varietal boundaries than almost anyone in Canada (Okanagan Falls-based Stag’s Hollow would be up their too). In addition to their Syrahs and Cabernet Sauvignons they grow Tempranillo, Tannat, Petit Verdot and Touriga Nacional. Wine writers love the experimentation, but I can’t imagine it’s an easy road to hoe—each one of those grapes require them to educate most consumers about them before they’ll make a sale.

Which brings us to their Arneis. It’s a magical wine: it’s both bone dry and juicy at the same time with citrus skin and citrus pith and what seems like a daily dose of minerals thrown in. It’s serious but still quite approachable and most importantly it doesn’t taste like anything else on most wine lists. And the price—$23 at the winery—is a steal, much less expensive than any Italian import we can get our hands on out here.

For a producer or a somm, selling any wine is hard. But selling a wine that almost no one has heard of—that’s where the heavy lifting comes in. In some cases that heavy lifting is worthwhile. So when you see this wine—at the winery, the store or a restaurant—give it a whirl. It’s the product of the road seriously less-travelled."

 

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John Schreiner on wine - Moon Curser's love affair with slightly obscure varietals

"There is a view that far too many grape varietals are grown in the Okanagan Valley. Chris Tolley, the co-proprietor of Moon Curser Vineyard in Osoyoos, would differ.

“I love the diversity,” he says. “I love the affirmation that this valley is capable of doing a wide variety of wines. I have not been the champion of that but it is turning out that way. Maybe we do one of these varieties better than anywhere else in the world.”

The Moon Curser portfolio is unusually rich with varietals that would not be considered mainstream for the valley. Such as Arneis, Dolcetto, Tannat, Tempranillo, Touriga Nacional and Carménère. Coming soon: Nebbiolo.

There is a nod to mainstream varietals such as Viognier, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon. And this spring, the winery planted a new 10-acre property in west Osoyoos that includes three acres of Merlot. In 2005, when the first vines were being planted by Moon Curser, Chris planted Merlot because he thought that he could always buy it. Today, Merlot, along with many other varietals, is short supply, forcing vintners to grow their own.

Chris’s viticultural choices have made for challenging grape growing but also for a very interesting wine portfolio.

Take Arneis, which Chris grows, along with Dolcetto, because he has roots in northern Italy, where that white varietal produces crisp and fragrant table wines.

“In Italian, Dolcetto means little sweet one, where Arneis apparently is little rascal,” Chris says. So far, he has produced three vintages of Arneis – and each one ripened at a different time.

The 2016 vintage ripened in September while the 2017 ripened in early November. “If I had that much drama with every variety, I probably would not be in this business,” Chris laughs. “In the end, the 2017 made a very interesting varietally correct Arneis. I quite like it. It has a lot of structure to it.”

Take Tannat, best known for the robust reds made with the varietal in Uruguay and in the south of France. The unusual chemistry of the grape challenged Chris with stuck fermentations when he first made it, something since mastered.

The next challenge was how to use the rustic red in a blend. After trying a number of varietals, he took the suggestion of his wife, Beata, to make a Syrah/Tannat blend. (Both owners trained as winemakers in New Zealand.) That now comprises the blend of Moon Curser’s flagship red, Dead of Night.

“Beata and I blind-tasted blends for Dead of Night two years in a row,” Chris says. “We don’t even bother blind-tasting the Tannat blends now. It is always going to be a Syrah blend. Originally, we tasted other Tannat blends and we always picked the Syrah. They seemed to marry quite well – although the appellation system in France would not allow that.”

The winery does release a modest volume of Tannat on its own, mostly to satisfy the curiosity of tasting room visitors. “We do a pretty nice Tannat compared to other places that do Tannat,” Chris believes. “It is nice to have a variety we do world class, even if it is an alternative variety.”

Then there are Chris’s adventures with Touriga Nacional, the great Portuguese red varietal. An Osoyoos neighbour with Portuguese roots decided to plant some vines. With no viticultural experience, he canvassed the possibilities with Chris and settled on Touriga because it is a Portuguese varietal.

“He put lots of fertilizer on the plants,” Chris says. “The vines grew like crazy. When winter came, they were still green. The first frost came and they all died right down to the ground.”

Not quite all; enough survived that in 2011, about two barrels of wine were produced from what had once been a two-acre vineyard. When an effort to replant did not succeed, the neighbour sold the vineyard to Chris in 2012. Never one to back away from a challenge, Chris salvaged cuttings, had them propagated and planted them in a different vineyard. He made his first significant volume of Touriga Nacional in 2016 – a wine so good that it won a platinum medal this fall at the Lieutenant Governor’s Wine Awards.

Carménère is another varietal grown just by a handful of B.C. wineries. It was grown widely in Bordeaux pre-phylloxera but, because it is a late ripener, was not replanted often in France after phylloxera. The varietal did thrive in Chile, which has no phylloxera, and has been revived during the past 25 years. Black Hills Winery and Moon Curser were the first Okanagan wineries to plant it.

Moon Curser is also among a handful growing Tempranillo, a Spanish varietal that is not quite as challenging as the other non-mainstream varietals. “All it cares about is heat,” Chris has found. “If you get a cool fall, it gets to a certain ripeness and just sits there.” In a cool vintage like 2011, Tempranillo wines were light. Most subsequent vintages have produced bigger, richer Tempranillo.

Moon Curser does pretty well with varieties that are grown more widely in the Okanagan, such as Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot and Malbec.

Here are notes on Moon Curser’s current releases."

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RVWest.com - South Okanagan is a wine lover’s paradise with vineyards at every turn

"South Okanagan is a wine lover’s paradise with vineyards at every turn
The wine tastings are even better when accompanied by a fabulous meal

by Louise H. Boyer

Osoyoos is a popular camping destination, with Nk’Mip RV Resort as the star. Not only is this location exquisite in its diverse landscape of lakes, hills and desert fauna, it is also a stone’s throw from various wineries.

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A few minutes’ drive from Nk’Mip, Moon Curser Vineyards is a friendly 2.4-hectare (six-acre) farm-like winery that produces wines from unusual varietals such as Tannat and Tourigat. The Malbec 2016 is a medium-bodied red wine with intense notes of blueberries on the nose and flavours of plum, black cherry, sweet leather and oak. The finish is full of lush tannins and well-balanced acidity. The 2016 Border Vines is a dry, full-bodied red wine, mostly Cabernet Sauvignon, with a nose of cherry, blackberry and black pepper. The palate adds leather and a little spice well-balanced with medium tannins and subtle oak. "

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