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Pick of the week

Quails' Gate Chardonnay 2006 ($18.99 in the Western provinces) is full-bodied and brimming with ripe tropical fruits and pear, with a round frame, subtly granular texture and notes of smoke and minerals and good balancing acidity.

Two regions, two events, two signs Canadian wine is moving past the self-conscious puberty stage and into full adulthood.

First, in British Columbia, there was the Black Hills Stampede.

Collectors of fine Okanagan Valley red will be familiar with Black Hills Estate Winery, the boutique producer near the town of Oliver that makes a $40 Bordeaux-style blend called Nota Bene. Getting your hands on a bottle has never been easy, with supplies generally sold only through the winery and to expensive restaurants.

But when the 2006 vintage was offered for public sale on April 14, the entire inventory, 3,300 cases, vanished in 47 minutes. That's 39,600 bottles spoken for in less time than it usually takes me to locate a corkscrew in my cluttered kitchen drawer.

A 47-minute sell-out in the Okanagan. This wasn't Napa, Bordeaux or South Australia (where, incidentally, this past Thursday more than 7,000 cases of Penfolds Grange, Australia's most famous wine, sold out in one day - at the head-spinning price of $500 a bottle). Yes, the age of the Cult Canuck Cab is upon us.

I only wish one of those cases were headed my way. I tasted the wine the day it was being bottled last September and it was in fetching shape. Packing a typically ripe, 14.7-per-cent alcohol, the blend of 47 per cent cabernet sauvignon, 37 per cent merlot and 16 per cent cabernet franc was velvety and nicely layered with flavours of cherry, vanilla and chocolate and a hint of pencil lead. Though the alcohol probably could have used another few months to fully integrate with the fruit, it was, like most vintages of Nota Bene, pretty delicious in its baby-fat youth.

You can credit (or blame, depending on your position in line) not just the wine's well-deserved reputation, but also the growing demand generally for B.C. wines in the West. "This is just the level of enthusiasm people have for wine in B.C. now," Glenn Fawcett, the winery's president, said over the phone from his base in Calgary.

Blame also two other factors: the Internet, which enabled shoppers to order online without pitching a tent outside the winery overnight, and Jason Priestley. Readers of this newspaper may recall that the Canadian actor, famous for Beverly Hills 90210, bought a stake in the winery last year after founders Senka and Bob Tennant sold to a limited partnership run by Fawcett. (Senka Tennant stayed on as winemaker.) As the first bona fide celebrity to invest in the B.C. industry, Priestley cast a bit of a Hollywood glow over the winery. Though showing tasteful Canadian restraint, he did not push the new board of directors for a cheesy name change from Black Hills to Beverly Hills.

Here's a tip for the few of you who happen to be in the winery's vicinity tomorrow during the current Spring Okanagan Wine Festival. As is the winery's custom, 25 cases of 12 bottles were held back and will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis at the winery door (at the regular price of $42.90 a bottle, 250-498-0666; blackhillswinery.com). But nota bene: There's a limit of two bottles per person.

More widely available, at least in the Western provinces, are two excellent new releases from another top-notch producer in the Okanagan. Quails' Gate Chardonnay 2006 ($18.99) is full-bodied and brimming with ripe tropical fruits and pear, with a round frame, subtly granular texture and notes of smoke and minerals and good balancing acidity. And Quails' Gate Pinot Noir 2006 ($24.99) is an impressive pinot for the money, mid-weight, with exuberant spring-berry flavours and whiffs of smoke, beetroot and spices.

If you live in British Columbia or Alberta and like dry rosé, consider an excellent rosé for spring sipping, Joie Rose 2007 ($18.90 in B.C. and $24.90 in Alberta). It's not cheap for a pink wine, that's for sure, pushing beyond the usual limit for a serious Tavel from the southern Rhone. But it's an expertly made, very seductive wine.

The second aforementioned milestone in the domestic industry's progress came with the May 15 issue of Wine Spectator. In it, you'll find the U.S. magazine's first-ever feature on the most significant wine region within a day's drive from its New York head office: Niagara. (They ran a feature on the Okanagan a few years ago.) It comes, of course, complete with a necessary preamble about the Falls, casino gambling and Shavian theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake, so it was more a wine tourism piece than one of the usual, comprehensive tasting reports.

But, yes, there they were actual photos of Niagara-industry pillars, such as Len and Tom Pennachetti and Angelo Pavan of Cave Spring Cellars and Moray Tawse of Tawse winery. Five icewines garnered 90-plus scores, though none of the dry wines did, with the top four managing 88 points out of 100.

Still, the belated feature is worthy of a toast. Maybe with a bottle of Henry of Pelham Cuvee Catharine Brut, or some Chateau des Charmes bubbly. Or this nice rosé that was just released in Ontario, which the Spectator missed, Daniel Lenko White Cabernet 2006 ($20.15, product No. 075648). Not to be confused with other pink wines named after red grapes (such as "white zinfandel"), this Niagara rosé is dry rather than medium sweet, though it's verging on off-dry. Light-bodied, it offers up lemon and cherry fruit with and herbal undertone. It should go well with some spicy Asian dishes.

One wine I'm very sorry the Spectator missed, and one that makes a pretty confident statement about Niagara wine simply with its price ($60), is Thirty Bench Benchmark Red 2005. Just 226 cases were made of this Bordeaux-like Niagara wine (available at thirtybench.com), which is full-bodied, rich and smooth, with a creamy-cherry core, notes of vanilla and spice and velvety tannins. Lots of oak here, but it's nicely integrated into the plump, ripe fruit.

Steep, yes. But you're paying for the small-lot rarity, which is the main reason so many of those California cult cabs can fetch prices well into the three digits, the types of wines that appeal to core Wine Spectator readers.

And here's another Ontario bubbly that you will never read about in that magazine. Creemore Springs Traditional Pilsner, released April 15 through The Beer Store, is superb. (When released last year, the spring/summer production was limited to LCBO stores.) A traditional Czech-style pilsner with 5.3 per cent alcohol, it's crisp, with a rich malty flavour and deliciously bitter finish, quite distinct from the brewery's flagship Premium Lager. Available in 12-packs ($22.75).

If you want to get your hands on some of that Thirty Bench Red, be sure to attend the 2nd Annual Niagara Wine Weekend & Auction at Niagara-on-the-Lake, June 13 to 15. The $1,000-a-head admission gets you into a VIP reception, wine garden party, gala dinner (prepared by chefs Michael Bonacini and Jason Parsons) and dance, plus auctions of some of the region's best wines. The event supports the SickKids Foundation and the St. Catharines General Hospital Foundation. For tickets and information, visit http://www.niagarawineauction.com or call

1-866-946-3593.