Saturday, January 9th, 2010

Cowichan Duck and Cowichan Pinot

By Dawn Schultz

Dawn was born and raised on the Canadian prairies and later lived in practically every province in Canada. From an early age she started working in food and beverage industry. After successfully completing Level I and II of the International Sommeliers Guild she has recently graduated from Level III. Dawn was working as the Restaurant Manager and Sommelier at the Hotel Grand Pacific. Recently, she moved to Vancouver and began to work with Artisan SakeMaker, Masa Shiroki, at his shop. Please stop by if you are ever in Vancouver! www.osake.ca

In the warm Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island you will find a handful of amazing farms and top-notch wineries. On Cobble Hill you will find the Venturi Schulze vineyard that produces 100% estate-grown wines. The family run vineyard follows the basic philosophy of natural sustainability: no irrigations, no herbicides or pesticides in the vineyard, no chemicals in the winery outside of a small amount of sulphite added to some of our wines as an antioxidant to enable cellaring.

In the tradition of pairing local foods with local wines, we have taken Cowichan Valley wine and paired it with Cowichan Valley duck. Lyle and Fiona Young are the owner operators of their beautiful Cowichan Bay Farm. The Youngs follow sustainable agricultural traditions. Their Pastured Poultry is raised in the summer months outside in roomy moveable pens. The chickens and ducks they raise always have access to fresh grass, air and sunshine. In the winter months the birds are raised in warm and dry roomy barns with natural light. The feed used does not have any antibiotics or animal byproducts.

Executive Chef, Rick Choy, and his culinary team has taken duck from Cowichan and created a spring roll. The duck legs are BBQ’ed with a housemade BBQ sauce that has notes of spice and ginger. The duck is cut Julian style and wrapped up with carrots, diakon, celery, leeks and onions into a spring roll. The spring roll is deep fried to perfection and served piping hot.


Paired with this dish is the 2004 Venturi Schulze Pinot Noir. This Pinot Noir combines their 5 clones of Pinot Noir. The 2004 growing season contributed to a full and rich wine. The crop was split into two batches where one was cold fermented to preserve the signature Vancouver Island character of rich dark black cherry. While the second part of the batch was hot fermented which resulted in dark earthy flavors. The wine was finished in French Nevers Oak and is unfined and unfiltered.

The rich earthiness of the wine with dark black cherry compliments the natural full flavors of the duck in the spring roll. The rich flavors of the BBQ sauce are balanced by the full berry flavors of the wine. The 13.7% alcohol and subtle acidity of the wine balances the full weight of the deep friend spring roll.
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This entry was posted 8 months ago on Saturday, January 9th, 2010 at 2:12 am and is filed under Food and Wine Pairing, Tasting Notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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