TNs: Boardgaming Wines -- Tasmanian Sparkler, A Couple of Ontario Wines & Nova Scotia Maple Wine

Berserkers,

Fellow board member Nick Christie is visiting Toronto for a week and staying with Mike Grammer at his condo. So they hosted a boardgaming afternoon in which lengthy sessions of Le Havre and Imperial were played. I made grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch and Chinese Black Bean Chicken Macaroni for dinner and we had a quartet of wines to go with our games and food:

JANSZ TASMANIA PREMIUM CUVEE – This came into the LCBO a while back before I closed my collection and the thought of it was so intriguing I made sure to get both this and the Rosé. I mean we all have Champagne and Cremants but how many of us can say we have Tasmanian wine in our collections? Keep in mind, I had absolutely no idea of what the quality would be like, it was a pure impulse purchase.

Light golden yellow in the glass, fragrant frujit aromas of lemon peel, unripe pineapple and green apple. Rich body. On the palate it is very fruit forward with ripe green and golden apple flavors, some nuttiness and a slight touch of lees. This is very fruit focused and a pleasant surprise. They’d like to fashion themselves as a Champagne style maker, but this honestly reminded me more of Franciacorta. Quality sparkler and an interesting change of pace.

PEARL MORISSETTE 2013 CUVEE BLACK BALL RIESLING – A dry very tart Riesling with lemon lime flavors and high acidity that are softened out by aging in foudre that gives the body richness and creaminess. This won’t make your forget your favorite high end Alsacian Riesling but that Francois Morissette managed to pull this off out of the notoriously bad 2013 season is incredible.

BETWEEN THE LINES 2015 CABERNET FRANC – Deep purple red in color. Aromas of ripe raspberries, tobacco leaf and cocoa. Light bodied in the mouth. Light flavors of raspberries, smoky tobacco and some vegetal green pepper betray the fact that the good work done here has been undermined by yet another horrible vintage that played havoc in Niagara. Next year’s vintage from the awesome 2016 season will be much better.

JOST MAPLE WINE – One of my favorite Canadian stickies because Jost manages to make the texture far less cloying than you’d expect. Golden brown in the bottle, of course it smells and tastes like sweet maple syrup. BUT… right along the finish there’s some tangy acidity and maple sap flavor that lifts the wine. The medium-full body is lighter than pure syrup as well which also helps. You’re not downing alcoholized maple syrup here, this is actually a wine. It plays to a single dimension but it plays it very well.

Awesome!

Any chance we could get some “TN’s” for the games!

I love board games.

I suck at them, but am a cheerful loser and love them deeply.

Kickstarter is reinventing Fireball Island.

Ask and ye shall receive.

LE HAVRE – A complex Cab Sauv. Your goal is to collect resources, buy buildings with them, and convert them into more expensive goods that you can ship. Whoever collects the most value in shipped goods and building costs wins. I enjoy the game but it requires you to think 3 to 4 steps ahead and the race to convert and ship goods often misleads one into forgetting that it’s actually the buildings that are worth the most points.

IMPERIAL – Akin to Bore-dough. You play as an investor looking to expand and invest in pieces of other European countries that are also expanding and investing. Invest more money than the other players in a country and you take it over. Fail to invest enough and you’ll lose control over it. While interesting, the game is a bit schizophrenic in that it pushes economic expansion over warfare yet it’s impossible to expand without engaging in some kind of combat eventually. The other issue I have with it is that because you can take over a country if you invest enough in it, you could be literally fighting yourself over the long run which may harm you.

While I do enjoy these two, I much prefer games that have a building element to them. I also enjoy Bora Bora, Bruges, Stone Age, Macao, Caylus, Castles of Burgundy (far and away my favorite). We’re playing Scythe tomorrow and I suspect it’s right up my alley.

Love Fireball Island. It needs to be brought back. The costs of some of those original ones on line are like Roulot Burgundies.
Tran, did you get to 30 Bench to taste the reserve Cabernet Franc? Decanter was pimping this as the wine of the year in Canada. can’t remember if it was the "15 or '16. Emma Garner is actually pretty talented…

Agree Emma is talented. We did get to Thirty Bench and I loved her Methode Traditionelle Sparkling Riesling. Her reds are fantastic in hot years so I am up for some of that 2016.

Castles of Burgundy is an excellent game…one of my favorites as well. Lots of bits, though.

When we’ve had time for games in recent years, though, we’ve been focusing on ones we can play with our girls (11 & almost 9) - Isle of Skye, Citadels, Carcassonne, Dixit, etc.