The best sparkling wine hasn't been made yet. I think it will happen and when it does it will be from grapes grown in British Columbia and, most likely, the Fraser Valley just outside of Vancouver.
The weather is perfect for bubble grapes. Long periods of mild weather, never really hot, never really cold. Plenty of rain, just like Champagne.
What do you do when all your friends are growing beautiful grapes in warm, humidity-balanced climates and you're stuck with a a long, cool and wet growing season? You ferment your sad little berries once and then add some sugar and ferment them again in the bottle and then you spin, baby, spin!
You tell people yarns about widows and their kitchen doors and blind monks who "see" stars. You get dressed up with no where to go and you stay dressed up and go everywhere. You tell people that drinking your bubbly wine will make you a better person because all the better people are drinking it.
You make a wine that would have a hard time as a table wine into something luxurious and continue to spin.
I just finished a couple days picking Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in Langley. This will end up as Township 7's Seven Stars in time for Christmas 2009. The grapes of early November were still unripe despite an "excellent" growing season. The Pinot gave up almost no colour at crush and the Chardonnay still had 90% green seeds. The hangtime flavours were complex and elegant.
Ideal conditions for sparkling wine production.
Somebody grab 100 to 200 acres of land in South Langley or Abbotsford on a gentle south facing slope about a mile or less from the border, do a really good job of soil reprofiling and plant only PN and Chard.
And start spinning.
In 15 years you'll have the best bubble in the world.
