I met up with winemaker Pascal Madevon on his whirlwind trip through Ontario to promote his high end meritage blend Osoyoos Larose. The wine available for sale in Ontario right now is the 2006, but I got a preview of the 2007.

Compared to the light, smooth and well balanced 2006, there is definitely more fruit on the nose and the 07 feels bigger on the palate. Powdery tannins very evident and lots of oak/cedar notes too. Very good ripe cherry/berry fruit on the palate with some darker notes of licorice and tobacco emerging. Good long finish with fresher fruit. With acidity and tannins both still high, this needs several years' cellar time but the fruit is there to carry it through. Want to drink it this year? Definitely decant & aerate.

Madevon got his wine training in Bordeaux and continues to work only with the five red grapes from the region. The composition of the Osoyoos Larose varies from year to year depending on how the grapes turn out. The 2007 blend: 70% merlot, 21% cabernet sauvignon, 4% cabernet franc, 3% petit verdot and 2% malbec.

Madevon regularly visits Bordeaux and looks up former colleagues and friends, many of whom have their own wines. He likes to offer bottles of Osoyoos Larose to see what they think. The feedback is generally that it could be among the pricey 2nd Growth Chateau wines of Bordeaux. Madevon says that he follows many of the same vineyard management and production techniques as his Bordeaux counterparts and thus when he is complimented on the wine, he will protest "it's not me, it's the terroir!"

Osoyoos, BC, by the way, is officially the hottest weather station in Canada. This spring the weather is pretty ho-hum, but even an ordinary summer at the bottom of the Okanagan, in Canada's "pocket desert", yields more days above 30 degrees than anywhere else.

The first vintage of Osoyoos Larose was the 2001. In the ten years since then, the wine has caught the attention of a number of collectors in Canada and people, like this lady at Summerhill, look forward to getting their bottles signed by Pascal on his promo tours.

So how is the 2001 doing now anyway? I opened one from my collection recently and it is excellent. There are some secondary darker notes but on the whole it's still quite fruity. The tannins are still strong on the palate, but underneath is a lovely line of smooth ripe red fruit and the overall feel is smooth and balanced. (I should have taken a detailed note but I was hosting a dinner party. In any case the guests loved it.) By the way, Pascal reiterated that 2001 remains his favourite vintage: proud father with a soft spot for his first born? Or just that it's very good wine?

Not too many collectors store Canadian wines in their cellars for extended periods, and some even question whether Canadian wines can be long-lived. While ten years is still young for a quality Bordeaux, Osoyoos Larose is holding up very well - and still has years to go in my view. The real test will be how it is doing in 2021.

The fact that Madevon does vinify the wine with a view to aging potential - a potential that is so far living up to expectations - bodes well. It may even rewrite the  story on Canadian wines and how they age.

Osoyoos Larose - the component parts

After a terrific meal at Toca in the ritzy new Ritz Carlton, Pascal prepared a "component tasting" of the five wines that go into the final blend. We were joined by sommeliers Taylor Thompson and Lorie O'Sullivan.

Taylor Thompson samples the five component parts. He thought the merlot worked well on its own, that the cab sauv was "balanced" and that the cab franc was unusual "not like Niagara and not like Chinon," he said. He really liked the malbec's nose.

It was a fascinating exercise and I thought all of them were pretty "varietally correct". I also thought it was clear why merlot is a) the most widely planted red grape in the Okanagan and b) the biggest component of Osoyoos Larose. The merlot as fruity as it's possible to be without being a "fruit bomb" and I think would work very well as a single varietal. The others were all excellent examples too, with some green notes on the cabernets. Madevon told us that 2010 was not a warm year and, even worse, that it cooled down even more in September and October. You wouldn't know it from the wines.

I spoke to writer and all-round wine expert David Lawrason and asked his view. He also got to taste the components and indeed presented them to his sommelier class at George Brown College. Lawrason agreed that the merlot was very good and added "I really liked the cabernet sauvignon too".

The petit verdot, in case you're wondering what that was like, had a very unusual (and lovely) floral nose. But it's a big tannic beast and it's fairly obvious why most Bordeaux/meritage blends keep it in the single digits.