Blue Grouse Estate Winery Quill Q Red 2019

Deborah Podurgiel WSET IV Candidate rated this wine as 92/100 with the following review:

From Blue Grouse Estate Winery, Quill Q Red just keeps getting better and better. The 2019 is near its end of vintage, so if you can still buy some don’t hesitate. So deep red in the glass, it is fragrant with dark berry, black raspberry, savoury herb aromas, along with fresh cassis, crunchy dried sweet tobacco leaf and well-integrated oak spice full and long on the palate. The wine is a dry and full-bodied red wine blend of 46% Cabernet Franc, 34% Merlot sourced from vines growing in Parkhill soils in the Okanagan Valley (sandy loam formed from fluvioglacial deposits), along with 20% Marechal Foch sourced from vines growing in silty loam Fairbridge soils from a Cowichan Valley vineyard not far from the winery itself.

After fermentation, grapes were separately pressed and racked into a combination of American and French oak barrels, with each wine aged up to one year in barrel and then blended to create the final wine in bottle. Currently, tannins are medium, fine and pleasantly grippy. Delicious now with bison burgers from the grill but the wine could easily hold three-plus years in cellar. Tasted March 2022.

A bonus to buying the wine is that for the third year in a row, $1 from every bottle of Blue Grouse or Quill wine sold anywhere in BC will go to Nourish Cowichan to feed hungry children during April, BC Wine Month. As well, the Brunner Family, who are the owners of the winery, will match dollar for dollar of every bottle sold to a maximum of $10,000.