Stir Wine Pairing: Here’s why you need Monte Creek Riesling with your cookies and carols
We’re tuning into Vivaldi Chamber Choir’s virtual Home for Christmas concert, glass in hand (and ginger cookies in the other)
Pick an afternoon to take in Vivaldi Chamber Choir’s virtual Christmas at Home concert, then settle in with a glass of Monte Creek Winery’s Riesling 2018 and some gingerbread people from the Bench Bakehouse. VCC photo by Diamond’s Edge photography
Every week, Stir Wine Pairing suggests BC wine and food to go with a local performance.
The show
Vivaldi Chamber Choir’s Home for Christmas concert, online to January 6 (tickets, $15, via Eventbrite)
The wine
Monte Creek Winery’s Riesling 2018
The food
Cookies from the Bench Bakehouse or/and Kakfa’s Coffee
The lowdown
For a lot of people, holidays just aren’t the same without singing Christmas carols.
A few sing-alongs make up part of Vivaldi Chamber Choir’s annual Christmas concert. This year’s Christmas at Home features favourites like “Deck the Halls” and “Joy to the World”. Among the other pieces rounding out the 35-voice choir’s program by artistic director Edette Gagné is the world premiere performance of “Introit”, the opening movement of composer David Millard’s Requiem. Millard, who will play organ, composed the piece in memory of Alan Ryder, a VCC member who passed in the spring. Guest artists include violinists Michelle Gao and Tony Lee, violist Mark Jackson, and cellist Heywoun Hyun.
The pairing
With the December event being the pinnacle of the Vivaldi Chamber Choir’s concert calendar, we wanted something just as noteworthy to pour but that also won’t break our hurting bank accounts during this particular holiday season. While we can’t wait for the calendar to flip to the New Year, 2020 has been good to the Thompson Valley’s Monte Creek Winery, about 10 minutes outside of Kamloops. In fact, it was a record-breaker awards-wise for the vineyards and ranch.
At the 2020 All Canadian Wine Championships, the winery won the Founder’s Trophy for best overall performance, with nine medals. (The event, which has been running since 1981, received more than 800 entries from 130 wineries across the country). The family behind Monte Creek are farmers who have cattle and horses and who grow their own hay; they’ve achieved Salmon Safe certification for the winery, which involves reducing vineyard runoff and protecting water quality. This is a team that knows how important it is to have healthy soil and that good wine starts in the ground.
We would have suggested you pick up a bottle of its 2018 Riesling Reserve, which was named Best White Wine of the Year, but it has been sold out for a while now. Next best option: Riesling 2018, which earned Gold at the 2020 and 2019 All Canadian Wine Championships, the 2019 Pacific Rim Wine Competition, and the 2019 Okanagan Wine Festivals - Best of Varietal (Riesling).
If you’re the type to think “I don’t like Riesling because it’s too sweet”, this is the one for you: just shy of dry, it’s clean and citrusy, intense but not fruity. Order it from the winery for $19.99 (with free shipping on orders of 12 bottles or more).
The menu
Crisp and not candy-cane cloying, this Riesling will go smashingly with Christmas cookies, ideally anything gingery or bearing Christmassy spices for a nice contrast.
At the Bench Bakehouse, Matt and Tracy Steele are making classic gingerbread people. We love these simple folk, especially the one with the face covering. Pick them up pre-iced or get a kit to do the decorating at home (same goes for gingerbread houses). The Steeles (a husband-and-wife duo whose bakery is in Il Mercato mall on Commercial Drive) also offer vegan ginger-tahini and oatmeal-hazelnut-chocolate sandwich cookies. Another option is shortbread in flavours like hazelnut and toasted almond cut into bite-size pieces snugly tucked in a bow-tied box. (Then there’s stollen, fruitcake, French pastries and naturally leavened bread. Both cofounders are professionally trained: she studied at École Gastronomique Bellouet Conseil in Paris, while Matt went to the San Francisco Baking Institute.)
If cookies nearly the size of Buddy the Elf’s palm is what you seek, head to Kafka’s Coffee. The cafe (with three locations) may be best known for its individually brewed single-origin coffee, but it makes a mean soft ginger chew, sprinkled with sugar and topped with candied ginger. Pastry chef Adi Kesselman, a Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts alumnus, is whipping up other beauties that evoke familiarity and nostalgia: snowflake sugar cookies, chocolate chip and cranberry oatmeal cookies, linzer cookies, and chocolate Baileys snowballs. Ribbon-wrapped Kafka’s Cookie Boxes are $18 for six or $36 for 12.
Now’s the time to indulge and eat cookies like potato chips or popcorn. Just like singing a few carols, the holidays wouldn’t be the same without them.
Within Kafka’s Cookie Box are the chewiest of ginger chews.
Related Articles
