Quails Gate Pinot Noir 2010 Sez Beppi:
SCORE: 91 PRICE: $24.99 in B.C.A B.C. leader in pinot noir, Quails’ Gate does a splendid job here. It’s medium-bodied, with sweet, jammy berries in the foreground, joined by tobacco, cinnamon, dark chocolate, a hint of charred wood and good snugness from fine-grained tannins. Try it with grilled salmon or pork tenderloin. ($25.99 in Sask., soon to be released for $22.99 in Man., various prices in Alta.)
Cono Sur Pinot Noir. Impossible: an econo pinot noir.Some of the recent plantings have proven especially favourable to the new darlings of Chilean viticulture, pinot noir and syrah, which have joined bread-and-butter varieties merlot, cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay. Carménère, the country’s signature red, with its fruity-spicy profile, has found its own groove, shedding its herbaceous backbite with the move to well-drained slopes free of excessive winter rain or haphazard flood irrigation. Didn't survive a follow up tasting weeks later, though. Useful lesson in identifying tannins. Woke up feeling like I'd had a tea bag on my tongue all night. 
Montebuena Rioja 2009
Beppi sez:: Medium-full-bodied and earthy, this big Spanish bargain offers notes of cigar tobacco, forest floor and light, fine-grained tannins. It is a good red for herb-crusted leg of lamb. $15.99 in B.C.
