THE ADVOCATE 217
VOL. 79 PART 2 MARCH 2021
THE WINE
COLUMN
By Michael Welsh, Q.C.*
Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
—Abraham Lincoln (Lyceum Address 1838)1
OFF THE BEATEN PATH IN BRITISH COLUMBIA
I write this column in late January 2021 as the pandemic still rages but vaccination
is in view. For now, however, we must still live life large at home.
So I again take you on a world tour of wine you can explore at home, but with
a twist. The column brings you some lesser-known grape varieties, deeply
linked to their various homes, that have been successfully transplanted to
British Columbia. We go off that beaten path of French varietals that take up
most of the liquor store shelves to where the outliers of British Columbia’s
wine trade are travelling. Many of the wines in this column are harder to
find, as they are not in the government LDB liquor stores, but in these days
of online ordering directly to your home, just phone or go online. Many can
also be found at your local Save-On-Foods or Superstore wine sections, or in
private wine stores, many of which will again ship. So with these few words
of introduction I begin our journey at home. Primo, benvenuto in Italia.
TREBBIANO
Trebbiano is one of the most commonly named white grapes grown in Italy,
though it is in fact a family of varieties and not just one. They have common
characteristics in that their bunches tend to be long and large, the berries
* Michael Welsh, Q.C., carries on a litigation and ADR practice in the South Okanagan and is a bencher. The views
expressed here are his own and not those of the Law Society.