The Vancouver International Wine Festival has been very, very good to Samantha Rahn.
Sure, there was the honour of being chosen as last years Sommelier of the Year which means she gets a gold pass to this years festival, Feb. 24 to Mar. 2 but the festival was also responsible for a parking lot conversation that led to finding the man of her heart.
Rahn had grown up on a farm in Saskatchewan and was training to be a classical musician clarinet major, bass trombone minor when she went to Banff to find a summer job to help pay for her university tuition. She was hired as a supervisor at Wendys and lived with four other people in a super rundown apartment. One of her roommates worked in a wine store and hed bring home bottles of cheap wine for them to try.
Goodbye Mozart, hello Merlot. Farewell Prairies, glad to get to know you Rockies.
The competitive spirit that she had applied to her music education then found an outlet in snowboarding. In 2007 she devoted a winter to competing at NorAm snowboard cross events, one of which was a test event for the 2010 Olympic Snowboard Cross track at Cypress.
In between races, shed sneak down to the wine festival, knowing that she needed to start getting back into sommelier mode.
On the last day of the festival the afternoon training was cancelled and she was standing in Cypresss parking lot with a group of fellow competitors. One of them was a Bearfoot Bistro waiter from Whistler, Jamie May. He said he was going to a trade event at the festival, too.
I tested him, Rahn says of what turned out to be a pivotal moment in her life. I wanted to know if he was really into wine or just a server who wanted to go to get drunk.
Thats why she casually let drop, I had a Pingus yesterday, referring to a cult wine from Spain. (Its $1,000 a bottle and very rare.)
Jamie looked at her and replied, What vintage?
Time stopped for Rahn. I remember thinking, So, this is how your life is going to be now.
May who went on to compete in the 2008 nationals and 2009 World Cup test event helped Rahn get over her homesickness for the Rockies and embrace Whistler.
As far as career moves go, shes landed it. Rahn is the wine director at Araxi, one of the most popular and respected restaurants in the resort town.
From those early days Rahn has been fascinated with wines, reading everything, trying everything. (Shes in the middle of level three of her Wine and Spirit Education Trust qualifications.)
I always need to be challenged and growing and wines been a good outlet, she says. Blessed with a good memory, she can rhyme off a wines provenance with the best of them but shes never lost sight of the fact that wine is supposed to be for pleasure.
With a thousand wines in Araxis cellar, a good memory helps when a diner asks her to suggest a wine.
You have to make people feel comfortable, she says. Theres still an old school pretentiousness but people dont want to be schooled; they just want something they like. Its about creating the experience.
The wine festival is the perfect opportunity to get a taste of whats out there, and shes particularly thrilled with this years joint themes: France and bubbly.
For Rahn, the festival is also about reconnecting with friends and associates, something thats not easy given the hours they work.
She had resigned herself to never winning the Sommelier of the Year award, thinking, Im up in the mountains and no ones probably thinking of me.
How wrong she was. And how right a choice.
Do not go to the tables of your favourite wineries. Go find something different or someone from a region youve never heard of.
Have a couple of things in mind that you really want to go to. Choose maybe half a dozen wineries.
Avoid tables with lineups
Her suggested discoveries: Check out the beautiful and great valued wines from Zinck (Alsace, both sparkling and still wines), the glorious whites of Michel Chapoutier (not to overlook the delicious reds) and, for a really outside the box but world reknowned producer, Brumont from Madiran in southwest France. in the region of Madiran.
Many festival events are sold out but you can go to VanWineFest.ca to see whats still available.
