Of Wine and Armitage

/ SueBC

Wine and Armitage… two of my favourite things. In the summer, we travel every year to the Okanagan wine region of British Columbia for a beach vacation. Of course, we always have to throw in a few visits to the local wineries!

Many of the wineries are located on high ground, with the best views of the surrounding countryside, and it’s very picturesque along the back roads too. (Views from Tinhorn Creek and from Burrowing Owl.)

Stoneboat Vineyards is one of the cutest wineries I’ve seen, and their wine is nice too. I bought an excellent ice wine from there this year.

stoneboat vineyards

Many of the wineries have tasting rooms. Burrowing Owl also supports conservation of the burrowing owls in the area. And they make an excellent example of a Bordeaux-style wine with an ending that rhymes with Armitage! (Apparently, the word is a combination of “merit” and “heritage”.)

My favourite type of wine, though, is Pinot Noir — something that I have in common with Richard Armitage, according to various interviews. While he’s said in the past that he’s more into wine than beer, it sounds like he may not regularly drink wine or anything much anymore, except in service to his craft.

During the interview for the Wolverine: The Long Night podcast, he mentioned that he hadn’t “drank in around two years.” But then he told us that he “probably got through about two bottles of wine (!)” the night before a particular scene to dehydrate and make his voice rough. He said, “I turned up on that morning, for the bar scene, kind of in bar scene mode. I had a really bad hangover and I was like, ‘That was, that was not a good idea.’ But it kind of worked… I couldn’t find the voice without going to that place.” This was apparently a technique he also used to “wreck” his voice and make it deeper for the role of Thorin in The Hobbit. Good thing he doesn’t have to do that sort of thing too often!

Drinking wine is something he’s had to do in character, though, for many of his roles. Good thing he’s had personal experience! (Screen caps from RichardArmitageNet.com.)

I wonder if the wine business is something he’d want to do in his down time, maybe while he’s waiting for his next big role? He mentioned setting up a production company — maybe he could produce wine instead of drama? Or maybe he could lend his voice to do some marketing for just the right winery?

armitage wines website

There’s actually a winery in California run by a guy named Armitage! Armitage Wines advertises “award winning wine produced in the Santa Cruz Mountains with a focus on Pinot Noir!” And the home page sports a tiger’s face, reminiscent of Francis’ and Reba’s night out. What could be better?

Apparently, the winemaker “believes that if we quiet ourselves enough we can feel the plants vibrational energy speak to us.  This level of connection is what he believes separates one winemaker from the next allowing for great variation in ones (sic) development of wine.  He uses sacred geometry to pull this vibrational energy from the universe into the wine even during all phases of transformation.” Um… okay.

armitage wines

So what do you think? Has anyone ever tried the Armitage wine? The reviews on-line are good. A bit rich for my blood, though, at $55 U.S. for a bottle of Pinot Noir. Maybe if I’m ever passing that way…

51 thoughts on “Of Wine and Armitage”

  1. LOL I had no idea there was a winery called Armitage… Sounds a bit too esoteric for my tastes. As for “our” Armitage and putting his efforts into wine production rather than film production: That reminds me of dear old Sam Neill who is quite successful with his own boutique wine-producing efforts in New Zealand. His company is called Two Paddocks – he actually tweets under the same handle on Twitter. So at least Armitage could follow in an acting colleague’s footsteps. And in his beloved New Zealand, no less. Maybe that eco house is going to materialise, after all…

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  2. Sue, your blog is so educational! I always learn new things about a variety of topics outside of The Armitage gate. I love ice wine. I had some first in Germany on a Rheinland tour in 2011. Soo good! I need to buy some and speaking of that I am gonna google where to buy Armitage wine. $55 is pricey but I am curious to see what it tastes like. The visuals here are just breathtaking of the vineyards, even more picuresque than Nappa Valley where my sis and I went in 2014.

    As an aside I hope your work stress has lessened. I love your blog posts so I am thrilled that this one popped up and you are the consummate researcher!!

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    • I made the ice wine last! I have mini-wine glasses that were just perfect. I’d love to try the Armitage wine, but it looks like maybe only in California. I love the area where we go in the summer and the views are definitely spectacular. We always go to the winery restaurant with the best view for lunch so I can take some pictures.

      Nope. Work is really, really brutal. Today was not a good day. But thanks for the nice feedback on the blog posts.

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  3. LOL on the Armitage wine! Wouldn’t mind tasting him… er… it! 😉
    We drink about one bottle of wine a week at our house, usually one during the weekend (Fri or Sat evening) and usually a Merlot. Yumm.
    Love the views in the wine country pictures!

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    • Can I pour you a glass of Armitage? Wouldn’t that be fun? I used to only drink white wine when I was younger, but now I find it will often give me a headache. I prefer red. We also have some really nice dry rosés here.
      Thanks! It’s a really beautiful area.

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  4. A la sortie de la série ” Hannibal”, une grande réception avait eu lieu. Pour cette occasion, il avait été servi un pineau noir, Grand Cru de Bourgogne, appartenant à la Côte de Beaune.
    A cette époque, n’étant spécialiste qu’en hydro-minéralogie des eaux potables, j’avais fait quelques recherches en oenologie. De mémoire, je pense qu’il s’agissait de Puligny ou Chassagne – Montrachet. (Voir le site: https://www.vins-bourgogne.fr/nos-vins-nos-terroirs/la-bourgogne-et-ses-appellations/montrachet,2377,9170.html?&args=Y29tcF9pZD0yMjA1JmFjdGlvbj12aWV3RmljaGUmaWQ9MzU1Jnw%3D et pour plus de précision la carte de ces vins prestigieux: https://www.vins-bourgogne.fr/nos-vins-nos-terroirs/la-bourgogne-et-ses-appellations/gallery_files/site/321/402/29684/29733.pdf)
    A cette période de ma vie de fan, j’avais été très choquée. Quel luxe! Compte-tenu du faible volume produit, ce vin est très rare donc très cher. Les ventes sont réservées très longtemps à l’avance. Pratiquement toute la production part à l’étranger… Voici à titre indicatif:
    – le prix de certaines bouteilles de Montrachet à 185,50 euros: https://www.le-bourguignon.fr/fr/47-batard-montrachet
    – des bouteilles les plus coûteuses au monde (en 5 et 6 il y a les Montrachet grands crus):
    https://www.journaldunet.fr/patrimoine/guide-des-finances-personnelles/1131303-vin-le-plus-cher-du-monde/
    Maintenant, j’arrive un peu plus à comprendre comment cela peut-être grisant de pouvoir accéder à de tels produits d’exception et de s’en vanter.
    Pour l’anecdote, le printemps suivant, j’avais conçu le menu d’un anniversaire familial autour d’une bouteille de Côte de Beaune, bien moins prestigieuse à 45 euros.

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    • Nice to be able to sample some high quality wines now and then. My hubby worked for a winery for around a year. It was great! He would come home with various wines we wouldn’t have been able to sample otherwise. Really, though, my tastes are not overly expensive. Mid-range price is just fine.

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        • The three I mentioned are favourites. Dirty Laundry is good too. We have good wine-growing country in BC. I don’t know which wineries export to the States. It’s funny… cross-border wine selling is allowed both ways, but we can’t buy wine from other provinces in Canada.

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  6. One of my favorite vacations ever was in Bordeaux, where we did a combination of churches and art and winetasting. Truly memorable. However, if I were to do it again now I’d pay someone to do the driving.

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    • It’s made by allowing the grapes to stay on the vine until they freeze (hence the name) and pressing the frozen grapes. It’s often not a planned method of production because the grapes have to stay on the vine a long time and things can happen to them before they freeze (mold or animals, for instance) and then they have to freeze hard and get picked very quickly. I don’t care for Moscato — too sweet for me — but for some reason Eiswein is not especially sweet. (Compare freeze distillation with beer — “ice beer” is a thing, too — you let the beer freeze and then take the water off.)

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      • Sounds complicated and labor intense, but I want to try it, so next time I’m gonna have to pick some up. Yes, Moscato is very sweet, but I’m gonna try the Eiswein you mention now too. I’ve never been a beer fan, but since I only ever tasted it as a child (parents let us have a taste if we wanted as kids and I never liked it) I didn’t ever try it again. Probably still won’t, but I do like champaign and some people tell me they taste similar, but I don’t believe it. 😊

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        • Moscato was a real trend wine about five years ago now — I remember an RA fan, Xenia, who got interested in wine because all of a sudden everyone was drinking Moscato. It was supposed to be an easy “beginner” wine — to me it tastes like alcoholic grape juice, but when I started with wine I also preferred sweeter varieties (Müller-Thurgau was my favorite for something like two years).

          In general I’d agree that beer and champagne have little in common, but here are beer styles that taste like something like sparkling wines — although they are not beer in the sense of following the German purity laws; you’re looking for a lambic beer (Cantillon makes the best one) called a gueuze. I love these — they have wild yeasts and often include fruits in their mash.

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          • One of my husbands close friends is a German Beer connoisseur and for several years rode his bicycle all over Germany tasting, well who are we kidding, drinking all the varieties he could and cataloging them. It was pretty funny because he is a fairly tall thin man, but after several years of riding his bike around Germany, his tall thin frame had a fairly round beer-baby belly. I think I tend to snooze through most of his beer critiques. haha

            Ooo, Now I’ve got to add Müller-Thurgau to my sampling list. 😊

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    • It’s a bit sweet and a little thicker than regular wine. As Michele said, it’s a dessert wine. Usually you serve it cold and in a smaller glass. I really like it. They only make small quantities each year, due to the process and uncertainty of the crop as Serv described.

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