Fairmont Hot Springs
From Water To Wine
Award-winning vintages are best paired with hot springs
Every November, when the frost is in the air, the larches have turned from green to gold and the Rocky Mountain peaks are capped with snow, a migration takes place. For the geese, flocks are formed that fly to warmer climes for the season. For snowbirds, convoys of RVs head for the sun in the southern U.S. and Mexico. For wine aficiandos in the East Kootenays, Fairmont Hot Springs Resort becomes the destination of choice.
Bliss— You’re Soaking In It: The mineral pools at Fairmont Hot Springs provide the perfect way to beat the cold during B.C.’s winter.—photo by Tanya Laing
I am a wine lover. My husband, Rusty, has never understood the appeal. But then again, he said the same thing about sushi and now he throws down slabs of raw fish like he’s part pelican. So maybe he just needed a chance to try some different varieties to find something that tickled his palate. Besides, it was clear that my technique of teaching him about wines wasn’t working. That technique, quite simply, involved forcing him to sample my favourite cabernet merlot and then stand above him, hands on hips, and say, “Well? WELL?”
“It’s fine,” he would say. “It tastes like wine.”
“And?” I would ask. “Good wine evokes more than flavour. It’s more than ’fine.’ It warms the soul. It reminds you of summers when you were a child! It speaks to you of friendship. What emotion are you feeling right now? What feeling is the wine giving you?”
“Fear?” he suggested. “Anxiety? Definitely a feeling of wanting to be anywhere else.”
“Philistine,” I hissed.
“Can I drink my beer now?” he asked quietly.
For seven years, Fairmont Hot Springs Resort has hosted a wine tasting festival featuring the finest vintages from B.C. The event, which tends to sell out quickly, is a weekend-long celebration of wines from crystal-clear whites to so-dark-light-can’t-escape reds; from the syrupy-sweet dessert wines to so-dry-they’re-desert wines—and everything in between. Ports, pipes, fruit wines, sparkling wines, rosés, reds, blushes, barolos, chardonnays and shirazes—do I have your attention? Fairmont Hot Springs certainly had mine. We were invited by the resort’s marketing manager, Harrison McKay, for the event’s second day which included a chance to participate in the judging portion of the weekend as well as the grand finale when winners are announced. My beloved philistine was ambivalent about the wine tasting, but Fairmont Hot Springs Resort is famous for its scenery, fine food, luxurious spa and—of course—the soothing hot mineral waters. It wasn’t difficult at all to convince him of the merits of a night away at one of the most amazing places in B.C.
We started the day at the spa for a couples treatment that included a delicious soak in a mineral mud bath and a half-hour massage. While one of us sat in the deep, clawfoot tub in the rich, loamy heated mud puddle, the other was tenderized, round steak-style. I know that some people prefer a gentle, soothing massage but I like a masseuse who gets in there and beats up muscles I didn’t even know I had. Luckily, our masseuse was that perfect blend of nurturing and ever-so-slightly sadistic. As she kneaded that particular place between my shoulder blades that sometimes hurts like blazes, she worked out a knot that is likely as old as I am. Oh, sweet, sweet pain.
An hour and a half later, with all the tension rolfed out of us, we floated to the first event of the day, the judging of the wines. If only all contest judges felt as fluid and full of zen as Rusty and I did. If the Academy Awards were given out by an academy full of jello cups like Rusty and myself, everyone would go home a winner. This was exactly the shape Rusty needed to be in to learn about how to taste wine.
There are many secrets to being a wine drinker. Getting just the slightest bit loud, clumsy and opinionated is not the secret part. The secret is learning how to swirl the wine to open it up to the air and really bring out the flavour. The secret is learning how to hold the glass by the stem so as not to muck up the glass with fingerprints and your body’s heat. The secret is learning how to really put your nose into the glass and smell the wine before you even taste it and searching your most ancient memories for that olfactory memory that, once found, can make a simple one-note beaujolais suddenly become an orchestral movement on the tongue.
It’s amazing how quickly Rusty discovered those secrets.
In the judging seminar, four different stations were set up with whites, rosés and blushes, reds and dessert wines. Upon entry, each judge was given a wine glass, a form to rate the vintages and a pad of paper on which to make notes. Each bottle was presented in a brown paper bag to conceal the label—one of the few times drinking from a paper bag is respectable—and labeled with letters of the alphabet to distinguish them. Rusty and I were on, roughly, F, when Harrison pointed us to the bucket in which to pour the excess wine.
“Don’t hurt yourselves,” he advised.
From then on, it was all about digging in, sniffing, swirling, sampling and snobbing. There were over 40 wines to sample, and each with its own distinctive flavour. And Rusty—bless him—started to understand the differences. At one point, an hour in, with his nose deep into the glass, he said, “This one smells of smoked oysters, compost … and my mom.”
“And?” I asked.
Tears sprung to his eyes.
“And I love it,” he declared.
We rated the wines, and by the end of the judging, Rusty was talking about oakiness, peppery flavours, fruitiness, dryness, depth, clarity, bouquet and all the other terms that aficionados use to prove we know what we’re talking about.
From there we proceeded to the grand finale, where the winners were revealed, all of the entrants provide samples of their best vintages and several cows-worth of some of the finest cheeses are offered for tasting. A fine evening. Some of the most distinguished palates in Western Canada were on hand to offer hints on taste, depth and tone. As well, there were people who—like the old saying went—may not have known a lot about wine, but they knew what they liked. The brilliant thing was that everyone found something they loved. For me, it was a fantastic syrah, a delicious combination of tomato and boconccino, and my husband. His palate has turned out to be rather sophisticated. He found flavours and depths in wine that I hadn’t even begun to explore.
The capper to the weekend, of course, was the time spent in the hot pools. Fairmont Hot Springs Resort boasts some of the most amazing views in the Columbia Valley. There are snow-capped Rocky Mountains, hoodoos, lakes and rivers—and, of course, the hot springs. There’s never a bad time of year to visit, but to sit in the steaming mineral pools in the late fall, when your breath hangs frozen in front of you, should be entered into the dictionary under the heading “bliss”.
Oh. The warmth. The sweet, enveloping, healing warmth. First thing in the morning—with the mist hanging in the trees like the wine hangs in your brain—with a go-cup of fresh coffee, you breathe. You soak in the fabulous views. You soak in the fabulousness of the setting. You soak in the water. Bliss.
Like the variables that make a good vintage, a good wine, a good year, this is what makes a good getaway. This one, this weekend, this was an award-winning combination. We’ll be back.
For details about Fairmont Hot Springs click here
