BAUHAUS is about to celebrate its one year anniversary. Over the past year, we've established our restaurant in the heart of Vancouver's Gastown district. Within a few months, BAUHAUS was being featured on national and international lists as one of the top restaurants in Canada. Slowly but surely, word spread about a new style of high end cuisine in Vancouver: the fusion of classic German and modern European food. At the beginning, the prospect of amassing the perfect wine list was overwhelming, largely due to the fact that much of the wine I love was not available at BC Liquor Stores. To overcome this obstacle, I contacted top German Riesling winemakers Weil and Künstler, who supplied very high end, dry Rieslings to our local area. I also solicited several other wines for reasonable prices: four red wines from Burgenland, Austria (including Gabarinza, Pannobile and Bela Rex, < $200) and the 100-point Salzberg ($350). After eight months of waiting, the wines finally arrived. Another difficult part of creating a wine list was sifting through the innumerable wine dealers. Over the past year, I have personally tasted over 300 wines and selected the best ones at low and medium price points. This process has only strengthened my knowledge of wine. I learned that French and German red wines under $50 leave little to be desired, whereas low-priced reds from Argentina (Clos de Los Siete, Malbec), Australia (Torbreck Woodcutters Shiraz), and Italy (Primitivo Arpago, Grillo) taste fantastic. We have finally reached a point where we are happy with our wine list, which includes several German whites, local wines, and classics from around the world. But, we also understand that keeping on top of current wine trends and doing frequent wine tastings are the keys to maintaining an impeccable list. Every night I walk through the restaurant and talk with our guests. My hope is to impart some good advice: a delicious dish tastes even better when paired with the right wine. Whether you're enjoying braised beef, steak, duck, or deer, you will lose one-third of the flavour of the dish if you pair it with a cocktail instead of a good red wine. We keep our wine prices at the lowest margins possible to encourage our patrons to make the most of their dining experience. This starts with the perfect glass of wine.
We invite you to sign up for our monthly newsletter, where you will keep informed about my bi-monthly wine club dinner with special dishes and wines from around the world. And the best part of these dinners is that we drink all the wines together for 40-50% of the regular price. Comments are closed.
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