Thai Wine Tour Part 2: PB Valley Winery

PB Valley is a winery in the middle of a few mountains in Khao Yai. After our long drive of wilderness from Village Farm, we began to see these beautiful Thai vacation houses and log cabins. Truly this area started to resemble a giant country club, with beautiful boutique resorts and fruit plantations. There were a lot of these log cabins and posh looking villas in the middle of this beautiful valley. This area was green and lush, almost reminded me of the Penedes countryside as we were headed to one of the Torres vineyards. Now we were introduced to a new term “New Latitude Wines”. Now there’s Old World, New World, and New Latitude Wines (for the winos out there, correct me if i’m wrong here because this is how I understood it).

We entered this driveway that reminded me of a countryclub. We were in PB Valley Winery and we were quickly ushered into “The Great Hornbill” Restaurant, where a wood-fired oven and a gelateria caught my eye. In the function room, everyone marveled at the breath-taking view of the PB winery. It looked like something out of an excyclopedia, and the only reminded I had that we were in Asia was the fact that it was scorching hot outside. Mr. A, PB’s winemaker, took no time in introducing the wines. It was hot, and no water in sight, and so the Rose came out.

Mr. A said that unlike the usual skin-contact Rose, their Rose was made by mixing white wine with Shiraz. This was a little smoother than Village Farm and it also had a slight candy apple taste, but the finish was short, to the point that it almost felt like it didn’t go through my throat at all.

The Sawasdee Chenin Blanc. Awww, this was really good. Especially on a hot day, this one was light, almost toasty like a champagne without the fizz. Lots of green apple and absolutely refreshing. I got a little hit from all the instant sipping especially when you’re dehydrated from the 2 hour bus ride, but hey, atleast I’m on wine than anything else.

We were quickly ushered into a trailer, and was taken through the dirt road and the grape plantations, and then to the winemaking area. I don’t consider PB as a boutique winery, this place was so much bigger and better equipped than Village Farm (they have a huge automatic bottler when in Village Farm, they actually do the bottling manually). Mr. A gave us a short discussion of how white wine was made, and then we were off to the different rooms and wine making processes. Being PB’s R&D, my dad wanted to try something Mr. A was working on. And so he came out with a glass of unfiltered wine from one of the vats. Apparently this was on a “testing” stage. When i took a whiff of it, I quickly said, “Is this for real?!” The wine was cloudy, but the scent was so clear. It was screaming pears, guava and lychee. And you don’t have to take a long hard sniff to get the scent…it was so strong that I wondered what it would be like fully fermented. Of course, the cloudy wine was a little harsh, since it wasn’t finished fermenting yet. But this one had promise. Did I mention that PB valley is already 12 years old? That’s 2 years older than Village Farm.

After the tour, came lunch. We were treated to a wonderful mix of fusion and thai cuisine along with the wine and grape juice. Here are the food finds in PB Valley:

Deep Fried Pork Knuckle with Thai-Style Sauce. This was delicious. The knuckle was previously brined, so that it had that “corned” taste like pastrami. But it was deep fried and served with a nam prik which is a sauce made out of lime juice, thai fish sauce, cilantro, peppers and other herbs. I also liked dipping this into the Nam Chin Jew

PB Valley Grape Juice. This was delicious. I love grape juices from wineries. They are just so pure and dark, almost like unfiltered wine.

Grape Sorbet – what can you expect from a winery. Good juice = good sorbet. And what makes this so interesting is the skin bits from the grape.

“Nam Tsin Tseau” – This was the perfect dip for all these vegetables and meats in front of us. I even used it for the deep fried pork knuckle! This dip is made out of tamarind, chili, toasted rice, lime juice, blue ginger, palm sugar, shallots, cilantro, spring onion and cherry tomato. How they made it taste so good was in the hands of the chef who definitely knows what he’s doing.

Manao lime jam – I got this for our friends the Mirchandani’s. The manao is Thai’s official lime. It looked really good especially because the jam had strips of zest in it.

Sunflower Sprouts – though we didn’t get to taste these since it was in a giant pack in the store, sunflower sprouts gave us a new idea of what to grow here in Cafe Ysabel. Dad began planting some already, but I still don’t know how it it.

Charcoal Ice Cream – Yes folks, this was a glorious find considering I was in the middle of the mountains. PB Valley’s chefs must be risky gourmets, and I love it. Charcoal Ice Cream? I would never dream of eating anything that had an entire coal in it. The ice cream was smooth, it only looked like it would have that “polluted” taste but surprisingly it was very pleasant. The first thing you’ll detect is the good amount of vanilla in it, and the kind of fatty cream they used, then comes the smokey part. It’s pleasantly smokey, I never thought there is comfort in smoke, but for this one, there was. This is a definite must try. It’s something I didn’t even see in the Gelaterias of Spain & Italy. Love it!