MyWinePal

In the first part of my notes on the 31st Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival I talked about BC wines as this was the featured region. But there was more than just BC wines at the festival. I will spend some time talking about the International wines that I was able to try. Some of [...]

The 31st Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival has now come and gone. I attended the “Get Uncorked” kick off to the Festival, went to a Burgundy tasting (pinot noir, chardonnay and gamay), a Pinot tasting (all types of pinot both red and white), a Vinho Verde (Portuguese wine) tasting, plus tasted wines in the big [...]

Most of you probably know little about Portuguese wine other than the bottles of the slightly sweet, sparkly Mateus that were so prevalent in Canada 30 years ago. But then you moved on to the classical French varietals, like Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. Well I would like to suggest you take a chance on both [...]

Burgundy produces arguably the the most characterful wines in the world. For those who don’t know, Burgundy is famous primarily for Pinot Noir and for Chardonnay, but also is known for Gamay (which makes Nouveau Boujoulais). The region is divided into five major areas: Côte d’Or (divided into Côte de Beaune and Côte de Nuits), [...]

Alsace, located in eastern France, has a long history of wine making. The Rhine River flows through the Alsace region and the wine trade from the 12th to the 16th century was almost monopolized by Strasbourg and Cologne as the Mediterranean region was controlled by the Arabian people who shut off the wine trade by [...]

Saturday, I took the TGV high speed train to Reims (pronounced “Rance”) to see some of the famous champagne houses in the region. The scenery was a blur at 200+ km/hr on the TGV. It was quite foggy on route to Reims as well as started to rain. I did not think that this would [...]

In April 2008, MyWinePal was able to spend almost a week touring Sonoma and Napa Valleys. The weather was unusually warm; almost 20 degrees Farenheit above the normal temperature. Workers were in the fields actively managing the trellising. Some of the wineries,and brief notes on the wineries follow. The first visits were at J Vineyards [...]

The California Wine Fair visited Vancouver on April 2. There was a wide range of wines from cheap and cheerful, up to collectible wines for special occasions to sample. There were at least 120 different wineries, each with several wines to sample. Just not enough time to visit them all! A few personal observations. I [...]

2006 saw the start of a new winery in the Okanagan – Meyer Family Vineyards. A small 3.1acre vineyard on the Naramata Bench was purchased by JAK Meyer and his wife Janice Stevens which contained 10 year old Chardonnay vines. Their goal is to produce some of the best single vineyard Chardonnay in Canada. To [...]

As promised this is Part 2 of my trip to visit some of the wineries in the Fraser Valley. On this trip I visited Lotusland, Blackwood Lane, and Mt. Lehman wineries. The first winery visited was Lotusland Winery. This winery produces wines from grapes that are 100% grown in the Fraser Valley. The grapes are [...]