MyWinePal

Did you know that SpierHead Winery from South East Kelowna won the “Best New Winery” at the 2012 BC Wine Awards, and that their Pinot Noir was ranked #1 by the judges at the 2012 Canadian Wine Awards?  Well now you know.  I’ve been in contact with SpierHead for a year now, tasting their wines [...]

With every season, there is either grape growing, harvesting, vinification, aging, or bottling of wine. Recently I was happy to do some tasting in Vancouver of recently bottled wines from Le Vieux Pin and La Stella wineries.  These two wineries from South Okanagan offer different styles of wines; Le Vieux Pin being produced in a [...]

Starting a restaurant is hard.  Running a restaurant is hard. Whether you are the owner, chef, wait staff, or any combination of these, you are dedicated, you love food, and what you do.  This week was the Vancouver Magazine 24th Annual Restaurant Awards in Vancouver, celebrating our restaurants, chefs, and staff who have been tantalizing [...]

Bartier Scholefield‘s slogan is “Wine is Narrative“, which I agree it is, at least maybe for boutique wineries, sourcing grapes from a small region.  In my previous article, BC Has a Wine Story, I talked about the story that wine tells through the terroir that the vines were planted and the grapes ripened. Bartier Scholefield’s [...]

04.16.2013.  That’s the date that the Okanagan Falls Winery Association (OFWA) launched their Inaugural “The Heart of Wine Country Comes to Vancouver” event to show their wines to the wine trade, which includes wine writers like me, but as well wine shop and restaurant owners and staff.  If you ask someone in Vancouver where is [...]

BC‘s wine story, just like all other wine regions, is heavily dependent upon it’s terroir.  You may have heard of the term terroir, but what does it mean, and what is BC’s wine story? What is Terroir? Terroir is a many splendid thing!  Depending on who you ask, you may get many different answers, but [...]

 Who is Perseus Winery? Perseus winery is located in the South Okanagan, Penticton in particular. It was founded in 2009 and originally known as Synergy Winery & Vineyards. In 2011, three long-time friends—Rob Ingram, Sam Elia, Bob Hole—acquired the winery through their company, Terrabella, and joined forces with the three founding owners and other expert [...]

Wow, the Vancouver International Wine Festival was sure busy for me. I attended a dinner, a lunch, a seminar, and visited the Festival Tasting room 3 times. I was able to speak with many winery principals from California, which is always interesting. They can tell you background information about the winery or a particular wine they [...]

Chardonnay, a grape variety that can cause great disparity in wine drinkers.  There are many that fall into the “Anything But Chardonnay” camp, and others that love that it can have many different expressions; depending on the climate, soil, and the hands of the winemaker.  Some people do not even know they are drinking Chardonnay, [...]

The British Columbia Wine Institute welcomed me and a room full of other revelers to the “BC Paired: Indulge Your Senses!” during the Vancouver International Wine Festival. This event was a celebration of BC wines, red, white, sparkling and fortified, paired together with locally sourced BC ingredients prepared to complement the wines. 23 wineries were present to [...]