MyWinePal

One of the great things about the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival is that you can meet winery principals either at a wine maker dinner, a seminar, or at their winery’s table at the International Festival Tasting room.  In case you don’t know who will be attending the Festival this year, here is some background [...]

The Grand Taste is the last, and biggest event for the Taste of Tulalip.  I was amazed when I saw how long the line up was for people to enter this event.  If you’ve been to the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival, this lineup was at least that long or longer.  Represented at the Grand [...]

When people hear Napa Valley, they think big Cabernets.  Which is true, you can get some huge Cabernet Sauvignons there, but they also produce other wines, such as Chardonnay, Riesling, and Pinot Noir.  Did you know that the Napa Valley is one-eighth the size of Bordeaux and produces just 4% of California’s wine grape harvest, [...]

I really do enjoy finding wines that excite me, and I think you will also like. I’ve been to a Mark Anthony Brands Portfolio tasting and really enjoyed it. There were wines from all price points, and styles from red, white, dessert, fortified and bubbles. So when I was invited to their latest Portfolio tasting, [...]

What is a Portfolio Tasting? If you have never been before, it is a wine tasting held by a wine agent of all, or many of, the wines that they represent.  It is a great place to taste many different wines, typically from different countries, and learn a bit about the style of wines that [...]

This week I was invited to some major announcements from Okanagan Crush Pad. OCP was established in 2010 by Christine Coletta and Steve Lornie. The Crush Pad is located on Switchback Road in Summerland, BC. Their head wine maker is Mr. Michael Bartier. Mr. Alberto Antonini is their consulting viticulturist and wine maker from Italy, [...]

I look forward to the California Wine Fair when it comes to Vancouver every year. Beyond enjoying big Napa Cabs, there is a wide variety of other grapes that are being grown for wine in California.This evening there were 115 wineries presenting their wines to us. With each winery showing around 4 wines, that is [...]

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 [...]