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 [...]

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 [...]

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 first time you walk into the International Festival Tasting Room can be intimidating, with 175 wineries pouring 3 or more wines each, you have at least 525 wines to try.  But over time, you become a wine tasting veteran like me, setting up a strategy, checking out the background of some wineries you may [...]

California is one of the great wine regions of the world, in part due to the excellent climate and soils, and in part due to the willingness to experiment with different grape varieties and methods to produce the best quality wine.  At this year’s Vancouver International Wine Festival I had an opportunity to speak with [...]

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 [...]

Wandering through the isles of the International Festival tasting room, with glasses of sparkling, red, and white wine pouring freely, are you looking for a friend to share a new wine find? If you see me, please poke my shoulder and say “Hi, I’ve found an interesting wine I’d like to share with you”. And [...]