MyWinePal

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 [...]

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 Vancouver International Wine Festival has come and gone, but memories of the event still run through my head.  One event that I think about was the Chateau Olivier dinner at Le Gavroche downtown.  If you have not been to Le Gavroche, it is a small 2 story building located at 1616 Alberni St.  It has [...]

Part of the Vancouver International Wine Festival are seminars; Seminars to make you more informed about wine. I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Chateau St Jean Cinq Cepages Vertical tasting seminar. And now, you can share in some of my knowledge. What is Cinq Cepages? Cinq Cepages is a blend of five Bordeaux [...]

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 [...]

The early bird gets the worm, or in this case to taste some premium wines from around the world.  The Vancouver International Wine Festival is just around the corner, starting the last week of February.  There are still some tickets left for some of the wine events, as well as for the Festival Tasting Room. [...]

Are you coming from out of town to attend the Vancouver International Wine Festival?  Do you need a hotel? I came across this offer from Hotel Le Soleil in Gastown, just a short walk to the Vancouver Convention Centre.  Here is the package.  Enjoy! ~~~ As an upscale, independent boutique hotel in the heart of [...]

Here is a quick heads-up that tickets to the Vancouver International Wine Festival go on sale on January 8, 2013.  Here is the announcement from the Festival.  I will make a separate blog article with my picks for events to attend, and events I hope to attend.  Enjoy! ~~~ Vancouver, BC, January 3, 2013 – [...]

The Vancouver (Playhouse) International Wine Festival is slowly changing.  With the closing of the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Company, the Wine Festival has changed it’s name to the Vancouver International Wine Festival, and has a new arts troupe to support, “Bard on the Beach“.  The Festival has found a new sponsor, the Vancouver Sun newspaper, who [...]