Enjoy Wine, Food, and Travel with Karl MyWinePal
At every Vancouver International Wine Festival, when I attend the International Festival Tasting Room, I have a plan for which wines to taste. Luckily, as an accredited media person, I can attend the International Festival Tasting Room several times. But each time, is different. For this one session, I visited the theme region, west coast USA, and tasted only red…
Today we were able to taste California wines crafted on the edge – coastal cliffs, mountain tops, and rugged valleys – where adversity breeds greatness. This seminar at the VanWineFest 2025 showed us bold wines born from unforgiving terrains and regenerative farming. Our Moderator was Elaine Chukan Brown. Winery Principals to tell us about their wines: Kori Butler, Andrew Gouveia,…
We all love to get good value from our purchases, especially in wine when the quality of the wine exceeds bottle price. In this VanWineFest 2025 seminar, “Value & Variety, West Coast Style“, we were introduced to 10 different wineries along the USA west coast. This trio of states offer every climate, terroir, grape, and wine style to tempt wine…
This was my first dinner to attend at the Vancouver International Wine Festival. Justin Seidenfeld, Senior Vice President of Winemaking & Winegrowing, of Rodney Strong Wine Estates spoke at the dinner providing us insights into the excellent wines that they brought to pour at this dinner. This dinner was hosted at Riley’s Fish & Steak, providing us both seafood, beef,…
Here are two big red wines. One from a grape you may not know too well, Tannat, and the other wine is a Chianti Classico, but at the top tier, Gran Selezione. The Tannat wine comes from Argentina, which is uncommon, as Argentina is best known for Malbec. But this Tannat shows that it also does well in Argentina. Let…
When you buy wine in a BC Liquor store, you don’t think about how the wine was selected for the shelves. Behind the scenes are many wine agencies that search for wines from around the world, to build their portfolio, and have some of their portfolio sold through BC Liquor stores with the remaining wines, usually specialty wines, sold in…
Kevin Judd from the Greywacke winery in Marlborough, New Zealand, may not sound familiar to many readers, but Kevin is one of the pioneer winemakers in Marlborough. He was born in England and raised in Australia where he studied winemaking. In 1983 he moved to New Zealand and was the founding winemaker at Cloudy Bay, which all New Zealand wine…
I and other Trade individuals were invited to Discover Extraordinary Italian Wines. Some of the wineries at the event were searching for local representation, while other wineries already have an agent and their wines are in BC Liquor stores or private wine shops and restaurants. I’ve put a “*” beside those wineries that have local representation, so you should be…
When you visit Da Silva Vineyards & Winery on the Naramata Bench, it feels like you are transported to Portugal. The tasting room is beautiful, with bone-white walls and chandeliers, giving off a European feel. The wines are equally special. Richard and Twylla da Silva own the winery, with Richard coming from a Portuguese background. The names of some of…
Little Farm Winery is a small production winery located in the Similkameen Valley run by Rhys Pender MW and Alishan Driediger. Their wines are low / no intervention from start to finish. They use wild yeast, neutral barrel, lees ageing and little to no fining or filtering when the wines are bottled. I received two bottles of their Chardonnay. One…
Video Guide Uncorks the Story of British Columbia Wines. Buy Now.
