Category: bc

Who is Calliope Wines? The Wyse Family, founders of Burrowing Owl Estate Winery, has a second label called Calliope, which pays homage to a tiny hummingbird found in southern British Columbia. The grapes for Calliope wines are sourced from local vineyards in the South Okanagan and Similkameen Valleys. Their goal is to create expressive, fresh wines from each grape variety…

We all want to age gracefully.  The exuberance of fruit in young wines, while very enjoyable, can lead to more interesting flavours and aromas over time.  Riesling is one of the white wines that is known to be able to age well and improve with time.  It was with great appreciation that I received a vertical of Old Vines Riesling…

New BC wineries appear quite regularly.  Some I hear about before hand, while others take me by surprise.  Monte Creek Ranch is one of the wineries that falls in the latter category, plus they are in the Kamloops area, which has recently had a few wineries set up their homes; Harper’s Trail, Sagewood, and Privato. Who is Monte Creek Ranch…

It has been a long voyage of discovery for me to find out what type of relationship Riesling grapes have with the soils of BC, or as some may say the terroir of the area.  As mentioned in previous articles, it started with the idea, then contacting all BC wineries that produce a Riesling wine, to ask for a sample…

BC is a cool climate region, but we all know as we travel from South Okanagan northward, the climate does cool down, and that there are preferences for growing warmer climate grapes further south, and more aromatic whites further north.  From the BC Riesling Review, we see that Riesling is grown in the Okanagan Valley from the border up past…

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”.  Lao Tzu This spring, I took my first step, with the thought that maybe the different soil types in BC affect the aromas and flavours of our grapes.  How to test that thought?  There are so many different varieties of grapes.  I settled upon testing this theory with Riesling.  It…

What is Soil? Isn’t that a strange question?  We walk on it, build things on it, grow vegetables in it, but what is soil? Soil is a very important part of the BC Riesling Review as this is where the nutrients for the Riesling grapes come from.  I will try to keep this article interesting without being too dry and…

The hard part of the BC Riesling Review is done.  I tasted through 35 wines over a period of 3 months.  I can say that it has been a very interesting experience.  Below are the notes.  I tasted each wine two times.  The first time was as soon as I poured the wine in my glass.  The second time was…

The Fall BC VQA wines were released this past week, and as usual there are too many wines to taste and evaluate.  I usually like to try wines I have not had before, or sample from BC newest wineries.  If you have not come across the term VQA before, it stands for Vintners Quality Alliance, an association that was formed…

With summer holidays and then the extended power outage due to the wind storm this past weekend, I have finally finished tasting through all the 2013-14 vintages of BC Riesling that I received from BC wineries.  Thank you all.  My next step is to enter all my tasting notes into a database.  The database will be broken down by primary…