Category: california

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 more restrained French style, while…

I look forward to the Import Vintners & Spirits Association (IVSA) Trade tasting.  You get to try the new wines, liquor, and beer coming into the BC market, and be the first to tell you what to search out in your local wine shop, or BC government liquor store.  With the latest IVSA, here are my picks.  I hope you…

It’s no secret that there are many Canadian snowbirds that fly down for the winter months in Southern California; Palms Springs, in particular. With the average maximum “winter” temperatures in Palm Springs in November to March varying between 22-27 degrees Celsius and beautiful sun, who wouldn’t want to be there?  But what can you do there?  Well, there are golf…

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 are pouring for you. Some…

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, but really enjoy French Chablis or…

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 many California principals and winemakers,…

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 red varietals and is the…

I posted this article for all the star-crossed lovers 2 years ago.  I thought I’d check out the wines, and I’d stand by them all, but in addition, new wines have come to the BC market, so I thought I’d add those ones in too, so enjoy this Valentine’s Day with an even greater range of wine.  And don’t forget…

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.  Here is the announcement by…

The tickets are out for the Vancouver International Wine Festival on January 8.  Which events do you attend?  Well I’m here to help.  BTW, I was told there will be 767 #wine selections in #VanWineFest Tasting Room. 1850 total selections in 55 events. 30,000 bottles to open in all. Wow. My Number 1 Suggestion Your number 1 event to attend is the International Festival…