Category: Marsanne

Canadian Thanksgiving is going to be very different this year for many of us who are accustomed to getting together with our parents, brothers and sister, and maybe aunts and uncles for dinner.  It will be smaller, and may be just you, but you can still enjoy your turkey, ham, or vegan Thanksgiving meal with a glass or two of…

Today I’m tasting two white grape varieties from Alsace and from the Rhone Valley, but grown in BC!  Church & State Wines grows both Pinot Gris (Alsace) and Marsanne (Rhone) grapes.  And have done them very well.  Church & State Wines originated on Vancouver Island near Victoria, and later added a second winery in Oliver in the south Okanagan.  The…

With France being the theme country for the Vancouver International Wine Festival 2020, there were many more French wineries in attendance than in other years.  And with that many more wines to taste. Which made me very happy.  France has a great variety of red, white, rosé, and sparkling wines, from the range of noble grape varieties.  I spent several…

You never know what you will get to taste when you visit a winery.  During the long weekend, I visited Victoria and made a short trip over to Church & State Wines.  The tasting room and dining room is very spacious and modern.  Very nice. When I sat at the tasting counter I was first offered a Sparkling Pinot Gris. …

Road 13 Vineyards has been producing award-winning wines for quite a while.  They were awarded the Winery of the Year 2018 by WineAlign.  In November 2018 Road 13 Vineyards were purchased by Mission Hill Family Estate from Kelowna.  So these wines will be one of the last vintages produced by the original Road 13 Vineyards family for you to try….

Okanagan Falls, located between Penticton and Oliver, holds, I think, a sweet spot for growing grapes and making wine.  It has long warm days and cool nights, which allow the grapes to reach full ripeness as well as keep their acidity.  The Okanagan Falls Skaha Winery Association, consisting of 14 wineries, with 32 vineyards, held a tasting recently, which I attended.  In…

On my recent trip through the Okanagan, I stopped at 3 wineries.  The first one which I wrote about earlier was C.C. Jentsch Cellars.  The next day I stopped by a winery that is near to them, Road 13 Vineyards, located on Road 13 just south of Oliver, BC, where I met Mick Luckhurst who with his wife purchased the…

Cooking with local, healthy, sustainable ingredients should be a goal we all aspire.  Knowing where our food comes from and how it was harvested can help us make sustainable food choices.  For Chef Ned Bell, it has been a journey to learn about sustainability, first from the land to the plate, and now from what is in our oceans to…

Rhone, there is so much to discover, from scintillating Syrah, to ripe summer fruits from Viognier, Roussanne and Marsanne, to full-bodied, ripe red and black fruit blends from Chateauneuf-du-Pape.  I’ve travelled twice to France and both times I stopped in the Rhone Valley.  To see the Tain Hermitage hill, to get a chance to walk the hill and overlook Cornas…

I love to support our BC wineries.  I watched over the many years as the number of wineries has grown as well as the quality improved.  Wine critics from here as well as around the world, have tasted our wines, celebrated the quality, and told others.  Now you can find BC wines around the world, from Hong Kong to London….