Category: Okanagan

Church & State is head and heart, change and tradition, roots and growth. Church & State is in constant conflict, yet always in perfect balance. Who Is Church & State Wines? Kim Pullen founded Church & State Wines in 2004. Purchasing a 25-acre estate on the Saanich Peninsula, which had been home to the defunct Victoria Estate Winery, Kim set…

Who We Are Moraine Estate Winery is a family owned winery and vineyard overlooking Okanagan Lake, located just minutes from the City of Penticton. From its shelf-like location above striking clay bluffs, Moraine peers over the landscape and water. These iconic glaciated white clay cliffs comprise the breathtaking Naramata Bench and inspire the winery’s land-formed name. The winery owners are…

Are you on a Quest or a Chase for something?  For wineries, it may be for the best expression of the grapes in the glass, showing off their terroir.  A light hand by the wine maker.  To me the light hand of the wine maker really comes out in the red wines from C. C. Jentsch Cellars. C. C. Jentsch…

In the wine world, cool climate areas are making exciting wines.  Canada is viewed as cool climate, and I was wondering where we fall in the extreme north or south latitudes compared to other cool climate regions.  Here is what I found through a search on the web: Argentina‘s Patagonia wine region extends between 33.3° and 33.8° South. Osorno Valley…

BC is a large province, with a varied climate from maritime to alpine.  Our grape growing regions for wine production vary from the coast, to slightly inland (think the Fraser Valley), to our hot interior (the Okanagan or Kamloops for example).  With all this variability in climate, you would think that grape harvests would all vary and the wines that…

Brockmann’s Chocolates Celebrates 30 Years in Canada  “Who is the Brockmann family?” They have been in Canada for 30 years making chocolates, and I don’t know about them.  But here they are; right underneath my nose! The Brockmann family has been creating delicious chocolate recipes for over 80 years, and is now celebrating 30 of those years of chocolate making in…

Bench 1775 Winery is located in on 1775 Naramata Road, on the Naramata Bench.  They believe that great wines start in the vineyard, so all of their vineyard sites were analyzed in detail before being planted with clones and rootstocks best adapted to their soils and site climate. Val Tait, the viticulturist, wine maker and GM of Bench 1775, tries to…

Welcome to Meyer Family Vineyards After a decision to change careers and enter the wine world we spent three years searching for the perfect vineyard site in the Okanagan Valley. In 2006 Janice and I (JAK) purchased a small 1.62 HECTARE vineyard on the Naramata bench. In late 2008 we purchased a 6.9 HECTARE property in Okanagan Falls. We hired the…

Who is CedarCreek? CedarCreek Estate Winery was one of the first eight pioneering wineries in British Columbia. Right from the early onset, CedarCreek’s pioneering has been tempered by patience and perseverance. Our ideals matured into our philosophy: “Respect the land, honour tradition, pursue perfection.” For over 30 years now, we have pursued perfection and produced some of the valley’s best…

When I get a shipment of wines to try from a winery, sometimes a bottle does not make it into the tasting notes.  It may be because of the varietal not matching up with the other wines, or the topic of that particular article. These two white wines had to wait for the appropriate moment to be tasted and presented…