Category: VQA

Chinese New Year 2023 is celebrated on January 22, 2023, with this year being the Year of the Water Rabbit. The sign of the Rabbit is a symbol of longevity, peace, and prosperity in Chinese culture, and 2023 is predicted to be a year of hope. According to Chinese astrology, Rabbits are predicted to be gentle, quiet, elegant, and alert…

New Year’s Eve is just around the corner.  Have you purchased your sparkling wines to celebrate?  Here are some sparkling wines I enjoyed this year that you may want to consider buying.  Some BC sparklers are only available at the winery, but the foreign bottles should all be available at BC Liquor stores.  Cheers! My Sparkling Wine Suggestions BC Wine…

Today I was fortunate to taste and review two Renaissance red wines from the Okanagan’s Stag’s Hollow Winery.  Their premium Renaissance wines represent their best barrels from only the best vintages and are made in small lots.  Needless to say, if you like my descriptions of these wines buy them asap as they will sell out quickly.  The two wines…

A whole year has passed since my 2021 Wine Quiz, which was related to wines, wineries, and winemakers I was able to interact with and write about on mywinepal.com.  Here is my 3rd Annual 2022 Wine Quiz.  There are 10 questions gleaned from my articles this year. I hope you enjoy it!

In BC when we hear icewine, we think of the Okanagan, but icewine is also made in the Niagara peninsula in southern Ontario.  In fact, the Niagara wineries have an icewine festival each year, excluding during the COVID lockdown, but it is back and you can experience this festival, whether you are local in Ontario, or you fly out from…

With Christmas just a week away as well as other holidays happening this month, I have been trying to taste as many holiday-worthy wines as possible to pass along to you.  If you like sparkling wine, here are two quality wines from Blue Mountain Vineyards and Cellars from Okanagan Falls. The 2018 Brut Rosé R.D. is a blend of 70%…

Twenty-five wines coming from BC and around the world made it to my near-perfect – star category this year.  I’ve arranged these fantastic wines into BC wines followed by wines from the rest of the world.  Italian wine showed up prominently with my near-perfect wine scores.  Chardonnay showed prominently as well, primarily from BC. You should still be able to…

If you were to bring two wines to a dinner party over the holiday season, I might suggest these two wines from the Time Family of Wines. Their Chronos Pinot Gris 2021 and Chronos Cabernet Franc 2020 are very accessible and I think food friendly.  Let me tell you about them. My Wine Tasting Notes Chronos Pinot Gris 2021 (BC…

The 2022 harvest is the first after COVID restrictions have been lifted.  I am sure that lifting COVID restrictions was appreciated by BC wineries.  We had a cool start to the growing season, followed by mere mm of rain between July and mid-October so I’d guess the weather has had an impact on harvest and fermentation, but we shall see…

In case you like cocktails, why not make some with sparkling wine for the holidays?  Here are three cocktail recipes using BC sparkling wine that were sent to my email. Sparkling Wine Cocktail Recipes French 75 Elegance in a glass! The citrus aromas in Jackson-Triggs 2018 Reserve Esprit Methode Classique combined with the lemon juice flavours and herbal, woodsy notes of gin…