Tag: chenin blanc

My first Trade tasting for 2019 was this week, with agents showing the latest new wines they have brought to Vancouver or new vintages of wines that are currently in our market.  I was quite surprised by how many sparkling wines I had a chance to try.  I normally see a peak interest in sparkling wine leading up to the…

I tasted through many years this year through Trade tastings with agents and BC VQA wineries, the Vancouver International Wine Festival, visits to wineries, and personal purchases.  I rate all the wines I taste from 1 to 5 stars.  Fortunately, the quality of many wines is quite good, giving them at least a 3 out of 5-star rating.  At the…

One of the perks of being a wine writer is an invitation to a portfolio tasting from a wine agent.  The agency can bring out winery principals in some cases, who you can have a chat to about their wines.  They also pour wines that are available at regular retail, specialty wine shops, and special orders.  Having access to these…

Ken Forrester and his wife started their winery together with their young family;  Buying a large 38 ha plot of land in the Stellenbosch region of South Africa, and working with farmers over 90 ha of scattered parcels.  Ken wanted to produce the best wine in the world and has been working with the Chenin Blanc grape to try to…

Wine Align’s National Wine Awards were recently released and one winery, Road 13 Vineyards, in Oliver, BC, took away a major load of awards for their wines, and in the process were named Wine Align’s Top Canadian Winery.  Congratulations to Road 13 Vineyards.  I was lucky to visit Road 13 Vineyards in June and tasted through most of their wines…

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…

Do you know that the Okanagan Valley gets 2 hours more sunlight per day than Napa Valley during the July and August growing season and that the Okanagan is warmer and more arid than Napa?  We should be able to get great ripe fruit, but as well as the Okanagan being a desert climate, we also get cool evenings allowing…

2017 was an interesting vintage in the Okanagan in my opinion, with the cool, wet Spring, followed by the forest fires and smoke that started in June and went through most of the summer.  I was worried about smoke taint in the Okanagan, but fortunately, the grapes did not have any problems.  But the smoke did have an unexpected benefit…

Have you ever wondered which wines go well with our Pacific Northwest Cuisine?  Maybe you want to buy a bottle to enjoy at home, to take to a friend’s dinner, or maybe order at a restaurant.  I checked out the top restaurants from the Vancouver Restaurant Awards 2017 (Yes, I know the 2018 awards are right around the corner).  For…

This past year I tasted a tremendous number of wines from around the world, but some wines really resonated with me.  It may have been the great balance of fruit, sugar, acidity for a white wine, or the fruit, tannins and minerality in a red wine, or something else. Something that made the wine stand above the other wines.  Could…