Enjoy Wine, Food, and Travel with Karl MyWinePal
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…
The Fraser Valley has a few wineries, but they are not as well-known as our Okanagan wineries. One of the newer Fraser Valley wineries is Singletree Winery from the Abbotsford area. Being a cooler climate area for grape growing, expect aromatic white wines. But as many of the Fraser Valley wineries do, they also bring in grapes from the Okanagan…
Last year I was trying to answer the question “Are there any unique aromas and flavours in Riesling grown from a particular soil type in BC?” Through donated bottles by BC wineries, I tasted through 35 bottles of BC Riesling, attaching my tasting notes to the geographic location of the vineyard where the grapes were sourced, and then overlaid this…
Last year I was invited to try some of the wines from the new Singletree Winery, located in Abbotsford, BC. A family run opereation by the Etsell’s, they planted their grape vines in 2011 and opened a wine shop in 2015. Andrew Etsell grows the grapes, and is assisted by Okanagan winemaker, Matt Dumayne from Okanagan Crush Pad, to produce…
With summer holidays and then the extended power outage due to the wind storm this past weekend, I have finally finished tasting through all the 2013-14 vintages of BC Riesling that I received from BC wineries. Thank you all. My next step is to enter all my tasting notes into a database. The database will be broken down by primary…
I am a lover of Riesling. It allows the wine maker to produce wine in many styles, from bone dry, to a lusciously sweet ice wine. While we here in BC have talked about making very good aromatic white wines, I have not yet seen a systematic analysis of our aromatic grapes, Riesling in particular, and how the wines differ…
My last visit to Lotusland Vineyard in the Abbotsford area, Fraser Valley, was September 2010. I thought coming up to September 2012 that I should make another visit and see what is new at Lotusland. The lady at the winery I met today poured me their Enigma 2004, Merlot 2003, and 2 Cabs. All wines are under screwcap. When I…
I’ve been told that over the past two decades, the Wines of British Columbia have truly come of age. Wines are produced in the Okanagan, the Similkameen, the Fraser Valley, the Gulf Islands and on Vancouver Island. Cool climate to desert conditions let us produce a wide range of wines and wine styles. At the BC VQA Wines Fall Release,…
The summer is upon us, so it was time to head out to the Fraser Valley in the Vancouver lower mainland, and visit some of the wineries. I have visited Lulu Island and Pacific Breeze wineries in the past. Today my goal was to visit Township 7, Neck of the Woods, and Domaine de Chaberton Estate Winery. Well first off,…
As promised this is Part 2 of my trip to visit some of the wineries in the Fraser Valley. On this trip I visited Lotusland, Blackwood Lane, and Mt. Lehman wineries. The first winery visited was Lotusland Winery. This winery produces wines from grapes that are 100% grown in the Fraser Valley. The grapes are grown organically, but not yet…
