Tag: Harper’s Trail

Valentine’s Day is coming up soon.  Sharing a bottle of sparkling wine with your significant other over a nice meal is always a nice way to go.  Here is a list of 9 sparkling wines that I tasted over the past year that are in the BC market (or available across the border) that I thought you may like to…

Harper’s Trail Estate Winery was the first to produce wine in the Kamloops area using grapes from their Thadd Springs estate vineyard. A vineyard that has a vein of limestone running through it.  Limestone which offers calcium to the vines which aids in water retention in the soil plus easier nutrient uptake, and help maintain acidity in grapes late in…

The Canada Day long weekend celebration is this weekend.  Picnics and bbq and generally getting together with friends and family will happen.  Enjoying this scene with Canadian wine would make it even better in my opinion.  Below is a list of Canadian wines I tasted over the past year that I think would be fun to have this long weekend. …

Harper’s Trail Estate Winery in Kamloops has been a leader is showing the uniqueness of the area for grape growing and wine production, and has lead the way for a few other wineries like Privato and Monte Creek Ranch.  The Colletts’ 25.5-acre vineyard has a wonderful backdrop of limestone and clay cliffs.  I’ve enjoyed tasting their wines for several years…

Kamloops is a hot place in the summer, where grapes can grow and excellent wine can be made.  But it also can have very cold winters which can harm the grape vines.  It is a gamble to have a winery here, but sometimes the rewards outweigh the risk.  I have been told that at the edge of possibility is where…

BC’s emerging wine regions is rather large and encompasses different climates and terroir.  From my tour to the region, the places that I visited I think can be divided into two sub-regions: the hot west, and the cooler northeast.  There is still an area to the southeast that I did not visit on this trip, so cannot comment on its…

Everyone knows about the Okanagan Valley as a wine region, and some may also know about the Similkameen which is on the southwestern edge of the Okanagan, but what about BC’s emerging wine regions, covering the Kootenays, Lillooet and Thompson Shuswap?  I had a chance to go on a trip hosted by the Wines of BC to visit Lillooet and…

Introducing Harper’s Trail Harper’s Trail, named for the cattle drive trail of pioneer rancher Thaddeus Harper, is the first estate winery from Kamloops. Tucked into the city outskirts on the bank of the South Thompson River, Ed and Vicki Collett’s vineyard sits among rolling hills of sage and grass, home to bighorn sheep, bears, and myriad birds. The backdrop of limestone, hoodoos,…

Can you remember back 1 year ago to our Spring and Summer? We had beautiful sunny weather across BC.  Very little rain.  Perfect conditions for our BC grapes to have early bud break and flowering.  From the end of May to mid-September statistics show that 2015 was warmer than any other year on record.  Because of the sun and heat,…

It has been a long voyage of discovery for me to find out what type of relationship Riesling grapes have with the soils of BC, or as some may say the terroir of the area.  As mentioned in previous articles, it started with the idea, then contacting all BC wineries that produce a Riesling wine, to ask for a sample…