Enjoy Wine, Food, and Travel with Karl MyWinePal
We are back to estate grown BC grapes for the 2025 vintage. It was a great year for our wine grapes, producing a bumper crop for all vineyards. I have two white wines from Okanagan’s Hester Creek Estate Winery; their Hester Creek Estate Winery Character White 2025, a white blend containing Gewürztraminer, Viognier, and Pinot Gris, and Hester Creek Estate…
Easter is this weekend and you are wondering what wines to pair with your holiday meal. I would like to suggest that a rosé wine pairs well with everything. Rosé wines typically have high acidity and nice red fruit flavours that are very complimentary for many dishes. I also recommend an aromatic white wine. These wines usually have higher acidity…
Wine lovers often talk about “Old World vs. New World,” but the comparison becomes far more interesting when you look at two regions that share a deep respect for terroir while expressing it in completely different ways. British Columbia and France may be separated by an ocean and centuries of winemaking history, yet they meet at the intersection of climate,…
Six months ago, in August 2025, I tasted BC’s Hester Creek Estate Vineyard Garland 2022 and The Judge 2022 Bordeaux-style red blends. These are their top tier Origin wines. Both wines were made in the epic year of 2022 when weather conditions and the harvest was perfect. At that time I first tasted these wines, both tied in my wine…
Here are two more delicious wines that you should buy and enjoy right now while we are drowning in our winter rains, or snow, in BC. The two wines from the Okanagan’s Hester Creek Estate Winery are their Columbia Valley Collection Viognier 2024 (grapes coming from WA state), and their Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 (grapes coming from estate fruit). I bought…
2022 was a super vintage for the Okanagan wineries. Hester Creek Estate Winery, as part of this epic vintage, vinified their first Super Tuscan style wine, named UNDICI. To taste UNDICI is to taste a little bit of Italy. UNDICI joins The Judge and Garland as part of their Origin Series wines. Together these three wines reflect the beautiful terroir…
We have had some turmoil in Canada and in BC for wines in 2025. Many BC interior wineries suffered from the 2024 cold snap causing them to either not produce any wine in 2024, or importing grapes from across the border, or from Ontario. We also had the removal of USA wines from BC government liquor stores. Overall, we had…
I had a wonderful visit at Hester Creek Estate Winery in Oliver, where head winemaker, Mark Hopley, took me behind the scenes to view the working harvest in the winery, to try tank samples, as well as a few finished wines. Here are a few of the things that Mark and I spoke about. The 2025 Harvest: A Year of…
2022 was an epic year for making wine, according to BC’s Hester Creek Estate Winery. The year started out challenging with a late cold start, summer temperatures were not too high, low rainfall during the summer, but then lead to a long, warm end to extend the growing season, allowing the grapes to fully mature. Many wineries noted that their…
As we all know, the winter of 2024 was devastating for BC Okanagan vineyards, wiping many out completely. Some wineries, like Hester Creek Estate Winery, ventured south to Washington state to provide them with grapes so that they could produce wine for 2024 for us all to enjoy. The Hester Creek Riesling and Rosé Noir 2024 grapes were sourced from…
Video Guide Uncorks the Story of British Columbia Wines. Buy Now.
