Tag: organic

Wine Meridian a web-based wine magazine celebrating Italian wine dropped by Vancouver this week with 20+ wineries and some of their wines from across Italy to sample.  From Piemonte to Puglia, from Sicilia to Veneto, we had plenty of interesting wines to try. I worked my way through Prosecco and other sparkling wines, through many interesting white wines made with…

We drink coffee year round, but in the summer with the heat, a hot coffee may not be our first choice.  How to get your caffeine fix?  How about from chilled coffee and ice-cream drinks from Caffé Artigiano? Director of Coffee Michael Ratcliffe and Chef Dawn Doucette created some chilled coffee drinks unique to Caffé Artigiano. If you have children…

This is my second year attending Top Drop Vancouver, where small-scale producers from around the world show us their hand crafted wines. According to Top Drop, “Our focus is terroir-influenced, handcrafted wines, and the people behind them. W e believe in the importance in farming one’s own fruit and/or being constantly engaged with grape-growers to ensure sustainability and a high…

Canada should be proud of its recent wine history.  We started getting serious about vitis vinifera in the 1970s.  BC and Ontario started growing wine grapes and producing wines.  Nova Scotia and Quebec have followed, and I heard, but have not seen, that there are also wines being produced in New Brunswick.  Our climate since the 1970s has warmed up…

Naramata Bench in the Okanagan Valley (Image courtesy https://winebc.smugmug.com/Other/Okanagan-Valley/) We all can agree that BC’s Okanagan Valley is a special place.  Some of the things noted by winebc.org about the Okanagan Valley is “The Okanagan Valley lies in a rain shadow, between the Coastal and Monashee mountain ranges. This results in very low annual average rainfall. The area between Oliver…

Bench 1775 Winery is located in on 1775 Naramata Road, on the Naramata Bench.  They believe that great wines start in the vineyard, so all of their vineyard sites were analyzed in detail before being planted with clones and rootstocks best adapted to their soils and site climate. Val Tait, the viticulturist, wine maker and GM of Bench 1775, tries to…

What is OKANAGAN CRUSH PAD? Okanagan Crush Pad is a winery located in Summerland BC, which is home to our flagship wines Haywire and Narrative, plus wines made for custom crush clients. The licensed winery has been designed to facilitate production of multiple small lots of wine from many different sources, and the management of Okanagan Crush Pad welcomes clients seeking to use…

Have you ever read the winemaker’s notes that is sometimes on the back label of a wine bottle or from the winery’s website then try to see if you can pick up the same aromas and flavours?  Or even more challenging, to taste the wine first on your own; making your own notes, then reading what the winemaker says about…

The BC Hospitality Foundation’s Dish N’ Dazzle is coming up May 18.  I tantalized you with 3 Australian Semillon in a previous article, and now a quick review of three completely different white wines from Australia.  The grapes are: Chardonnay Roussanne Vermentino Chardonnay and Roussanne are grapes that originated in France.  Chardonnay is grown in the Burgundy region of France….

South African wines are well-known for going great with food.  The wines are a mix of the Old World and the New World styles.  Fruit forward, yet still restrained, plus enough structure and acidity to give you wines elegance. If you have not tried South African wines before you may want to try some for free, courtesy of the BCLDB. …