Enjoy Wine, Food, and Travel with Karl MyWinePal
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. …
Natural wine is a hot topic in the wine world. Maybe you have not heard of it. There is some range of what is a “Natural” wine. It could fall into the organic, or biodynamic, or sustainable categories for some people. During this seminar at Cornucopia, we had DJ Kearney, wine educator, writing and judge, give her perspective on Natural…
Do you remember reading your science books in school? How dry the material could be and uninteresting? Well sometimes, reading a book about the science and legislation about some topic in the world can be interesting. Case in point, is this book, “Biodynamic, organic and Natural Winemaking: Sustainable Viticulture and Viniculture” by Britt & Per Karlsson. I received a complementary…
I first met owners Chrstine Coletta and Steve Lornie in May 2011, when they were unveiling the concrete eggs they acquired to ferment a line of their wines at Okanagan Crush Pad (OCP). Jump forward 4 years, and you will see that they have followed a long, slightly windy road, that has brought them to where they are today; celebrating…
Video Guide Uncorks the Story of British Columbia Wines. Buy Now.
