Tag: organic

My first post for 2013 is hopefully one that will help many people out there that have some wheat or gluten intolerance.  When you are enjoying a glass of wine, it is nice to have some cheese and crackers to go along with it. But for those that have some intolerance to wheat or gluten, those wheat flour based crackers…

We have just a little over one month away before we are with family and friends, enjoying dinners, gifts, and of course celebratory wine.  And when we think of wines for celebrations, we think “bubbles”.  For some of you it may be Champagne, but there are many other sparkling wines, such as Cava, Prosecco, and Cremant.  I recently had a…

When you talk with visitors to the Okanagan, most will say they want to visit Summerhill Winery and see their pyramid, where they partially age all their wines. Some may say they also want to visit because it uses biodynamic farming methods.  I sat down with Ezra Cipes, CEO of Summerhill, and son of the founder, Stephen Cipes, at a restaurant…

This past week was very busy with wine events, but one event that I made sure to attend was the Bloom Vancouver, BC VQA Spring Release Tasting.  This was a Trade only event, so people like media, restaurant owners, sommeliers, and other wine buyers for consumers were only in attendance.  With spring you get the current release of the white…

New Zealand is well known for its clean air, temperate climate, and dare I say, super natural environment?  New Zealand’s wine industry goal is to be 100% sustainable, organic, or biodynamic by 2012. I read that over 95% of their vineyards are operating under an independently audited sustainability programme and over 90% of their wine production is also under an…

Did you know that Vina Carmen is Chile’s oldest winery, founded in 1850 by Christian Lanz, who named the winery after his wife, Carmen? The Carmenere grape variety was rediscovered at Carmen in 1994. In 1997 Carmen launched the first Chilean organic wine under the Nativa brand.  I remember buying the wine in WA state as it was not yet…

Today I was looking forward to the latest wine releases from Le Vieux Pin and La Stella wineries. In case you haven’t heard or tried wines from these two wineries, Le Vieux Pin makes wine in a French style, while La Stella takes the Italian route.  What do eggs have to do with this?  Read on about the wines first….

Emiliana Vineyards has become very well-known for their organic and biodynamic wines that they produce in the Colchagua Valley, Chile. I speak briefly with Fernando Pavon, Export Director about the winery and their wines.  Enjoy.

This week I attended the IVSA‘s latest tastings of new wine and spirits in the Vancouver area. There was at least 70 different tables from my quick count, with each table offering 5-10 different wines. As such, I was not able to try everything offered, but hopefully I was able to find a few gems, which I can pass along…