Tag: ortega

Have you ever heard of the Ortega grape? Did you know that Ortega is a cross between Siegerrebe and Müller-Thurgau?  And did you know that you can try Ortega wine from Blue Grouse Estate Winery from Duncan, BC?  Vancouver Island is a very cool climate region and as such many of the wineries produce wines from aromatic white grapes such…

In honour of Victoria Day, you may want to enjoy a bottle of wine made in Victoria (BC) or in the defined Victoria region.  There are 14 wineries in or around Victoria, BC.  Do you know which wineries?  They are: Deep Cove Winery Church & State Wines Rocky Creek Winery Devine Distillery & Winery Averill Creek Unsworth Vineyards Blue Grouse…

I keep mentioning about wineries on Vancouver Island as they give you a different profile of wine compared to what we are more familiar with coming from the Okanagan.  You are not going to find a big Cabernet Sauvignon produced on Vancouver Island, at least under the current cool climate.  Aromatic white wines and Pinot Noir are the stars on…

Valentine’s Day is near and sparkling wine to share with your significant other is probably in your thoughts.  But which sparkling wine?  Champagne or cremant from France?  Franciacorta or prosecco from Italy? Cava from Spain?  How about sparkling wine from BC? Blue Grouse Estate Winery and Vineyard Paula sparkling wine from Vancouver Island would be a nice choice. It shows…

Tucked away on side roads across southern and mid-Vancouver Island, you can be surprised by a family-run winery.  Enrico Winery is one such winery, located at 3280 Telegraph Road, Mill Bay, B.C. A cool climate region, this winery has forged ahead growing very interesting hybrid grapes by Valentin Blattner, a Swiss grape geneticist.  Several of Blattner’s grape hybrids are grown in…

In my previous article, I divided BC’s emerging wine regions into a warmer and a cooler side.  In this article I would like to concentrate on the cooler side, which for me covers the Salmon Arm and Lake Country areas to the north of the Okanagan Valley.  Lake Country is warmer than Salmon Arm, which is to the north of…

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…

Did you know that there are 671 wineries in Canada, as of Feb 2017?  There are 276 wineries in BC.  There is grape wine being produced in BC, Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia.  As part of the Vancouver International Wine Festival, wineries from across Canada were invited to attend, and to celebrate our 150th birthday as a country.  Bringing together…

The Near I recently reviewed Duncan, BC’s Blue Grouse Estate Winery, and mentioned in the article that I was going to cover their sparkling wine in a separate article.  The time is now!  Their sparkling wine is called “Paula“, after their only daughter, Paula, who is an aspiring opera student. The wine is a blend of Pinot Gris 38%, Ortega…