Here's what I had to say about Bouchons in Grandma Wears Hiking Boots.
Read this review and many more in Grandma Wears Hiking Boots: A personal guide to the Okanagan Valley, available in print at bookstores and online, and in eBook format at www.Amazon.com and www.chapters.ca.
I am one lucky grandma to live in the middle of the Westside Wine Trail, one of five newly designated routes on the Kelowna Wine Trails. My neighbours include Okanagan wine industry icons like Mission Hill (love hearing the bells of the carillon every day) and Quail's Gate; wineries like Little Straw, that despite a relatively new name, are producing vintages from vines that date to the 1960s; wineries dedicated to organic production like Kalala; old favourites like Mt. Boucherie and newbies like Volcanic Hills.
Two thumbs up for Tinhorn Creek's new restaurant, Miradoro. Located at the winery in the Golden Mile wine district south of Oliver, BC, this sleek new restaurant adds a welcome food service component to the demonstration vineyard, tasting bar, wine/gift shop and amphitheatre that hosts a sold-out concert series each the summer. Best seats in the house will be on the shady patio. I'm thinking tapas (totally love the charred chorizo and octopus) and a bottle of wine ... now, that's how I like my music. Miradoro is the subject of my very first video.
I'm embarrassed to admit that until a couple of weeks ago, I'd never made it to Hester Creek winery on the Golden Mile south of Oliver, despite the fact that it is one of the Valley's longest established wineries with vines dating to 1968. Big mistake! I'm delighted that the reason for my trip was to deliver a pile of Grandma Wears Hiking Boots for sale in their absolutely gorgeous gift shop,
which is part of the Tuscan style multi-purpose building that includes an executive meeting/dining room, demonstration kitchen (I'm dying to get down for one of their chef's show & tell & eat events), tasting counter and expansive patio. The view from the patio is vintage Okanagan with sight lines all the way down to Osoyoos Lake.
I can’t keep up. When I recently pulled out a wine country map, there I was, up to my barrel stopper in Black Widows and mystic pyramids, Blasted Churches and Freudian Sips. It made my head spin (and that’s before I started tasting).
Imagine my joy when news of a high-tech helper popped into my inbox. GyPSy Guide, which offers in-car GPS guided audio tours for the Rockies and Calgary/Vancouver/Victoria corridor, has inserted a special Okanagan wine tour into the program.
Mention the Kettle Valley Railway (KVR) Trail, and the Myra Canyon Trestles above Kelowna jump to mind. But there's another section of
the old rail line that involves even more spectacular Okanagan scenery, a
genuine character, lunch at a Naramata Bench winery, a mind-bogglingly
knowledgeable tour guide, and one border collie.
“It’s all downhill,” Ed Kruger assures us as he packs people into, and mountain bikes on top of, his Monashee Adventure Tours bus. Comforting words for a couple of semi-out-of-shape middle agers joining a group of 30-something Vancouver lawyers on a 36-kilometre cycle trek team-builder.
Ed calls this tour Rock Ovens to Valley Vistas.
Continue reading "Easy-ridin' the KVR Trail: Chute Lake to Naramata" »
The town of Oliver, BC - self-styled Wine Capital of Canada - is really getting into the spring wine thing. With Banée of Oliver, its formal evening of tasting and toasting now firmly established as an annual must-do who-ha, local wine country boosters have launched an April Wine Festival.
Eighteen members of the South Okanagan Winery Association set up tasting displays at the Oliver Community Centre on Saturday, April 21. I took advantage of the media tasting (sometimes we really get the perks) before the crowds arrived for an evening of "wine and wagers" on the themed casino night.
I've said before that I'm a real neophyte when it comes to wine. I've learned the basic Okanagan survival skills - swirl, sniff, sip, swizzle, spit - looks good. But if I opened my mouth for anything more than another sip, my ignorance would come blaring out. So I grab any opportunity to learn something new.
This week South Okanagan wineries and wine-folk hosted an array of the industry's best known wine writers for a look at what's happening in the region. And they let me tag along. My education got a big boost on a field trip to Golden Mile Cellars near the town of Oliver (the self-styled Wine Capital of Canada), where owner Mick Luckhurst and winemaker Mike Bartier gave us an object lesson in the principles of terroir.
