Looking to to buy for the BC wine lover in your life? Here’s a clutch of more interesting but not that hard to find wines, which individually and collectively show just how much the bar has been raised in the last few years. These bottles, beyond the run of the mill, will appeal to anyone […]
The winners of last week’s keenly contested Lieutenant Governor’s Awards for Excellence in BC Wine are announced by Government House this morning. As always, the final outcome was interesting because somehow we managed to select (from 436 entries between 119 wineries) just 12 wines that comprise a cross-section of wineries and styles. Of note this time […]
Portugal is back in the table wine game with a vengeance. No better proof of that than a recent Vancouver visit by a couple of score of key producers. Judging by the excitement in the room the you could have sworn it was a Burgundy tasting—except it wasn’t. This was the first major Vancouver offering […]
It’s always interesting to see what pops out at the end of major competitions. And this past week’s All Canadian Wine Championships proved no exception. Fourteen judges from across Canada (plus one from Michigan) were hunkered down in cosy 100-year-old Angeline’s hotel, in Bloomfield, Prince Edward County. It’s the first time I’ve visited this laid […]
The wonderful thing about wine is, if you taste enough, when you come across something truly new and noteworthy, it can hit you like a ton of bricks. In a good way, that is. I remember quite vividly the first time I tasted Synchromesh. It was at Okanagan Falls Wineries Association’s (OFWA) inaugural Vancouver tasting. […]
The Hired Belly has attended more than few winemaker dinners. But some remain etched in my memory. The very first was when Howard Soon (now Peller Estates’ chief winemaker, then Calona Vineyards’) dropped by the original Raintree, in Vancouver, to pour his wines. (To this day, Howard, who never met a mic he […]
The last time I met Brent Marris—the man behind Marlborough’s The Ned, The Kings series, and a whole lot more—was almost exactly 20 years ago. He was part of a New Zealand trade mission that came to Vancouver. At the time, Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc was in the early stages of its remarkable ascent and the […]
Next week’s Vancouver International Wine Festival will be one of the most well attended in the festival’s 36 years. How come it’s so popular? There are a couple of key reasons: Arguably North America’s most important combined consumer and trade wine gathering, it’s a great opportunity for wineries to meet their customers face to face—in […]
How about toasting The Year of the Horse with a brightly adorned bottle of Okanagan Pinot Noir? While several BC wineries have turned their attention to Hong Kong and the broader mainland Chinese market in the last couple of years, few have pursued the significant Canadian Asian market here at home. No surprise that first […]
UPDATED, Jan 16, 2014. The Trouble with Dine Out Lists… Is that you’re guaranteed to miss not only a few worthy restos but likely many. So be it. However, here, in random order (i.e. as I think about them or hear about them from reliable sources), is my “Mea Culpa” list of add ons—that probably should have […]
