In our glass: past and present wine picks
Synchromesh Wines: Shifting Gears in Okanagan Falls
I remember quite vividly the first time I tasted Synchromesh. It was at Okanagan Falls Wineries Association’s (OFWA) inaugural Vancouver tasting.
Breaking Bread with Clos du Soleil at Tavola
A ground-breaking collaboration: Marc du Soleil, made by Long Table Distillery, TP photo 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 [...]
Brent Marris: Renewing an Old Acquaintance over Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc
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 [...]
8 Tasting Tips (and more) for the Vancouver International Wine Festival
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 [...]
10 Sure Bets: The 2014 Dine Out Vancouver Short List
Dine Out Vancouver: It's about food and wine 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 [...]
10 Fizzy Faves for the Holidays: Hired Belly’s Best Bubbles
Bubbles beckon... Champagne flutes await at Cornucopia Bubbles forever! © Tim Pawsey photo Bubbles 'R' Us! Over here at HB's swank, granite and glass adorned, soaring corporate HQ, we’ve been busy popping a few corks, drafting our list of go-to holiday bubbles. Sparkling wines (and Champagne for some a few [...]
The Must-Have Value List: 2014 Vancouver Magazine Wine Awards
The rosé flight. Every home should have one! I’m working on a redesign for hiredbelly.com wine recommendations, which will include all of the Belly’s Best selections as they run elsewhere. It’s time consuming but I think will be worth the wait and effort. In the meantime, here’s a link to the best [...]
Kamloops’ first winery, Harper’s Trail Releases Inaugural Cabernet Franc
Harper’s Trail has released its inaugural Cab Franc—and my guess is it will get plenty of attention. Well, it should anyway. In fact, you could file this under “One more reason why Cab Franc could be BC’s defining red variety.” I do think this is a ground-breaking wine. If you had asked people a [...]
Terry Threlfall’s TNT: Blowing Away Preconceptions of Okanagan Chardonnay
Latest from Okanagan Crush Pad's 'Campus' series... Wine is very much about “people and place.” It’s a fact. Much of what makes wine so fascinating is just that: few other products yield so strong a connection to the land as grapes and the people who grow them, make wine out of them—or in [...]
First Tastes at Yaletown’s Good Wolfe Kitchen & Bar with Wines of Roussillon
They had me at the Steelhead pastrami ... Newly landed Good Wolfe (1043 Mainland St., Vancouver, 604-428-1043) has been on my radar for some time but I just hadn’t managed to get there until a couple of weeks ago. It’s not that I deliberately dodge new opening shenanigans. But the reality [...]