Sometimes a casual conversation turns into an amazing opportunity. Such is the case with this podcast. Bailey Williamson, former assistant wine maker at Road 13 Vineyards in Oliver, and I were talking one day and he asked me if I was still making podcasts. I said yes and he thought it would be a great excuse to taste through the first 3 vintages of the Sparkling Chenin Blanc that he had made at Road 13.

Hello! 3 vintages of one of my favorite sparkling wines?? I think I could make some time for that, no problem. One went the text messages and before you could say “riddling rack”, we were recording, popping crown caps and enjoying that very special vertical. What a treat!

It’s a long episode, but filled with some great comments on wine making, sparkling wine, and how wines can change over time. Cheers!

I finally have a little time to put up a post about all the videos that I’ve been doing lately that are now available on You Tube. They are low-budget, punk-rawk videos that I take with my iPhone clamped to a broken mic stand but I can’t afford the real gear at this point. I just need to buy less wine and then I’d be able to save up for a nice video recorder. Honestly, I’d rather just get the wine and use what I’ve got.

The podcasts aren’t going anywhere – in fact there’s one in the works right now which will be available very soon – so keep checking back here, or on iTunes or Feedburner for the latest release. The podcasts will be less frequent than before since life in wine country seems to get a little busier at this time of year. But there will be lots more news, wine reviews, and conversations about BC wine coming up.

To those of you who have been reading this blog, watching the videos, and listening to the podcasts, a huge vintage THANK YOU. (That’s right, I busted out the all-caps for that.) When I first started in the wine industry and began to learn about wine, I soon figured out that wine people really like to share their wines. That’s all I’ve wanted this blog and podcast to be – a place for me to share with you what I love about wine in British Columbia.

A big Wine Country salute to you all! <CLINK CLINK>

~Luke

Click on any of the photos below to go to the You Tube page.

I haven’t posted anything here lately and I thought I should to let you know why. I’ve been a little busy lately, way more than I normally am at this time of year. My day job is still the same but everything else is getting kicked up a notch. Promoting the recently released CD from my folkanagan duo, The Gala Vanters, is taking a lot more time and energy than I’d anticipated and other musical gigs have been popping up at an unusual rate as well. So much for my ‘recovering musician’ status.

Please make sure to follow the video tastings that I’ve been doing lately on YouTube. There are more up now and because they are so simple to record, edit, and upload, (way more easy than a 45-minute audio podcast) this is something that I’ll be doing more of from now on. And I’ve had a lot more response from these videos so far than anything else. Plus they’re kinda fun.

There will be more podcasts to come, including some very special ones, so if you are a subscriber on iTunes, there will be more sounds from BC’s wine country soon. It’s just not going to be as frequent.

I’m still looking for a vineyard to follow for the 2012 vintage. The general outlook on the vintage so far, based on the weather, in conversations with vineyard people, is fairly positive. Spring in the Okanagan can change quickly but things are starting to grow here far earlier than they have since I’ve lived here. So we might be in for a more “normal” year this year. Here’s hoping.

More things to come from Wine Country BC. Follow me on Facebook by clicking the link on the right of the page. Check out tweets @winecountrybc and subscribe to the YouTube channel for all the latest wines to look out for direct from where the wine comes from.

Cheers from wine country!
~Luke

On this podcast, I interviewed Steve Venables from Forbidden Fruit Winery in the southern end of the Canadian part of the Similkameen Valley. The valley narrows here slightly and the winding Similkameen River flows calmly just a few steps away from the wine shop. Since the day was so calm, I decided to record this interview outside in this idilic setting. The sound of the river and the birds around it are naturally part of this recording.

Could whatever it is about wine that makes people want to leave the city and spend their weekends and vacations traveling through scenic vineyards influence the way you think about other things? People go wine touring, not potato touring. Nobody ponders their tater-tot and makes comments like, “It has a certain minerality that suggests central PEI, perhaps closer to Summerside, which would account for the lovely color due to the iron-rich red soils there…”

Perhaps potatoes can’t reflect their terroir quite as well (or maybe they do?) but there are other things that can. Fruit growers here in the Okanagan valley all know that tree fruits taste different depending on where they are grown. Cherries grown in Osoyoos taste different than those grown in Oliver, Penticton, or Kelowna. So do peaches and apples. But fruit products are always sold by variety regardless of their provenance and so most consumers, including myself, don’t know that the 3 apples in the shopping cart could all come from 3 wildly different orchards.

There are other products that do come from a ‘place’ the same way that wine does. Honey is one of them as can be a fascinating and as healthy for you as wine.

The farm I grew up on had a neighbor who had bees and made honey. We bought honey from him by the bucket until he closed up shop and moved. We didn’t eat much honey after that because I remember the store-bought honey did not taste the same and gradually it left our diet.

Living on the coast, I was treated to my first honey-tasting at a farm in Port Coquitlam that also sold pumpkins. We were taking my son to the pumpkin patch before halloween and the farm also had a few different kinds of honey. “What’s the different between all those honeys?” I remember asking. That’s when the toothpicks came out and I was taken through a tasting of all of their honeys with explanations about each one.

Whatever kinds of flowers are most common near the hives will determine the flavours in the resultant honey. There was a huge difference in viscosity, color, intensity and complexity of flavours. I remember being particularly enamored with the wild flower honey and bought a jar of that to bring home. But the experience of tasting the different honeys stayed with me from then on.

Though this was early on in my wine industry career, I’d been learning about and appreciating wine for some years before that day. Not long after that, I attended a wine tasting at Douglas College that also featured a table of different single-malt Scotch whiskies and another table that featured an assortment of balsamic vinegars. There was a world out there to be tasted and it all started for me because of wine, which until that time had been the only thing that I’d really tasted as an adult that had so many different variations in flavours, intensities, and complexities. The highly processed and homogenized foods products that I’d been eating since I was a teenager were suddenly less interesting and, as I’ve more recently discovered, completely unhealthy for me. Wine became the gateway for a whole new world of taste and ultimately health.

Perhaps it is this connection that wine has been providing for me: the last un-frayed thread on a rope that attaches me to the natural world. If it breaks, it will let me fall completely into a world where all foods are processed, genetically modified and/or synthesized beyond recognition. It’s the awareness of the natural world inherent in wine production that has lead me to further seek out and appreciate other foods that are equally as natural and beneficial which I may have otherwise taken for granted or ignored completely.

Whatever it is in wine that has made me more aware of other foods that I eat, I’m glad for it.

Wine touring is all about meeting your expectations. The chance to breeze through the vineyards in wine country as you seek and sip your favorite bottles. If you are looking for a lively wine touring experience filled with grand showcase wineries, majestic lake views, quaint gift shops, and opulent destination resorts, then keep moving down Route 3 to the Okanagan. There’s nothing like that in this valley.

Welcome to the Similkameen Valley. Forget about Starbucks, there aren’t even traffic lights in this part of the world. The focus here is on living a natural lifestyle. It’s not hard to forget about natural since it literally towers over you in this deep and extremely scenic valley.

It is in Cawston, in the most southerly region of the Similkameen that John and Virginia Weber have chosen to build their winery, Orofino. Crafting mostly single-vineyard variety-based wines along with a blend or two, the emphasis at Orofino has been quality. The roster of growers, many of whom are also neighbors, are luckily in simpatico with their desire to create intense, complex, age-worthy, and tasty wines. The relationship between grower and vintner can be tricky waters to navigate because each may have different goals in mind regarding quality and quantity. Orofino has managed to create a spectacular lineup of wines with their growers because the focus extends beyond the simple goal of selling products. The goal here is great wine made in a great community. The relationships in this region are evidently stronger than the need to be competitive.

Evidence of this comes through even in the best of times. When I sat down with John Weber in mid-February, it was just days before Orofino’s Syrah 2009 took home the gold medal as the top wine at the Gold Medal Plates Canadian Culinary Championships in Kelowna on February 11th. In a Similkameen Wineries Association press release soon after, John thanked the growers of the winning Syrah, Murray and Maggie Fonteyne of Cawston’s Scout Vineyard “for their terrific work in growing these grapes for us.” When one wins, everyone wins. Welcome to the Sim.

Wines Tasted in this podcast:

Riesling 2007

Gamay 2010

Pinot Noir 2009

Syrah 2009

Passion Pit Cabernet Sauvignon 2009

Beleza 2009

(EXCLUSIVE! If you listen very carefully, John will mention a special new wine to be released this coming spring! You heard it here first!)

The second Eat.Drink.Tweet conference was held Feb 17-19 and has proven itself to be one of the best social media conferences in BC. I had a chance to chat with several wine producers and conference attendees as well as conference organizer Allison Markin of All She Wrote in this very special podcast.

Listen to the podcast here or download it at iTunes.

This week on the podcast, we taste the Traveller from 3 Cru, part of Kalala Organic Estates from West Kelowna.

Helping me taste and chat my way through some of BC’s best (and not-so-best) wines, I have been extremely lucky to have a great team of wine lovers join me on the podcast. Aaron, Amber, AJ, Calli, Jeanette, Maya, and Nick have all been awesome in helping keep things interesting.  We all have different tastes and it’s been a great treat to get to explore some of the great wines we produce here with you. Thank you so much for being part of this special podcast.

I would also like to thank all the wine makers, winery owners, wine writers, personalities and publishers who have spoken so clearly into my microphone over the last couple of years. BC wine is a unique and strong community because of you and I’m honoured that you took the time to talk with me. Thank you.

This podcast would be useless were it not for listeners and readers like yourself. If you are listening at home, in your car, or while working in a vineyard, thank you so very much for letting us be a part of your day.

With a special podcast like this, we needed a special wine. I had a preview of this wine before its release and I was so taken with it that I knew it would be the one to use for the 100th episode. We taste the Desert Hills Ambassador Port-style wine and talk about our favorite wines from the past year.

Cheers from wine country!

~Luke