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

We’re starting off the year by welcoming back an old friend. Soaring Eagle returned last fall with a small lineup of wines and Nick and I tasted one of them recently. Here’s what happened…

Stephen Wyse from the boutique winery Young & Wyse in Osoyoos, BC, likes to talk about wine too. When I got to talk to him in his wine shop recently, the time went by quickly and the result is this podcast which pushes 45 minutes. It’s a great conversation with a guy who knows wine. He also has some great advice for anyone who is feeling a little burned out with their job.

We’ve featured Young & Wyse before – exactly 2 years ago in fact – when Amber, AJ, and I tasted their Shiraz from their first vintage in 2008. Their winery has been on our radar ever since with unique blended wines like the “Amber” (our Amber bought one, of course) and the Black Label aka the “33,30,24,13″. Now with new vintagea of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon and a cozy wine shop just outside of town, this is one winery that should be on your must-visit list.

This week, we focus on something that a great many ‘serious’ wine lovers seem to disregard: Rosé. It’s almost a bad word among a certain generation of wine lovers who won’t touch the stuff.

THAT IS GREAT!! Please keep ignoring it!

Keep assuming that it’s all simple, sweet, girly wines and pay no mind to it at all. Without you wanting to buy it, demand will stay low and prices will match it accordingly.

For the rest of us who know about how good r-o-s-é’s from BC can be, here’s an awesome one from Bartier-Scholefield (produced at the Okanagan Crush Pad in Summerland) that Nick and I tried recently. Cheers!

Also featured this week is a cavalcade of cameos from returning Wine Country BC Podcast guests as we roll down Bottleneck Drive, including Joyce Wegner from Wineries Refined of BC (Podcast 90 and 51), Kim Lawton from the Similkameen Wineries Association (Podcast 83), Allison Markin from All She Wrote (Podcast 83), and Chytra Brown from Savour Magazine (Podcast 51). And making his podcast debut this week is Brian Glaum, president of the BC Wine Appreciation Society, who is also welcome to stop by the Wine Country BC studios for a full podcast next time he’s in the Okanagan. (Sorry, dropped a hint there…)

There were also a few people promoting their new books and we will hear from two of them today. We will hear from Ricardo Scebba about his new cookbook “That’s Amore” which is full of recipes from his restaurant near Lake Country. He makes no secrets about his cooking and this book has some truly outstanding recipes. (He’s also great at doing impressions of the movie Spinal Tap – ask him next time you go to his restaurant – He might give you a discount.*)

I also had the chance to speak with Judie Steeves about her cookbook called “Jude’s Kitchen.” It’s a huge book of recipes based on local ingredients that has some expert wine pairing for each recipe. You’ll have to listen to find out who the expert is but as a hint, he’s been on the Wine Country BC podcast before!

And finally, I couldn’t help but get a word in with Peter Young of Okanagan Wineland Dressings who makes one of my favorite salad dressings of all time. Many of his products are available in local wine shops and delis throughout the Okanagan Valley.

*Or he might charge you double. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

My family went on a weekend vacation to Wenatchee, WA where we were planning on doing a little wine tasting while spending a little time away from home together as a family. We tried to mix up what we did so that the kids would not get bored with the wine touring part of the trip. On Saturday afternoon, I found a little wine store called The Wine Thief where I figured there might be a good collection of quality wines from around the state. That turned to be true about the wine as well as the people who work there.

The store had a tasting bar, sofas around a fireplace, and two main sections of wine display shelves. I zeroed in on the wines from Washington State and started to browse. There was one particular wine I was interested in, but I didn’t find it on my own. I was also open to any suggestions from the staff since they are usually aware of all the best wines and deals in the store. My family had joined me at this point and my four year old daughter had brought in her little stuffed dog, Emma. They played on the sofas while my wife and I continued to browse the wines.

We found one we liked and added some cheese and crackers to the bill and off we went to dinner before heading back to the hotel. There was only one problem.

Emma, the adventurous little stuffed doggie, got left behind at The Wine Thief. We were all unaware of this fact until later that evening when my daughter wanted Emma at bedtime.

Let me tell you a little bit about Emma. Emma was purchased by my son at Montreal’s Trudeau airport as a gift for his sister when he and I were visiting my parents. He brought her on the plane all the way back to the Okanagan himself and gave it to her when we got back. That was almost a year ago and in that short time, Emma has been lost and left behind in the most amazing places that I sometimes think this little stuffed doggie loves adventures more than the little girl that carries her around.

She first went missing in the spring. My daughter couldn’t find her anywhere. We looked all over the house for a good couple of weeks, but no Emma. Turned out she had fallen down behind her bed and was out of sight. Not the first time things had fallen down there.

The next time Emma went missing was a little more dangerous. I was walking home after dropping my car off for servicing and walked through a pathway that connected with a little cul-de-sac. I walked through the middle of the large turnaround area for cars and looked down. There was a little stuffed dog that I thought looked kind of familiar. I picked it up, dusted it off and put it in my pocket. I found out later that my daughter had put Emma in the little side pocket of her back pack before walking to day care with my wife. It must have fallen out right without their noticing and left in the middle of the road for a good 3 hours before I found it. If I hadn’t had to walk home from dropping off my car…

Back in Wenatchee, we were pretty sure that Emma was at The Wine Thief but they weren’t going to be open until after we were due to leave town. I phoned and left a message that morning and then phoned again that evening once we were back home. That’s when Tracy, who happened to be working that day, answered the phone. She’d found Emma right on the sofa where my daughter was playing and put it in a little bag for safe keeping. I gave her my address so that Emma could be put in the mail.

“Oliver? Is that near Osoyoos?” asked Tracy.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s about 15 minutes away.”

“My son is playing in a hockey tournament there this weekend,” said Tracy. “Maybe I could just bring it up for you.”

What were the odds of that happening? After exchanging cell phone numbers, we connected again that day and I picked up Emma from the front desk at their hotel. Emma was packed inside a suspiciously large pink gift bag.

When we got home, my daughter was thrilled to see Emma again. Happy kids are the best. That’s when she looked into the pink gift bag where she found a card and 6 other little stuff puppies that Tracy had included as a little gift. Her face lit up like a 1000 watt bulb and she jumped up and down with excitement. It was amazing.

Just getting Emma back was exciting enough but this really put it over the top. It was a truly amazing afternoon. Since then, she has carried her puppies around in a little basket and they don’t leave the house anymore. It’s nice to know that when they do somehow get left outside, there are great people out there that can help them find their way home. When I first got into the wine industry, I noticed that the people that love wine also love to share it. That attitude carries through in other aspects of our lives as well.

Thank you, Tracy and all the good folks at The Wine Thief. Cheers from wine country in BC.

Lorraine Kane of Riverstone and event organiser Beth Garrish

The revolution is now, or at least it was last Thursday, November 10, when a large tweet up was organized to celebrate Rosés around the world. In Oliver, the Wine Capital of Canada, we held ours at the Fairview Golf Club complete with live music and munchies.

Tinhorn Creek took the top tier for the best local rosé with their totally tasty 2Bench Rosé. This was an extra special treat since this wine is normally only available at Miradoro.

Live Tweetin', big-screen style

With Sarah Harker from Rustic Roots

Tweeting along with Shauna from 19th Hole B&B

Cheers from wine country!
Luke

It was a very feminine-oriented marketing plan, which placed The View in a small group of wineries in BC at the time. A woman with whom I worked bought a bottle for no other reason other than because it had a red shoe on it. She was all excited about it for weeks and then told me later, after she had consumed said bottle, that she hadn’t liked the wine very much. Strike one for me against buying a bottle.

Strike two came sometime later when the store where I worked received a shipment of their wines. Pinotage. At that time, that was enough to count it out completely for me. I was not a fan of Pinotage for a few reasons, one being that a wine teacher of mine had described it thus: “It’s a cross between Pinto Noir and Cinsault, and retains none of the good characters of either.” Normally never one to let my teachers get in the way of my education, it unfortunately reinforced a tasting I’d attended 6 years previous to that where South Africa was the theme country and there was Pinotage a-plenty. It was early on in my wine tasting experience and I knew that Pinotage was South Africa’s “It” grape but I just could not find a single version of it that I liked enough even to say, “It’s ok.” To me at that time, it was like the wines had been made by having a wet grizzly bear stomp on the grapes.

It is with this history that I approached the newly arrived bottle of Pinotage from The View in front of me that day. So I sniffed, I tasted, sniffed again, tasted again, and then something weird happened. This wine would not leave me. It was immediately approachable, had a flavour that drew me in, and had this long, smokey finish that would not let me forget it.

I have tasted that wine more than a few times since then and it has remained just as seductive ever since. It has changed a little – the flavours have blended a little more and the fruit and tannins are less aggressive – but it’s still got that something special that I now look for in a Pinotage. Check it out if you can find it.

This podcast was recorded in the barrel cellar at The View winery and there is a little of that unexpected ‘winery ambiance’. I consider it a great addition to the soundscape. Cheers!

Click on the player below to listen or get it on iTunes.