My List of Wineries to Watch in 2014

Well It happen someone kindly took me to task on my list of Wineries to Watch in 2014. He was rather upset that I did not consider any of the Prince Edward County wineries worthy enough to be on the list.

Kindly remember that I have a personal website I’ do not make a  living writing about the wineries or critiquing  the wines of our great nation.  In fact I run a personal non profit website. I don’t even know if the wineries care if they make my list or not.

For the sake of argument  lets just review who and how a winery may make this list. First off every winery in Canada is eligible for this list. You might say “ It’s the Squeaky Wheel that gets the Grease that makes the list. In other words if I hear a great deal of chatter about a winery it has a very good chance of making the list.

If a winery has a good reputation and zooms along with quality wines year after year very one knows about them and they most likely are not going to make the list.  Everyone is already watching them. A good example of this would be Tawse or Inniskillin. An elite  winery would have to do something pretty special to make  my list of Wineries to Watch

Such was the case of Mission Hill in West Kelowna. Mission Hill Family Estate stunned the Wine World by Winning 'World's Best Pinot Noir' at Decanter World Wine Awards 2013. I had a feeling we would be hearing from Mission Hill in 2014 and it did not take long .  In January  the Elite winery CedarCreek Estate Winery was purchased by von Mandl Family Estates, the new holding company of Anthony von Mandl, the owner of Mission Hill Family Estates.

Now getting back to our PEC ambassador. He must remember  I live in British Columbia. Its hard to track the Ontario wineries.  In fact there are now over 700 wineries.  Once again I repeat the phrase  The Squeaky Wheel gets the Grease.  I just did not hear that much about the PEC wineries.

In  2013 we listed Karlo Estates and ten other Ontario wineries .  Some wineries never answer our repeated request for information  That would include eighteen wineries from Prince Edward county.

So in response to my friend in PEC let the wineries inform me about  WHAT IS HAPPING. Send me info on the wineries as does Fred Couch for the Niagara Regions and Robert Murray in Nova Scotia and Dee Newman in the Okanagan and Leanne Frosese of Townhall Brands.

http://www.winesofcanada.com/featured_winery_watch2014.html

Return of the Blog

Back in 1992 I started a wine website called World of Wines. As I began to take a much closer look at the Canadian wines and her wines I release this was just the beginning of something sensational. I changes the website focus to strictly on Canada, purchasing the Domain Winesofcanada.com. Even then I did not realize how big the industry would grow.

I started writing about 28 wineries. I had no understanding of how many small regions there were, where brave winemakers where planting new vineyards. My only wine tasting experience was a  trip to Napa Valley.

Back then I would take the winter month to update and add new material to the website. The summers were mine to enjoy and visit the wineries. Today taking time off is difficult there is so much happening in Canada's wine industry. The website is more popular than ever.

This December I tried to take time off. I decided I would discontinue the blog for a month and find a better design template. I never did find one. I never did get the time off.  So I begin again.

Please take a moment to review our website page which list all the wineries in alphabetical order.
http://winesofcanada.com/listings_alp.html
You will see that some of the wineries have links and some are in black type. Those in back are the wineries we need help fining information on.

See what wines we enjoyed over the holiday season

http://winesofcanada.com/bobs_picks.html

Thank you Have a save and healthy 2014