Dinning Out

There were six of us. Out destination the Arts Club theatre at Granville Island to view the RED Robinson Dinner performance. It was a dinner theatre night. We did not make prior reservations and our first choice Edible Canada was booked solid. Good for them our second choice was  Sandbar Seafood Restaurant.

Its location was rather hard to find tucked in behind a number of retail. It was located upstairs. Since we had a number of  senior citizens in our group we had to take a cargo elevator to reach the restaurant. Prior to arriving we notified Sandbar that six of would be there in 30 minutes for dinner. Did they have a table ready no. Were we greeted with pleasant smiles, no The hostess look confunded.

We stood patiently waiting as other guest arrived some from the elevator some from the stairs and some people coming and going to the restroom.  The hostess' station was also located in from the the stairs leading to the third level an outdoor deck. A bit crowed I would say

Finally we were seated. The waitress arrived about five minutes later which gave me time to study the wine list. Okay I'm impressed by the number of BC wines on the wine list Good for Sandbar.  The price of the wine by the bottle beyond my pocket book

The waitress stood at the opposite end of the table from myself I could not hear a word she was saying
Even when she stood next to me  her soft voice was hard to hear. I ordered a glass of  13 Road  wine
I'm sure they meant Road 13 I had the Honest John a white blend. It was excellent

There was a long wait before our orders were taken. I order the GI Burger. It was a good choice one of the best ever. My wife orders a crab and shrimp salad She was disappointed with her selection of what she called green lettuce.  As we waited on the food bread for four was brought to the table with enough butter for two.

As we were waiting the restaurant became to be filled with Smoke.  I thought it was quite strange that no smoke alarm went off. The waitress came to the table informing us that it was necessary to shut down the grill. Those of us who ordered grill items NEEDED TO select another item from the salads. If it was me I'd be gone by now. However I suggest to the waitress that we be compensated on the bill for the problems.

After making a selection the waitress returned in a few minutes to tell us the gill was now back on. Time was marching on and we were now concerned that we would be late for the Red Robinson Show.

It was now time to buy for the meal We had separate checks. There was no deduction on any of the bills.
The credit card machine fail to work  The waitress fetched a second machine it worked once before failing again The manager had to be called by the waitress. Where was he all night.

There were no good byes or thanks from the staff was we departed

The Red Robinson Dinner show was fanastic.

Fruit Wines

Have you tried Canada's Fruit Wines. Why not the are GREAT!
In Canada we have some of the best fruit producing orchards in the world.

Field Stone Fruit Wines  in Strathmore, Alberta, is one of the best producers. Alberta’s first cottage winery opened  in July of 2005. All  wines are crafted from 100% Alberta grown fruit.  

Cypress Hills Winery  is a going concern in Saskatchewan making quite a name for themselves. Cypress Hills located in the southwest corner of the province. The winery is owned by Marty and Marie Bohnet. They also produce some grape wines.

In Ontario's famous Niagara wine region look for Sunnybrook Farm Estate Winery. Sunnybrook Farm Estate Winery is Canada's first fruit winery, specializing in wines made from 100% Niagara Peninsula grown tree fruit and berries The winery is owned by Gerald and Vivien Goertz who purchased the farm in 1976. Their best selling wines are Peach, Bosc Pear, Spiced Apple, Ironwood Hard Cider, and Chocolate Embrace.

The Lake Erie South Coast has a number of Fruit wineries. These include  Black Bear Farms, Blueberry Hills Estate, Rush Creek Wines Ltd. and Wooden Bear L Winery.

Rush Creek Wines is located on the north shores of Lake Erie in the Eastern Region of Elgin County, near the historic village of Sparta. A dream come true for Kim and Wendy Flintoft and their family.
Winner of the 2001 National Fruit Wine Maker of the Year award Rush Creek Wines offers a wide variety of wines, from dinner wines to dessert wines, meads (honey wine), maple wine, and very dry wines - they have them all. Using only 100% pure fruit from which the wine is named, no grape base is used.

All Rush Creek wines are fully Kosher certified for Pass-Over.
Best Seller Blueberry Rush a most unusual best seller, Decadence, a strawberry chocolate wine!

Boreal Berry Farm and Winery is located in Warren Ontario. he winery is located on 160 acres at the edge of the boreal forest; it sits on a rich silt loam, our land was originally a floodplain for the Nepawassi River, the main waterway joining Lake Nipissing and Georgian Bay. The owners are Greg and Mira Melien.
They produce fruit wine using northern hardy fruits, sustainable low carbon footprint using natural, bio dynamic methods.They are North America's only haskap winery, and the largest commercial haskap orchard in Eastern Canada. 160 acres with haskap, saskatoons, cherries, lingonberry, aronia, sea buckthorn

There are a couple of fine fruit wineries in the maritimes. Among the best are Lunenburg County Winery Newburne, NS and Rodrigues Markland Cottage Winery.

In BC Forbidden Fruit Winery is a family owned and operated boutique winery located on Ven’Amour Organic Farms, a Certified Organic Tree Fruit Farm, Vineyard and Nature Estate along the banks of the pristine Similkameen River in Cawston BC

Please give Canada's fruit wines a try and also try our Meads.

Bloom BC VQA Release Tasting



I certainly had a good time at this event, tasting and chatting with winemakers and winery owners.
There are some very nice hard people in the BC wineries. Here are some quick notes

Rosé the best of show here goes to Hillside
Port Style wins once again best of show goes to Black Sage Pipe 2008
Chardonnay Culmina Family Estate Dilemma 2011
Pinot Gris goes to Laughing Stock nice fruit flavours
Viognier Moraine was quite good as was Lariana Cellars



Best Cellars of Fine Wines

Bartier Bros
Blackwood Lane
CC Jentsch
Church and State
Culmina
Kraze Legs
NK'Mip Cellars
Painted Rock Oh That Red Icon 2011
The View Try the Gewürztraminer



Now let me remind you that at these events its is impossible to taste all the wines of visit all the wineries . I go on and on about all the great wines been produced here in British Columbia.
Let me just mention a few wineries you should visit that maybe under your radar. There are wineries with very nice owners and very good wines.

Maverick Estate Winery
Castoro De Oro Estate
Covert Farms
Daydreamer
Moraine
Noble Ride
Recline Ridge
Sage Hill
Spierhead

visit the website more info www.winesofcanada.com

Off In Arizona

Here we are in Sun City Arizona. It is a little warm compared to back home in British Columbia. Sun City has more shopping than bus stops. Each one has numerous places to buy wine. Costco has wine, Safeway has wine and the corner store has wine.

All the shelves are stacked full of a multitude of wines two or three bottles of each label all crowed together; mostly from California. Pricing runs from $2.99 up to $30.00. Trader Joe's has it's supply of Charles Shaw two buck chuck wine. Their signage claims they sell more wine than anyone else. I took a pass on this wines. There were numerous wines at the next price level of $3.49
I decided to try a fw in the $6-$9 range

I think living here were the prices are more reasonable and produces are seen so often I would buy more wine.

But to be honest so far they have not equaled the quality of Canada's wines. I will have to up my price level to the $20.00 mark to do a better comparison. In fact I think I will walk down to the corner store and select one now. Maybe one from Oregon.

Wineries of the Shuswap

Back in the lat 90's and early 2000 Larch Hills winery in Salmon Arm was impressing the Okganagan wine lovers with their wines. Especially their Ortega. Recline Ridge Vineyards was also a winery near by making strides in cool climate grape growing. Today we hear very little about the wines from the Northern Shuswap area. Despite the fact that there are now 10 wineries listed for the area.

There use to be elven but a fire at Granite Creek Estate Winery but them out of business. I made some attempts to contact Baccata Ridge Winery in Grindrod but was unable to make contact.

Celista Winery located in Celista BC claims to be CAnada's most northern winery. They seem to be the most successfull winery in the Shuswap today collecting over 20 international awards in the last four years. The winery is owned by JAck and Margaret Ootes. They grow Maréchal Foch, Ortega, Madeleine Sylvaner, Madeleine Angevine, Gewürztraminer and a small quantity of St. Laurent. Hans Nevrkla award winning winemaker and founder of Larch Hills Winery was hired as consultant and winemaker.

Off the beaten path is Edge of Earth Vineyards located in Spallumcheen. Due to the windy country road one has to reach the winery owners Russ and Marnie Niles renamed the winery Edge of the Earth Vineyard. It was formally called Hunting Hawk Vineyards. They welcome visitors year round. They produce a Argus wine.

Recline Ridge was one of the more successful wineries in the Shuswap. Unfortunately a fire destroyed their winemaking facilities. Last I spoke with them they were not going to rebuild. We hope they will reconsider and continue to operate.

Larch Hills Winery has one of the most beautiful locations. Once you reach the vineyard you drive through a single car lane between the vines to reach the winery that over looks the valley. Hans Nevrkla award winning winemaker was the original founder of the winery he sold to the current owners.

One name that does pop up now and then is OVINO Winery located on the out skirts of Salmon Arms. The winery is owned by
John and Catherine Koopmans. Signature wine is estate Foch-Pinot Meunier blend

Recline Ridge Vineyards extends over 7.5 acres and hosts nine different varieties of grapes. Their unique post and beam log building is 3,300 total square feet on three levels and will house both the winemaking facility and a wine shop and tasting area. The winery overlooks the vineyard framed by Tappen Mountain and the Tappen and Similkameen Valleys. The winery was purchased in 2010 by Graydon and Maureen Ratzlaff. I have tasted a few of their wines They are quite good.

One of BC's newest wineries in the Shuswap Sunnybrae Vineyards and Winery owned by Barry and Nancy Turner. They run a true family winery receiving help from their daughters and grandchildren.
The winery has a beautiful location. From the tasting room's balcony you see Shuswap lake . From the front door you se the vineyards and Bastion Mountain. They produce some rather good wines.

Wine in Grocery Stores

I live in a small bed room community, Tsawwassen . We have three locations in town where wine can be purchased. A government run store, a private liqueur store and a VQA. They are all located in the same mall. If I buy a wine from any of them I based my store selection on the quality of their hospitality. If the local grocery stores added wine to their selection of products I suppose it would add a bit of convince to the shopping trip but nothing more. I doubt the grocer will make the experience of shopping for wine equal to what a speciality store can do if they try.

I do not expect to see any pricing deals resulting from grocery stores carrying wine. Nor do I expect a better selection of wines. In fact I suspect they will lean a bit more towards California than anywhere else. So bottom line will the fact that grocery stores can carry wine in 2015 get me all excited NO. I’m a little more excite about local farmer markets allowing smaller provincial ( local ) wineries to sell their products. Hopefully it will remain a local market not dominated by marketing agencies promoting foreign wines.

Would I like to see the provincial government allow free shipment of wines between provinces YES. Would I buy a Nova Scotia wine or a Prince Edward Island wine if I could off a store shelf Yes I would.
Do I feel I wine prices are too high yes I do but so is the price of Milk, Gas, Hydro, BC Ferries and Chocolate bars.

The Vancouver International Wine Festival

Sadly it is over another festival has come and gone. The days went by so quickly! As the saying goes time flies when you are having fun. Thank you Vancouver Wine Festival. Thanks to the organizers, the volunteers and the Wineries from around the world. It was a good time!

I was a little worried at first a few weeks before the festival was to begin I realized I had not as yet received my agenda. So I contact the organizers apparently they lost my application. Thankfully, they scrambled to put a few events together for me. Although I did not get into some of the seminars, I wanted. I was happy with my time at the festival.

I was especially pleased that my wife and I were both able to attend the Thursdays night tasting event together. We booked ourselves into the Pan Pacific hotel for the night. Inviting a few friends up for appies between events. Blackwood Lanes owner and winemaker Carlos Lee came along with the wineries manager Kim Gislason. They brought with them a bottle of their famous reference. We ordered room service for breakfast enjoying every minute of our stay.

The best part of the festival to me is meeting for the first time owners and winemakers from BC and around the globe. The second best part is saying hello to the winemakers and owners we have known for years.
Then perhaps it would be tasting so many wonderful wines.

This year we finally were able to met and chat with the owners of Thornhaven, Gerhringer Brothers and Unsworth and Burrowing Owls Kerri McNolty to name only the BC wineries. I shook hands and chatted with some legends,Stephen Cipes from Summerhill Pyramid winery after been warmly greeted by Ceo Ezra Cipes; Sandra Oldfield from Tinhorn, Walter Gehringer and Time’s Harry McWalters.

Alison Scholefield at Okanagan Crush representing Haywire provided a nice welcome introducing me to winemaker Matt Dumaynei. Barbara and I had a long enjoyable chat with a very well dressed winemaker of note Eric von Krosigk. Another great conversation we had was with Steve Neiss of Gray Monk.

The Island wineries were represented by two wineries. Averill Creek was there, represented by owner Andrew Johnston and his fine cellar of wines. Also present was Unsworth Vineyards a winery with a growing reputation under owner Tim Turyk.

Some of the established stars of the Okanagan were there. Painted Rocks John Skinner, winemaker Derek Kontkanen of Jackson-Triggs, Lake Breeze’s Garron Elmes, Constellation winemaker Matieu Mercier representing Osoyoos Larose and owner winemaker Cassini Cellars Adrian Cassini provided some outstanding wines.

The Vancouver International Wine Festival has three mandates: to provide an informative, educational and entertaining wine experience for public and trade; to be a premier market opportunity for the wine industry and festival partners and to raise funds for the Brads on Beach Theatre Society.