I’ve discovered everyone in the Okanagan is an expert on wine and wine making. I include myself in that robust, full bodied, oaky group as well, thank you.

First some background.

Wine was discovered in 1492 by Christopher Columbus when he landed in the Napa Valley. On later voyages he also discovered Australia, potatoes, chocolate, coffee, syphilis, the Tijuana Brass, swine flu, and a sportswear company.

Back at the start though, Columbus took the wine plant home with him to Spain or Portugal or Italy someplace, where monks used the delicious fruit to make raisins. Some of the raisins stored in jars fermented and exploded – thus creating Pop Tarts. This has nothing to do with wine really – I just made that up.

Anyway, wine plants produce grapes in all kinds of flavours and varieties. There’s Champoo, Cabriolet, Infantile, Riceling, Pie-note Blank, SovietMignon Blank, Blankety Blank, Merlin, Baby Duck, Moody Blue, Dire Straits and many others.

There are also a lot of wineries in the Okanagan. Some of the more popular are BrokeOrchard, DamnTheALR, and The Concussed Defenceman. TaxSchloss-CarryVorwart is also popular.

The reason there are so many wineries in the Okanagan is because there are so many places where grapes are grown here. Sheesh – work with me here.

So wine is pretty popular hereabouts, as you can tell from the number of boating accident reports that include the phrase ‘alcohol may have been a factor’.

If you have just moved here from Alberta (and really – who hasn’t?) you probably think wine comes from holes in the ground and you are no doubt desperate to fit in. The fluid in the lake is not oil by the way.

What this means is you should go on a few winery tours.

Winery tours are great for learning about wine and alcohol related bus accidents. You’ll learn things like what ‘delicately balanced’ means, or how the term ‘fruity’ can be used in a sentence without causing offense.

You may also hear things like “Please get off the table Mr. Crawford”, “Oh ick someone just spit wine down my dress”, or “Gewwurtz….gevvutstra…gesund…I’ll have a Bud please…”, and so on.

Really serious wine snobs actually spit out their wine on these wine tours instead of drinking it, if you can imagine.

Spitting it out is nothing compared to shooting it out your nose. I had lunch with a guy once, and we ordered a really expensive bottle of wine. He had some sort of coughing fit and got all mixed up – shooting wine out of his nostrils, ears – everything. I could barely hold my glass under his nose, trying to save some of this precious elixir. Some people are so wasteful you know?

Anyway by now if you’re still on a winery tour you’ll have purchased several cases of fine wine, or some cases of cherry syrup in Mountie-shaped bottles, depending on how drunk you were when entering the gift shop.

Now it is time to pair the wine with the appropriate food. Official wine people will tell you that correctly pairing wine with food is essential to achieving orgasms or something.

Being a family with young children, we frankly don’t care. At the end of a hectic day, all Mom and Dad really desire is getting as much plonk into our empty bellies as will fit in a short period of time, and if it goes well with Kraft Dinner and wieners then so much the better.

Red wine is good with burgers, white goes well with Cheerios. There. Consider yourself paired.

I’ll put a cork in it now.