Photo: Chelsea Powrie

Luke Whittall and two staff members celebrate at the annual BC VQA Wine Information Centre open house in Penticton.

The BC Wine Information Centre in Penticton hosted its annual open house Saturday, decking out the store in holiday regalia and offering a mix of artisanal products for purchase including, of course, wine. 

"[The open house] is something that's usually a good way to start our Christmas season in terms of our displays, which is something we're known for," said Luke Whittall, special events coordinator with the centre. 

He said turnout was great for the annual open house, with a steady flow of people enjoying wine and food tastings and checking out the Christmas trees in the store. 

"It's usually raining and miserable on this day, but it's actually gorgeous today, so that's always nice!" Whittall said. "It's our biggest event of the year."

Whittall said this is the time of year that the centre sees people coming in looking for gifts, rather than purchases for themselves. That's why they offer local products outside of just wine.

"People are looking for gifts, you can augment the bottle of wine as a gift with a very nice card, or gift card," Whittall said. "This isn't Hallmark, we don't have high-production stuff, just like most of the wines we have here, they're fairly small production. It's a focus on artisanal products, that applies to wine, food, art that we have here and gift items as well. Unique stuff."

The wine centre is open daily, and staff are always on hand to help shoppers. 

"We are all very wine-knowledgable, most of us are what we would call wine nerds. Between all the staff here, we have tasted all the wines here in the store," Whittall said.