
A sign of impending spring wine releases at Okanagan wineries? Pruning? Bottling?
Or braving the interior highways to get to Vancouver?
It’s a combination of all three. In our recent frigid and snowy weather, dedicated vineyard managers, wine makers, and even winery owners have been out pruning the vines in between inside duties on the bottling line for upcoming vintages.
But a couple of handfuls of Okanagan wineries have packed up this week for the Vancouver International Wine Festival. Now celebrating four decades and at just under two weeks of educational seminars, dinners, galas, and large-scale tastings, the VIWF often heralds the calm before the storm of our full-blown wine tourism season.
While last year VIWF celebrated Canadian wines for our country’s 150th anniversary, this year the festival has two theme countries, Portugal and Spain, under the unofficial umbrella of wines of the Iberian Peninsula.
Why, then, would local wineries take part?
As a wine-producing country, the Okanagan being just one region in Canada where vineyards roll over the landscape, Canada is young. Very young. We are the middle school child just getting used to the complex world of the playground that is wine.
The early days of VIWF provides our winery principals with numerous seminars during the trade days conference. Here, they attend exclusive tastings aimed at educating attendees about wine production and winery management in the theme countries.
Wine geeks from around the world can unite, this year, during Port (Portugal’s signature fortified wine) and Cava (Spain’s signature sparkling wine) seminars.
Winemakers also socialize and exchange business cards at receptions at the coveted trade tastings. Coveted because, unlike the evening festival tastings, there are fewer people crowding the tables, and much more time to chat with your cohorts about varietals, yeasts, and barrel aging.
Think of it as professional development. With booze (and plenty of spittoons).
Of the 173 wineries attending this year – pouring 1,450 wines, in case you were wondering – Canada is represented almost exclusively by B.C., including one sake producer.
The lone booth from outside our province is from Nova Scotia’s sparkling wine region. The lone B.C wine producer from outside the Okanagan is from Vancouver Island, with 23 wineries from the interior ready to pour.
Those of us living here in wine country might be surprised to hear tasters wandering through the 16 countries commenting, “Canada makes wine?” or “There’s HOW many wineries in British Columbia?”
Vancouverites attending may not even know that the are a mere four-hour drive to hundreds of wineries in the Okanagan, Similkameen, Shuswap, and Kamloops areas.
But believe it.
We’re the new kid on the block and attending the festival to create the Canada area of the tasting room is an opportunity to educate seasoned, worldly wine veterans about what we grow and do here.
It's also to remind our big-city neighbours that even though the Vancouver Wine Festival literature says, “the wine world is here,” there’s a beautiful little corner of that world a short drive or flight away.
This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.