Oh, oh! Side note...
Has anyone toured the Mission Hill Winery in Kelowna? I'll be in that area in Sept and am wondering of its worth it, what to look for, what to do, etc.
Thanks! (sorry for partial thread hijack!)
I was just there, it's a uckfaying castle. The wines are overpriced and you can get them here cheaper and the sampling menu was limited to their base stock - and expensive for that too. The grounds though, they are amazing. Period. The architecture looks like it will withstand a thousand years.
As for food, it's overpriced if you're going on a fun wine tour. I was a bigger fan of the Gray Monk winery and their restaurant.
But back to Wines... my Girl and I bought 3 boxes of wine and we only hit up half the wineries in Kelowna. I am a big fan or deep and full body red wines, but about 65% of our take was white. The gewurztraminer and ehrenfelser were king takes / samples.
Notables in my rack from that trip are:
- Ex Nihilo (Night)
- Sperling Vineyards - Speritz (small bottle, bubbly, sweet)
- Cedar Creek (Platinum Viognier)
- Summerhill Pyramid (riesling, baco noir) ** This is a fully organic winery
- Gray Monk (Ehrenfelser(bought 4 bottles), Rotberger and Kerner)
- Oak Bay (Gewertztraminer, Gamay Noir)
- the View (Riesling)
- Arrowleaf (First Crush, Zweigelt, Vidal and Bacchus) [multiples of each ... read: I like Arrowleaf
]
- Volcanic Hills (Syrah and a number of bottles of Gamay Noir because it was delicious and ~$13)
If you make out out further, we only visited one by Abbotsford: 'Keremeos Fruit Stand / Fort Wine Company', they make fruit wines. Worth a visit.
Other notables:
- if you like a really really dark and deep red:
Treana (USA). I have a few bottles form 04 and 05 still and the 04 I had a few months ago compared to blood in thickness [I jest, but it's deep]. They can be acquired at the Crowfoot liquorstore in Crowfoot.
- A first bottle of red for a really nice occasion: Masi - Campofiorni. Not cheap, but my favorite if I go Italian.
- Meditrina (USA - meditrinawine.com)
For the price and availability,
Apothic Red is great, I have easily half a dozen bottles here. [at ~$11/each and got 15% off when I bought a dozen - how could I resist]
Aside from that, my racks are mainly for my home-brews: Barolo (made 3 batches, each one is magnificent, and they age beautifully), Valpolachella (Cheap and good, Cheeky Monkey brand), Vieux Chat du Roi (can't remember, but I used very little sulphites so I need to drink it quickly) and I just finished bottling a hard lemonade that I fortified with a distillation from a failed batch of wine off my crab-apple tree.
