QOTD: Don’t know when I will ever go to Canada but would have to be in the summer! Love Canadians tho, always very cool and polite.

Gary & Chris, A guest from BC!!! WOW!!!!! So happy!!! Have friends from upper & lower BC!!!! Very happy to see you feature these wines!!!!! 🙂

[Gary] >> I feel like if you smell this long enough you can probably induce a headache
Gary, I’m sure if you drank it long enough you could probably achieve the same effect 😉

QOTD: I’m in MN, so I’ll probably make it up to Ontario again this year. If I get a chance to see my friends in northern CA, maybe I could take some time to venture up the west coast and end in the BC area. I saw Rob and Big hit a pretty sweet sk8 park in Vancouver, so that would be a good reason to make the extra effort.

… other than the wine of course!!

Ok so here is my problem with this episode. I love that fact that you have a guest, I love the fact that its smaller vines that we may not have heard of… but… really, I, and I can’t be alone, order wines from your site that i see on here… These wines, I cannot.. So I’m a bit bummed really..

Gary: Any chance of some of us newbies who really don’t know what we’re doing yet coming on and tasting with you. It would be so fun to take the drive to NJ and sit in on a thunder show and taste some wine with you..

QOTD: If you tell us how to get there, we’d be there… I may have to email him for the trip. We went to Niagara recently and loved the winery’s there. ended up coming home with cases, and cases of wine!!

Ok so here is my problem with this episode. I love that fact that you have a guest, I love the fact that its smaller vines that we may not have heard of… but… really, I, and I can’t be alone, order wines from your site that i see on here… These wines, I cannot.. So I’m a bit bummed really..

Gary: Any chance of some of us newbies who really don’t know what we’re doing yet coming on and tasting with you. It would be so fun to take the drive to NJ and sit in on a thunder show and taste some wine with you..

QOTD: If you tell us how to get there, we’d be there… I may have to email him for the trip. We went to Niagara recently and loved the winery’s there. ended up coming home with cases, and cases of wine!!

Good show.

QOTD: I don’t know when I will go to Canada, but when I do, I hope BC is the first place. From the pictures I’ve seen and the stories I’ve heard from friends that have been, I get the feeling that it’s quite wonderful.

Good show.

QOTD: I don’t know when I will go to Canada, but when I do, I hope BC is the first place. From the pictures I’ve seen and the stories I’ve heard from friends that have been, I get the feeling that it’s quite wonderful.

QOTD: I’d love to visit, but I’m not sure when I’ll have the opportunity.

QOTD: I’ll get back to Canada as soon as I get my passport renewed. It used to be possible to go up there impulsively — now you need the pizzazzport.

Great to see you covering a whole new region, and (unlike the guy below) I don’t mind that you review wines that aren’t readily for sale everywhere (though I also love to see you cover the corner-store wines like Bogle). Along these lines, in addition to the Big Ups to Ehren Jordan show I keep suggesting (a Failla or two, a Neyers, a Turley), I’d love to see a show on older wines, and to see you work the nosepiece or something with some years on it. (Maybe even a blind or double-blind show with older wines — guess the theme, guess the vintage, go all out.)

P.S. Still waiting for your review of Notorious. 88+? 92?

Although I moved from Germany to Canada only two years ago I already live the Canadian wines. We’ve been in the Okanagen valley for our honeymoon a couple of years ago. Beautiful wineries, great food and very good wines. Way to go.

Great show Gary!

Thanks for reviewing some canadian wines,Jackson triggs have many good wine,2006 merlot is one,another great winery is NK’Mip

Can’t believe he didn’t bring a Mission Hill Cab Sauv!

I’m with Gary probably use the olympics to make a journey to our neighbor to the north.

Good guest!
QOTD: I’ve never been West of Windsor! I’ve been almost everywhere East, though. Hopefully once I graduate & have money to travel I’ll stop by when I visit Washington.

am from BC and am big fan of Road 13 but agree 100% with the over oaked chard. BC whites are still their strength but the reds are starting to get much better. BCer’s are still generally a bit naive about wine because we are in the infant stage of tasting and being educated about wine but Vancouver has many top end restaurants with top end wine lists that are giving us BCer’s a taste of what our wines should be tasting like. We are getting educated and pay dearly for it thanks to our provincial taxes.
Hope you make it in 2010. You will have a great time!!!!!!!!

QOTD: ive been living in the pacnorthwest for 8 years now and i still havent made it over to canada – sometime before the end of the ’00’s!

Excellent Educational Episode—-it’s a triple E….or E^3

i’m always down w/ the E^3

Thanks for a SUPER show, Gary. Thanks for giving the big shout out (or is that a “shoot oot”?) to the “Ok”!

My wife and I had the pleasure of touring some of the terrific wineries on the east side of Okanagan Lake–the “Naramata Bench” (around the cities of Naramata and Penticton)in July 2007. When your guest mentioned the “40+ degrees Celsius” temps, he was not joking. That translates to ~118F. That, my friends, is TOASTY (and we arrived a day after visiting Whistler, where it was SNOWING!)

Anyway, we sampled some wonderful wines. My favorites were a super Gewurz from Hillside Estates and a great pinot/merlot/cab meritage from La Frenz. Check out the delightful fruit wines at Elephant Island. We also had our first brush with ice wine, which definitely deserves the hoopla.

Unfortunately we only planned two days and nights, which didn’t do the area nearly the justice it deserved. What a magnificent spot! We could have stayed a week, not just for the wines but for the natural beauty. The people are unbelievably friendly, too. We hope to get up there again soon.

QOTD: I am dreaming of going to BC – not for the wine, but for a heli-ski trip
My friends in Calgary speak highly on Okanagan wines, but I have yet to experience any.
Good overview today for next trip up there.

Thanks for doing a show on the Okanagan Gary! That’s my hood! And kudos to Rhys for dragging some BC vino all the way to the Thunder Show. This confirms how well the Germanic whites and Pinot do in BC. Okanagan Merlot and Cab Franc have been getting good reviews too.

QOTD: I grew up in the Okanagan and live in Vancouver now. Back there all the time to visit Mom & Dad and to taste and tour the awesome wineries. I’m keeping my eye out for a few fertile acres to implement my early retirement scheme!

Real soon.

QOTD: Sad story: we were in Seattle a few years ago and were going to go to the Butchard Gardens, but we didn’t have our PASSPORTS, so we could have gone but we might not have been able to come back.

As a life-long BC resident, I can’t but love today’s show. I’m a Vancouver resident, but get up to the Okanagan once or twice a year, usually for the Fall and Spring wine festivals, and always come back with more bottles than my budget allows. And if you do come for the Winter Olympics, you have to come back in the summer as well. The best time to visit the Okanagan for wine is from May to October. And come for the food as well! Vancouver has a great dining scene, and the Okanagan is fast catching up, especially the winery restaurants. Mission Hill Winery’s Terrace Restaurant (www.missionhillwinery.com) recent earned a spot as one of the top five winery restaurants in the world from Travel and Leisure magazine.

Interesting to see such a marked difference among expert wine critics, especially on the QG Pinot and the JT Shiraz. One top Canadian critic gave the exact same pinot an 85 and the same JT a 92, and he tends to be a tough critic. Different palletes, I guess. For a good overview of the Canadian wine scene and wines to watch for see the Canadian Wine Awards publication (http://www.wineaccess.ca/results/CWA_2008_RESULTS.pdf).

One comment on price. Canada (and all the individual provinces) have much higher taxes on alcohol than in the US, which is reflected directly in the price of a bottle. Typically this is 40% to 60% higher on the same bottle than in the States, so that $25 Quail’s Gate Pinot would be better compared with a $16 to $18 bottle of Pinot in the US.

Thanks for the show, Gary!! Look forward to seeing you up here!

QOTD: I live here. 🙂

Fantastic show Gary!

In addition to the Okanagan, Vancouver Island has a lot of great little vinyards as well that folks should check out if they’re ever up this way on a wine tour.