Being a Sonoma County gal, I’ve eagerly followed the progress of BC Zins over the past ten years. In November, I gathered eight of the nine current vintages of BC Zinfandel and analyzed them with some friends and food. Here’s the state of BC Zinfandel.
Mari Kane
Best Wine Bloggers Conference Ever: Penticton, BC 2013
The Wine Bloggers Conference is sort of a cross between a press junket, MacWorld and summer camp. It involves some work with a lot of play and often serves as the kick-start to a summer vacation. Some people leave their families at home for WBC. The majority of bloggers attend every year, so it gets quite old homey with the all the alumni and veterans hugging and kissing. To encourage fresh blood, though, the conference offers a scholarship fund to those who can’t afford the $95 “citizen blogger” fee. What citizen bloggers get is 2.5 days of wine tastings, wine […]
Wine Blogger Conference Comes to Canada
In two weeks, the city of Penticton, BC will be flooded with intrepid wine bloggers swarming the area with glasses in one hand and iphones in the other, tweeting and instagraming the Okanagan Valley into Internet fame. In case you haven’t heard of it, the Wine Bloggers Conference is a combination press junket, wine expo, and MacWorld, with shades of Meetup in between. After five years in the States, the Wine Bloggers Conference will finally cross the Canadian border, and Penticton organizers are working in overdrive to make sure the blogger’s impressions are favorable. There is still time to register […]
Vancouver International Wine Festival Chardonnay Kitchen Party
By Mari Kane When I got the invite to a Chardonnay Kitchen Party at the Miele appliances showroom in downtown Vancouver, I didn’t quite know what to expect. I’d heard of tastings there, but having walked by the store many times, I couldn’t work out how they’d fit so many bodies into it. The Chardonnay Kitchen Party was part of the Vancouver International Wine Festival, and organized by consultant Dana Reinhardt and wine writer Tim Pawsey. With its labyrinth of demonstration kitchens, Meile turned out to be a fantastic venue for wine and food grazing. One kitchen after another had […]
Ravenswood Teldeschi Zinfandel Wine Tasting Paired With Wit
By Mari Kane In late October, I attended a winemaker dinner with Joel Peterson, winemaker and “Godfather of Zinfandel” from Ravenswood Vineyards in Sonoma, California. The event was held at the Flying Pig in Vancouver’s Yaletown, and as we tucked into plates of comfort food, Peterson stood up and began telling stories about the wines he brought to pair. The result was a humorous blend of history lesson and standup comedy that made me homesick for Sonoma. My favorite story was about Teldeschi Vineyards since my friend, Bill Wertzberger, makes his wine at the F. Teldeschi winery which I have […]
Bring Your Own Wine to BC Restaurants
By Mari Kane Friday night marked a turning point in our seven-year-long Vancouver dining experience – we brought our own bottle of wine into a restaurant. One day after the new Bring Your Own Wine (BYOW) law went into effect in BC, my husband and I proudly marched into a restaurant bearing a bottle I had purchased in a VQA store not 3 hours before. We set it on the table and the maitre d’ approached our table, saying “I talked to you on the phone. This is our first BYOW.” I told him it was our first BYOW as […]
