I can vividly remember the first time I was offered British Columbian (B.C.) wine. It was a Riesling from Gray Monk and like an idiot, I turned my nose up and said, ‘No thanks. I don’t like Riesling.’ Happily, the sommelier pressed me to try and with a little ‘I-won’t-like-it’ eye-rolling I took a sip. Of course, it was nothing like the sweet German juice bombs I’d sneaked from my parents’ drinks cabinet as a teenager. Instead, here was something thrillingly different: all peach, citrus and green apples with a fresh minerality. And just like that, I was hooked on B.C. wine.
British Columbia’s Okanagan is a fifty-minute flight from Vancouver to Kelowna or a four-hour drive past lush flat farmlands before winding high through soaring mountains. The Okanagan wine region stretches from Kelowna down to Osoyoos and contains some of the world’s most diverse meso-climates from Canada’s only desert (which helps grow bold, punchy Cabernet Franc) through to cooler lakeside areas (where Pinot Noir and varietals such as Gewurztraminer flourish). Thanks to glaciers moving through the region centuries ago the area has wonderful mineral-rich soil – which lends those wines their great character.
I’d pored over photos of the Okanagan and longed to visit, enchanted by the scrubby hills of Osoyoos dotted with Ponderosa pines and the serene lakeside beauty of Penticton with its family-friendly beaches. And for once, the reality far exceeded the hype. Take it from me: spending a few days in B.C.’s wine country is likely to lead to furtively scouring estate agent websites and having endless ‘what if I just moved here…’ conversations.