How to Tour the British Columbia Wine Country

Most of British Columbia's wine country is in the British Columbia interior's Okanagan Valley, although there is also a small wine-producing region in Vancouver Island's Cowichan Valley. British Columbia wineries produce a wide range of excellent products, many of which have won awards in various national competitions.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Travel Guides
• Wine Spectator Subscription

1. Time your trip to coincide with one of the regional wine festivals. The Okanagan offers an Icewine festival in January, a spring festival in May, and an extensive fall festival in October, around harvest time.

2. Find out when each winery offers tours and tastings. Most Okanagan wineries are open to visitors who drop in between May and October, but many require appointments during the off-season.

3. Visit the British Columbia Wine Information Center in Penticton, at 888 Westminster Avenue West, Penticton, BC; [phone]. This is an excellent starting point for any wine-related trip; tours, tastings and tickets to regional wine events are also available here.

4. Pace yourself. There are lots of wineries in the Okanagan, most of them around the cities of Kelowna, Penticton and Summerland, and it is impossible to visit them all in a day or two. Try to limit yourself to three or four wineries a day so that you can get the most out of the tours and the tastings.

5. Taste carefully, starting with white or sparkling wines, then moving along to the reds (from lighter to heavier) and dessert wines. Or, try to restrict yourself to a particular varietal or style of wine on each day. A careful approach will prevent palate overload, which can happen quickly when you taste a large number of wines in random order.

Tips & Warnings

• Consider a summer visit if you also enjoy water sports and other warm-weather activities. British Columbia's wine region exists around the shores of the large and popular Lake Okanagan, and many visitors combine winery visits with a family lakeside or houseboat holiday.
• Come in the fall if you're primarily interested in wine-related activities; the wineries will still be busy, especially around festival time, but the region in general will be less crowded with tourists after the beginning of September.
• Store wine purchases carefully in a cool, dry place, and make sure the bottles are upside down or angled downward so that the corks don't dry out. If you need to cross the Canada-U.S. border to get your purchases home, find out in advance how much alcohol you are allowed to bring back with you.
• Choose a designated driver before you begin your tours. Even if you're trying to swirl and spit rather than swallowing most of the wine, it's still difficult to gauge how much you're actually ingesting.
• Wear a hat and use lots of sunscreen if you visit during the summer months ' the region gets a lot of sunshine, which is one of the reasons it produces such high-quality wine grapes.

on 11/22/2005 If you are going to be in the Kelowna area during wine season, be sure to take a tour of Quail's Gate Estate Winery. It is family owned and operated and offers spectacular tours, views of the valley and a first class restaurant.