Saturday, July 15th, 2007

Hot sun. No clouds. Good friends. Lots of wineries. This was going to be a great day.

We woke up rather late and, after breakfast, headed out to visit the Kelowna- area wineries. Many of these I had been to last year.

The first one we visited was Mission Hill. And I’m going to give you the straight goods about Mission Hill, because last year I was very awestruck: the winery itself is the biggest and most impressive in the entire valley. If you go to the Okanagan to see wineries this one has to be one your list. No question. The size, the style, the whole package is very impressive- except for one little part: the wine.

Mission Hill’s wines are passable at best and generally mass produced with little care for quality in order to get as many bottles out to as many markets as possible. It’s all about the brand and the reputation. But the wine sucks.

Oh, and the proprietor, Anthony Von Mandl, has a massive ego.  Take the tour.  You’ll see.

We took a tour and did a tasting, but we didn’t buy any. Even if I did like it, I could get it here in Saskatchewan anyway.

The second winery was Quail’s Gate. This is a very good winery with good product and an excellent tasting room. Love their Gewürztraminer. I didn’t buy a bottle, though (mostly because I still have a bottle I bought last year!)- after trying their Old Vines Foch I needed to have it. The deep, chocolate, dry flavour will come in handy this winter. Very rich.

After Quail’s Gate we went up the street to Little Straw. After more tasting in their brand new tasting gallery, I raved to them about the Sauvignon Blanc I purchased there last year. At least I raved. So did my friend Eric. A certain other person thought it tasted like garlic toast, though. She will remain nameless but in her defense she was ill at the time and had no sense of smell (or taste apparently). I bought another bottle of last year’s stuff this time.After all of this tasting, a few of us started to get a headache, and we all became quite hungry. We decided to have lunch at the bistro at the Summerhill Winery. After an a la carte lunch and some exceptional wines at Summerhill we were going to visit the tasting room but decided to come back tomorrow because the crowd was too big. VERY popular place.

We returned to the motel in the late afternoon for a much needed nap.

In the evening we decided to have a picnic on a beach and enjoy the sunset. We picked up some bread, cheeses, hummus, and crackers, and set out to find a nice, secluded beach. I only knew of one….if nobody minded the potentially off- putting scenery….

So my return to the nude beach was with friends this time, and some food, and some wine. I had a Cabernet Shiraz with the blue cheese we got. Outstanding. And we even went swimming- albeit with our swimsuits on. And yes, we had neighbors…

After the picnic we returned to the motel and had wine on the patio. After that things get blurry.