Touring wineries in the Okanagan is a common and dominant element of my bike tours, and this year I recruited the ultimate wine tasting partner- my wife Heather.

She flew to Penticton where I met her the afternoon after I got to Kelowna. We rented a jeep and for three days we enjoyed some great wine, great food, and great scenery.

We stayed at the Guest House at D’Angelo Winery on the Naramata Bench. The accommodations were perfect and I highly recommend them. We had our own suite with a kitchen and a private deck right next to the vineyards. There was also a pool available to us (which we made use of during a hot, sunny 30 degree day). The family that owns the winery are very friendly and accommodating and I think that a return visit is definitely in our future.

We stayed on the Naramata Bench for our wine touring except for late morning visit to Summerland to try 8^th Generation, Silk Scarf, and Thornhaven. On the Bench we ended up visiting D’Angelo (obviously), Misconduct, Ruby Blues, Hillside, Lake Breeze, Black Widow, Elephant Island, Deep Roots, and Quidni.

I’ve often toured the wineries on the Naramata Bench but I’ve never really made it a focus. The place is amazing, and every year I ride through here there’s another new winery that’s popped up. We bought tickets to a special event with the winemaker at Hillside, who explained to us the special geologic circumstances of the Naramata Bench, and how wines produced higher up the bench will have different flavours even though they may be the same grape.

This is because Okanagan Lake used to be much bigger thanks to a giant glacial ice dam farther south, just north of present-day Oliver. Okanagan, Skaha, and Vaseux Lakes all used to be one giant lake, but after the ice dam gave way the lake spilled out into the valley to the south. The sandy bluffs around Oliver (the famous Golden Mile) are the result of this flood leaving sand deposits. For the Naramata Bench, land further down the bench (closer to the lake) has much more clay that land further up the bench (up the mountainside), which has much more sand. They say that the current Naramata Bench Road is about where the lakeshore would have been, so winemakers on the Bench often refer to “above road” and “below road” vineyards, and the distinction is clay vs sand.

It was a very relaxing three days and we ended up with three cases of new wines to add to our cellar in the basement. We even joined the Wine Club at 8^th Generation so we’ll be receiving more wines during the Fall and Spring (10% off and free shipping to Sask…hard to argue with that). For three days neither of us worried about work or anything else going on at home.   This was our first vacation together since our honeymoon a few years ago and it was perfect. We both agreed that we should do this every year. Maybe?