Wine: West Coast Vintages

Discover the treasure trove of local wines and some glorious grape destinations

At the risk of overstretching a metaphor, let it be said that we inhabit an extraordinarily poetic part of the world.

British Columbia is now a serious destination for both earnest epicureans and rosy-cheeked enthusiasts bent on investigating our growing reputation for fine wines.

Whether it’s the signature Black Muscat produced by Blue Grouse Vineyards in the Cowichan Valley, the Certified Organic Bacchus/Ortega white that is the specialty of Barking Dog Vineyard in the Saanich peninsula, or the peppery Pinot Noir Reserve VQA of Salt Spring Vineyards, the range and quality of the products emerging from our own ‘Wine Islands’ has made it an Eden for touring gastronauts.

Marley Farm Winery on the Saanich Peninsula (Deddeda Stemler)

And of the more than thirty wineries, cideries and meaderies that now dot the verdant landscape of Vancouver Island and its satellites, most offer tours and tasting facilities, often augmented with food that equals the high-minded quality of the vino.

So how should one go about sampling the vintner’s wares in this part of the world? Organized day trips are offered by companies such as Crush Wine Tours (www.crushwinetours.com)—the starting price of $79 will get you on board for its three-hour “Peninsula Afternoon” trip ‘n’ sip—while a more extensive package is available through Gulf Escape Vacations (www.gulfescapes.com). This seven-day affair offers wine tasting in the Cowichan Valley, Victoria and Saltspring Island.

“Wine is bottled poetry”
wrote Robert Louis Stevenson.

But it’s also easy enough to hop into your vehicle and follow the signature “Wine Route” signs, illustrated appropriately with grapes, that line BC’s highways (with the requisite amount of due caution, of course!). Armed with a map and the exhaustive information gathered at www.wineislands.ca, any intrepid oenophile could turn a weeklong visit into a Dionysian blowout.

Church and State Wines (www.churchandstatewines.com) is an eminence grise amongst Vancouver Island’s wineries. Only fifteen or so kilometres from downtown Victoria, it rests on a hillside flanking the Saanich Peninsula farmlands and boasts eleven acres of Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris. Among its specialties is the Pinot Noir Icewine: a highly touted feature of the Canadian industry, this sweet, concentrated dessert wine derived from frozen grapes has traditionally been associated with the Niagara region, but the West Coast is fast catching up.

Church & State Wines family of wines
(Courtesy of Church & State Wines)With its quasi-Mediterranean climate, the Cowichan Valley enjoys the warmest average temperature in the entire country, offset by moist yet mild winters. As such, it’s become the home to roughly a quarter of the island’s cultivated land, and is dotted with some thirteen outstanding wine producers amongst the orchards, berry and organic farms.

The famed Cowichan Blackberry dessert wine has been a much-coveted item among aficionados, but was also notoriously hard to get. That all changed this year, when Cherry Point Vineyards (www.cherrypointvineyards.com) announced an upswing in production and a concurrent province-wide distribution arrangement that will finally put this prized sweet wine into BC Liquor stores. Of course, for our purposes, we can go straight to the source. Cherry Point is a particularly aggressive force in the burgeoning West Coast market for wine lovers, with an efficient, year-round touring policy that takes visitors from the vineyard, to the crush platform, to the winery, and finally on to everybody’s favourite part—the tasting!

On top of that, Cherry Point also hosts six weddings a year in its breathtaking Garden pavilion, set amidst the bucolic hillscapes of an area known for centuries to the First Nations people as “The Warm Land.” Sound appetizing? It hardly requires a sophisticated palette to appreciate what’s in store here.

A selection of Vancouver
Island wines (Andrei Fedorov)The Gulf Islands provide Canada with its most northerly vineyards, due again to an unusually temperate climate. There are currently twelve operations set amidst the neighbouring islands, with Hornby Island alone featuring three of them. Day-trippers should feast on that, especially as all three are notable in different and exciting ways.

Middle Mountain Mead (www.middlemountainmead.com) produces, wait for it—mead. The facility’s oddly Tolkienesque appellation is perfect as mead is the oldest fermented beverage currently known to science, having been traced back as far as 1700 BC. In its pure state, mead is concocted from water and honey, which the proprietors at Middle Mountain augment with herbs, spices and on-site fruits such as blackcurrant, apple and grape. The meadery itself sits among mountain meadows and some 2,000 eye-ravishing lavender plants in the summer months. The principle ingredient, honey, is also farmed there, and in the less-tamed surrounding area.

The still relatively young Hornby Island Winery (www.hornbywine.com) meanwhile sits atop the rocky promontories on the south side of the island, with nineteen acres of local fruit, while the Enjoy fine dining paired with beautiful wines at
Cherry Point Vineyard’s on-site bistro
(Courtesy of Cherry Point Vineyards)Carbrea Vineyard (www.carbreavineyard.com) is of special note as it also includes a rustic one-bedroom cottage for summer weekly rentals.

The herbicide/pesticide-free four-acre vineyard itself is used to cultivate the common Northern European varietals Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Gewürztraminer, and Agria, as well as the naturalized blackberries that Carbrea uses in its Wild Blackberry fortified dessert wine (a recent Bronze medal winner at the Northwest Wine Summit). Overseen by owner/winemaker Stephen Bishop, Carbrea is an insurgent young vineyard, well-placed in the artists colony of Hornby; the company’s eye-catching and elegantly funky label deserves an award in and of itself.

While the Wine Islands might be all well and good for travellers, those of us stuck on the Mainland can satisfy our roving taste buds at a select few local wineries or at any one of Vancouver’s hot wine bars.

A short drive from the city, The Fort Wine Company (www.thefortwineco.com) in Langley produces an array of fruit wines, including its multiple award-winning white cranberry, while its dessert wines received the thumbs up from Canada’s preeminent wine critic Anthony Gismondi.

Also located in Langley (and with a sister facility in the south Okanagan Valley), Township 7 Vineyards and Winery (www.township7.com) opened its doors in 2004 and quickly found its niche. A quick scan of the local restaurants that dip into the Township 7 catalogue of reds, whites, and rosés is impressive to say the least: A Kettle of Fish, C Restaurant, Wild Rice…

Top: Vancouver cozy wine bar Bin 941
(Shannon Mendes); Bottom: Blue Water
Café’s Private Wine Room is an
oenophile’s dream (Blue Water Café)And on that note, BC wines are naturally well-represented in a number of Vancouver’s well-appointed bistros and wine bars.

For ten years now, a savvy selection of homegrown specialties has made the wine list within the always bustling, techno-flavoured, shabby-chic environment of Bin 941—and Bin 942 (www.bin941.com).

In Vancouver’s Yaletown district, meanwhile, the Blue Water Café (www.bluewaterwine.net) has aced the Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence for the last five years, for a phenomenal and very recently expanded cellar that not surprisingly carries an expert sampling of BC’s best.

A 20-minute walk from Yaletown’s uniform glass and concrete high-rises and converted lofts will take you to the oldest section of Vancouver. The ascetically designed Salt Tasting Room (www.salttastingroom.com) is set deep inside the emerging Gastown district, and, as a luminous profile in The Globe and Mail noted, it “proudly” serves BC wine. And why not? Even here in Rain City, where the concrete and noise can seem endless, there is abundant poetry.