Winter fest
My wife and I and our 15-year-old daughter had dinner Wednesday with 17 strangers and it was fantastic. It’s what happens when you book onto the long table dinner at Old Vines, the restaurant at West Kelowna’s Quails’ Gate Winery and you’re seated communally with a bunch of other food-and-wine lovers. This week’s food theme was France. The charcuterie first course arrived on two seven-foot long cedar planks that were placed in the centre of the 25-foot table for everyone to help themselves, family-style.
Naturally, this being a winery, every course will be accompanied with a Quails’ Gate wine.
So, the pate, crusty bread and pickles is matched with the fresh and juicy Cailleteau 2016 Gamay Noir Nouveau.
Our daughter, Grace, had to settle for iced tea.
Quails’ Gate’s Chenin Blanc, the same wine that’s been served to President Barack Obama and Prince William and Kate, came next with the frissee salad.
The main course of pot-au-feu (a fancy French term for country-style beef stew) went nicely with the black-cherry-andtoasted-oak aromas and flavours of the 2015 Merlot.
And the crepes with Chantilly cream dessert finished off beautifully with 2016 Botrytis Affected Optima.
The long table dinners continue every Wednesday until the end of March.
The next two food themes are Italy and Spain.
The cost is $55 per person, with paired wines $25 extra.
The communal dining is part of Quails’ Gate’s winter program to keep people coming out the winery in dreary weather.
There’s also a Sunday Night Supper Series where parties of four can have a roast dinner for $100, Happy Hours Monday to Friday from 3 to 6 p.m. with $5 tapas and $5 glasses of wine, seminars and cooking classes.
Check out QuailsGate.com.
Tasting club
The cutest little bottles of wine arrived by courier this week from Liquidity Winery in Okanagan Falls. The marquee event of the 10-day Winter Okanagan Wine Festival is the Progressive Tasting on Friday where you can wander from venue to venue through the snowy village, glass in hand, trying different wines.
The 200 ml samples of 2016 Estate Chardonnay, 2016 Estate Pinot Noir and 2016 Reserve Chardonnay are the first shipment from the winery’s Equity Tasting Club.
The club, which is the first of its kind in Canada, sees two shipments annually of three mini bottles each delivered to your home.
You taste the wines and use the intel to decide what wines you’d like to order full bottles of to make up your 18-bottle annual club allotment.
Effectively, it’s a try-before-you-buy ritual in your own home.
The price of Equity Tasting Club membership is $75 a year.
The price of the 18 full-size, 750 ml bottles of wine is extra, and must include six choices from the Reserve tier.
However, membership includes free shipping, both for the samples and the 18 bottles.
Membership also includes access to wine releases from the library, a 10 per cent discount at Liquidity Bistro, two free tickets to member events, the option to pre-order wine before it’s released to the public and detailed winemaker notes from Alison Moyes on each wine.
Moyes describes the Estate Chardonnay as a casual tropical fruit, vanilla and toasty wine that pairs as nicely with a big bowl of buttered popcorn and your favourite Netflix show as it does with poached sole.
The Reserve Chardonnay is a little more complex with aromas and tastes of lime, lemon curd, pineapple and toasted almonds and is the perfect glass to accompany roast chicken, creamy pasta or a cheese plate.
The Estate Pinot Noir is textbook light-to-medium-bodied and full of cherry, raspberry, vanilla and spice nose and flavours.
Become a member at LiquidityWines.com.
The 20th anniversary edition of the Winter Okanagan Wine Festival is on for the next nine days at Sun Peaks ski resort near Kamloops.
What started as a two-day Ice Wine Festival in 1998 has grown into a 10-day celebration of wine in an alpine setting running through Jan. 21.
The marquee event is the Progressive Tasting on Friday from 6:30 to 9 p.m., where wine lovers stroll, glass in hand, through the snowy village centre, from hotel to hotel, venue to venue, to sample wines from 30 winery booths. Tickets are $75 at TheWineFestivals.com. Tonight’s Comforts of Grilled Cheese and Wine event is already sold out.
But there’s space available for tomorrow’s Starbucks Sparkling Brunch for $50.
A full list of events and prices is on the website.
The fest also urges wine lovers to stay overnight in one of Sun Peak’s many hotels and enjoy all the second-largest ski area in Canada offers from skiing, snowboarding, dining and shopping to snowshoeing, skating, fat biking, snowmobiling, horse-drawn sleigh rides, dog sledding and even Segway in the snow.
Dine Around
Starting Thursday, 43 restaurants in the Thompson Okanagan will start offering three-course lunch and dinner deals for $15, $25, $35 and $45 as part of Dine Around.
Running from Jan. 17 to Feb. 4, the annual promotion is designed to get people out to nosh and drink in the traditionally slow period between New Year’s and Valentine’s Day.
The B.C. Restaurant and Food Services Association has teamed up with the Wines of British Columbia for the event, so all dishes come with an Okanagan wine recommendation.
Participating restaurants run the gamut from chain properties such as Earls, Moxies, Joey’s, The Keg and Red Robin to independents such as Waterfront Wines and Salted Brick in Kelowna and Theo’s, Bogner’s and Villa Rosa in Penticton.
You can view the full list of restaurants, menus and prices at DineAround.ca.
The Launch Party for Dine Around, Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at the Kelowna campus of Okanagan College, is open to the public.
Attendees can sample a selection of food and wine from participating restaurants and wineries.
Tickets are $40 each or two for $70.
Steve MacNaull is The Okanagan Weekend’s business and wine reporter and columnist. Reach him at steve.macnaull@ok.bc.ca.