Red, white or rose?
Fortunately, Christmas turkey is an obliging wine-friendly bird. As such, you can pair your traditional festive meal with a wide range of reds, whites and roses.
The rule of thumb is to choose wines with high acidity and low tannins to complement the low-fat, mild flavour of turkey meat, yet also accompany the plethora of other flavours of the holiday spread from gravy, cranberry sauce and stuffing to salty potatoes, roasted vegetables and tart pickles.
It’s best not to overthink your decision, but rather grab a bottle you like and enjoy.
Pinot Gris might just be the perfect turkey wine for its jolt of acidity and subtle fruit, honey and spice aromas and flavours.
The 2016 Forgotten Child Pinot Gris ($19) from Savard Vines in Summerland has all that, as well as some soft, sweet and floral notes.
Time Winery in Penticton touts its 2016 Riesling ($23) as the ideal turkey wine for its bracing acidity, which will cut through the fats of the feast.
Fitzpatrick Family Vineyards in Peachland recommends three of its vintages as fantastic turkey foils – the zesty and aromatic 2016 Unwinder Ehrenfelser ($17), 2016 Interloper Gewurztraminer ($17) and 2016 Outlook Riesling ($18.50).
In fact, Fitz president Gordon Fitzpatrick will be dressed as Santa today from noon to 6 p.m. pouring the wines at the Save-On Foods store in Kelowna’s Orchard Plaza.
If you’re in the mood for some Yule pink, invite the 2016 Narrative rose ($19) from Summerland’s Okanagan Crush Pad to dinner.
The salmon-hued vintage is crisp, clean and juicy.
And if it has to be red, go light-to-medium-bodied, like the 2014 Reserve Pinot Noir ($26) from West Kelowna’s Mission Hill Winery.
Mission Hill winemaker Darryl Brooker will be drinking it with his Christmas dinner and quipping how the charming wild berry and plush black cherry aromas and flavours of the wine make turkey even more of a star.
All One Era
Stephen Cipes, the founder of Summerhill Pyramid Winery in Kelowna, has always marched to the beat of his own drum.
He stores and ages wine in the winery’s eponymous Egyptian-style, on-site, 900-square-foot pyramid.
Cipes claims wine benefits from the monolith’s geometry and alignment to true north by clarifying and smoothing them and boosting aroma.
Rather than call himself owner or proprietor, Cipes refers to himself as the winery’s visionary and spiritual guide.
Summerhill was the first Okanagan winery to go organic and biodynamic.
Along the way, it also became an innovator with its award-winning Cipes sparkling wines and still table wines and is Canada’s mostvisited winery.
With his long, curly hair and rose-tinted (seriously) round glasses, Cipes also gives off a quirky, hippie vibe.
So, it should come as no surprise Cipes’ latest venture is a book called All One Era, which is about attaining harmony and peace on the planet, not wine.
To launch the book, Cipes chose Thursday, Dec. 21, the darkest day of the year, the winter solstice and the pivotal fifth anniversary of the ending of the Mayan lunar calendar, which marks the beginning of the All One Era.
The day and evening included Cipes reading from his book, a candle-lit procession to the pyramid, vegetarian potluck, drumming and dancing.
The era is meant to prompt us to take back our power as grand eternal beings and put our fearbased materialistic pasts behind us.
The $12 book can be purchased at Amazon.com or from the AllOneEraTheBook.com website.
If all this sounds a bit too weird to you, just grab a glass of Summerhill wine and enjoy, no fretting about pyramid power or new eras required.
Bottle tree
It’s traditionally shaped, stylishly illuminated, constructed of industry-specific materials and topped with twinkling star.
It’s the Christmas tree at Okanagan Spirits in Vernon, made of gin, vodka, burbon and whisky bottles.
The distillery, which has locations in both Vernon and Kelowna, is using the tree to promote its extended shopping hours, a-few-of-our-favourite-things gift guide the holiday- inspired cocktail of the week.
Okanagan Spirits on Bernard Avenue in downtown Kelowna is open today 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., before closing on both Christmas and Boxing day.
The Vernon location, on 24th St., is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. today and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. tomorrow, before closing on the 25th and 26th.
Gift suggestions, for yourself or loved ones, range from black currant liqueur ($30), bourbon maple syrup ($20) and a copper Moscow mule mug ($28) to bottles of bourbon ($60), gin, whisky, moonshine, vodka and gin, absinthe, aquavit, mini-packs and tonic syrup.
The festive cocktail of the week is the Okanagan martini, a frothy and red-hued concoction of raspberry liqueur, vodka and pineapple juice.
Fruitcake
If you want a pre-Christmas chuckle, check out Moni Schiller’s Nuttier than a Fruitcake newsletter and blog at Fruitcake.ca.
Schiller closed down her Kelowna-based fruitcake-making business after 12 years, but continues to write and share recipes and her humourous life observations.
In the Christmas newsletter, she mused how one of her two adopted male tuxedo kittens has turned out to be a girl and Ira had to be re-named Iris.
There’s a recipe for rum balls, a rant about buying thrift-store Christmas ornaments rather than new and a suggestion to buy a bigger pair of pants to feel svelte during the holiday eating season.
Steve MacNaull is The Okanagan Saturday’s business and wine reporter and columnist. Reach him at steve.macnaull@ok.bc.ca.