Okanagan wine tour worth the wait
Longtime friends finally get a chance to celebrate birthday milestone delayed by COVID
What better way to celebrate being friends, since Grade 4, than a “Welcome to 50.5 Rou,” Okanagan wine tour.
Rou’s milestone 50th was back in November 2019. She planned a weekend away in May to celebrate, however, due to COVID restrictions we had to reschedule. It became a Welcome to 50.5 getaway trip of three friends.
Our first destination: 8th Generation Vineyard in Summerland.
This was my first time at 8th Generation Vineyard, but Rou and Laurie had visited many times before on their way to Penticton for triathlons.
8th Generation’s wine shop is chic, modern, yet rustic. Definitely a place where I would book a party or a bridal or baby shower.
The beautiful new tasting room was open for our eyes only on a cloudy afternoon. Even though we couldn’t do a tasting, Rou and Laurie knew exactly which wines to purchase: Frizzante and their Rose. Not long after that, we checked in early to Summerland Resort and enjoyed our first bottle of 8th Generation 2019 Pinot Meunier Rosé on the patio of our partial lakeview room.
The hotel was a perfect escape from our busy city lives, with a small private beach to dip our feet in the lake, and later soak in the hot tub beside the pool.
Summerland Resort is divided into two separate buildings. The building with the reception desk has the pool, hot tub, areas to sit with fireplaces and a small beach. The building across the parking lot is connected to the iKhaya Spa. The property has a nice boardwalk to walk along the shoreline of the lake.
On Saturday morning, we were picked up at the hotel at 10 a.m. by Matt, the owner of Experience Wine Tours. A gracious guide, Matt greeted us with optional masks to wear and a mask for himself, as well. He also provided hand sanitizer before we ventured into his spacious vehicle that allowed plenty of room to sit and more space in the back for the many cases of wine we would soon purchase. Score!
Our first stop, a relatively new vineyard, Lightning Rock Winery, sits high atop a hill with a gorgeous view of the lake, vineyards and the town of Summerland.
Tyler and Jordan have been working hard for the last couple of years, making sure that Lightning Rock is a farmland-stewardship winery. The young couple live in a gorgeous log home on their expansive property with an amazing patio overlooking the lake.
Tyler greeted us once we “oohed and aahed” over the views and gave us a choice to taste outside or inside their newly built tasting room. We had a choice of different varieties of their preservative-free sparkling Chardonnay, Viognier, Rosé and Syrah wines from their Elysia and Canyonview vineyards.
As he drove us to our next destination, Matt, also a sommelier, talked about the history of wine making in the Okanagan region.
Second stop, Origin Wines in Naramata. Rou used to work with Blake, the owner, in Vancouver. Blake and his wife Daya, originally from the Okanagan, had been planning to open a winery for years. Blake worked in the visual effects industry, often commuting back and forth from Vancouver to Naramata until the opening of Origin Wines.
Blake and Daya’s gorgeous property has an amazing lake view with picnic tables and a very country-chic tasting room. We tasted the GU Gewurtz, Via Viognier, Quench Rose and the Mistral Pinot Noir. Blake also gifted Rou some bottles for her birthday.
While we tasted the wines, Matt prepared the most amazing charcuterie board for lunch. The locally curated cheeses, meats, bread, hummus, in-season strawberries,
carrots and asparagus were delish. It was the first time (but not the last) I had eaten fresh raw asparagus.
Dining on fresh local ingredients on the sundeck at Origin, overlooking the lake and a vineyard, the sun shining down on us, aah …
Then it was onward to our third stop: La Frenz Winery. In contrast to the two startup wineries, La Frenz, established in the late-1990s, took a different approach to socialdistancing protocols.
We were seated at tables on their busy patio for the tasting. I would say there were at least four other groups on the patio overlooking the lake and vineyard, yet the tables were not close together. Their tasting was very organized as our masked server came to our table with the flights of wines we chose from the menu.
Matt was gracious in carrying all the boxes of wine we purchased at each stop.
Final stop, Roche Wines, where Penelope and Dylan Roche make hands-on farming their first priority.
Once we entered the tasting room, we were asked to lock the door to prevent anyone else from entering. We were the only group in the rather spacious tasting room.
The tasting room at Roche has a side window to serve customers who wish to purchase and not taste wine. Smart! We had the opportunity to taste five wines, including their Texture and Tradition series wines.
Thankfully, Roche offers free shipping of their wines to your home. Matt had plenty of room in his car for more cases, but it would have been very squishy in Laurie’s car for the drive home if we had included the boxes of wine from Roche, La Frenz, Origin and Lightning Rock.
Our perfect day ended with Matt driving us back to Summerland Resort.