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Okanagan-Taste

Award-winning wines for mom on her special day

Toast mom with these wines

There are plenty of options for brunch for Mother’s Day this weekend, but if the mom or the mother figure in your life is more of an oenophile and appreciates good wine more than eggs benny, here are some bottles to wrap up as your gift.

First, take note, all of these bottles are winners from last week’s Cascadia International Wine Competition held in Richland, Wa. You can scroll through the gold and double gold medalists on Facebook until the final full list for 2022 is posted on the web.

This competition accepts entries from across the Pacific Northwest, so it is, indeed, international.

And, you can legitimately say to your ma one of the judges at Cascadia – that would be me – recommends these bottles from B.C. Judging is done blind, but after all the swirling, sniffing and spitting was done, I discovered a few of these were in my flights. I even recognized a couple of them as being from the Okanagan.

Maan Farms Estate Winery in Abbotsford won double gold for its 2020 Strawberry-Raspberry blend fruit wine. Yes, a fruit wine. The aromas wafting out of the glass were akin to a fresh pie cooling on the window sill.

Still in a slightly sweeter style, Stag’s Hollow Winery’s 2021 Tragically Vidal was also a double gold winner, and a spot-on Vidal, as noted by one of my fellow judges.

This table wine is perfect with a fresh fruit salad if you’re making brunch for mom. So is gold medal winner Wild Goose for its 2019 Late Harvest Gewürztraminer. Wild Goose also took gold for its 2021 Sauvignon Blanc and Upper Bench in Naramata won gold for its 2019 Estate Chardonnay.

Both Hester Creek and Gehringer Brothers took gold medals for some unique white blends. Hester Creek for its recent vintage of Pinot Gris-Viognier, and Gehringer Brothers for its 2021 Desert Sun (a Riesling-based blend), and its Gewürztraminer-Schönburger. Hester Creek also won double gold for its 2021 Old Vines Pinot Blanc.

While the Okanagan’s aromatic whites shine in competition and our terroir invites much jealousy from other winemakers in the Pacific Northwest, our reds were recognized as well.

Double gold for Volcanic Hills 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon. When I realized this bold B.C. red wine had been in one of my flights, and my judging panel pushed it to double gold status, I was both thrilled and amazed, thinking it was from somewhere further south. Serve this with a steak for your ma.

Volcanic Hills took a gold medal for its 2017 Merlot, as did Phantom Creek for its 2019 Kobau Vineyard Syrah.

The top wine overall was a spectacular sparkling wine from 3100 Cellars in Idaho. Not available here, but I thought it might have been a bottle of 2018 Polaris from Township 7. Short of whipping down to Idaho, this B.C. bubbly is an ideal option for toasting mom.

Cheers.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.



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About the Author

A creative thinker with more than two decades of experience in communications, Allison is an early adopter of social and digital media, bringing years of work in traditional media to the new frontier of digital engagement marketing through her company, All She Wrote.

She is the winner of the Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association's 2011 and 2012 awards for Social Media Initiative, an International LERN award for marketing, and the 2014 Penticton Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Award for Hospitality/Tourism.

Allison has amassed a following on multiple social networks of more than 30,000, frequently writes and about social media, food and libations as well as travel and events, and through her networks, she led a successful bid to bring the Wine Bloggers Conference to Penticton in June 2013, one of the largest social media wine events in the world, generating 31 million social media impressions, $1 million in earned media, and an estimated ongoing economic impact of $2 million.

In 2014, she held the first Canadian Wine Tourism Summit to spark conversation about the potential for wine tourism in Canada as a year-round economic driver.

Allison contributes epicurean content to several publications, has been a judge for several wine and food competitions, and has earned her advanced certificate from the Wine and Spirit Education Trust.

In her spare time, she has deep, meaningful conversations with her cats.

She can be reached at [email protected]



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The views expressed are strictly those of the author and not necessarily those of Castanet. Castanet does not warrant the contents.

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