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Friday and Saturday August 8-9 2014 is our 7th Annual BC Wine Festival Weekend in the store. On both days we will be sampling BC wine. On the Saturday we have a special guest host – Tim Martiniuk, General Manager and family owner of Stoneboat Vineyards in Oliver, BC. Tastings are 3-6pm both days.
Our Community Sponsor for the Saturday is Bowen Island Arts Council who are sponsoring a poetry competition to celebrate BC wine. It’s easy to enter. Just send your entry to creative@biac.ca by email or post it on their Facebook Event page at https://www.facebook.com/events/429007857239404/
Please put your town or community on your entry. Entry is open until Midnight Friday 8 August.
We’ll post all the entries on a board in the store and tasters on Saturday 9 August will vote for their favourite entry. If you cannot make the tasting you can also vote for on-line submissions by “liking” the entry on the BIAC page above.
Poems can be in any form but must reference something specifically about BC Wine – can be a region, a general reference to why you like BC wine, a vineyard or a winery etc.. Entries will be judged on the first verse only. Haikus are welcome.
There will be prizes for the top votes in two categories:
- Entries from Bowen Island
- Entries from off-island
If you cannot make the tasting you can also vote for on-line submissions by “liking” the entry on the BIAC page above.
P.S. Must be 19 or older to enter.
This calendar takes us through to September. Please remember that it can change. Our email list receives a reminder so please feel free to drop your email address off at the store.
All tastings are 3pm to 6pm unless noted.
- June 27 Friday – “Wines of Gabriel Meffre” hosted by Greg Pollard of Diamond Wines
- July 4 Friday – Hosted by Annette Goliath of Grady Wines
- July 5 Saturday – Meet the Cidery – Seacider hosted by Sara Park of Seacider on Vancouver Island
Steamship Days July 11-13
- July 11 Friday – Hosted by Liza McCauley, Delf Group
- July 12 Saturday – Meet the Brewery, Howe Sound Brewing
- July 18 Friday – “The Italian Job” racy Italian wines at a steal for value. Hosted by Burrows Luongo importers
- August 1 Friday – Hosted by Thea Cuevas, Constellation Brands
August 8-9 Fri-Sat – BIBWC Annual BC Wine Festival
- August 8 Friday – BC wine sampling hosted by Paul Rickett
- August 9 Saturday – Meet the Winery, Tim Martiniuk, GM of Stoneboat. Community Sponsor – BIAC
- August 15 Friday – Hosted by Select Wines
- August 22 Friday – Hosted by Selwyn Rawstron, Empson (think NZ P. Noir and Sauvignon Blanc)
- Sept 12 Friday – Meet the Winery, Sandra Oldfield, CEO Tinhorn Creek 20th Anniversary tasting
- September 18 Thursday. Bowen Children’s Centre Fundraiser 1st Annual Wine Fair, Lodge at Old Dorm. Tickets available via BCC and BIBWC. We aim to have over 60 wines for tasting at this event.
Free in-store wine sampling
BowFEAST weekend eat and drink local celebration.
- Friday 16 August, 3-7pm
- Saturday 17 August, 1-5pm
- Sunday 18 August, 1-5pm
We’ll be opening a raft of BC wines to showcase our local wineries. Different wines each day so plan to drop in for every session.
Special Guest: Sandra Oldfield, CEO Tinhorn Creek
Friday 16th – 5-7pm
Tinhorn Creek is our #1 selling BC wine brand. Please come and meet Sandra and learn about Tinhorn’s wine right from the source.
In addition to Tinhorn Creek, over the weekend we’ll have wines to taste from
- Averill Creek
- Blue Mountain
- Calliope
- de Vine
- Dirty Laundry
- Quail’s Gate
- Saturna Island winery
- Stoneboat
and maybe a few more…
Where: In-Store at Bowen Beer and Wine Cellar
When:
Friday 17.8 – 3pm to 6pm+
Saturday 18.8 – 1pm to 5pm+
Sunday 19.8 – 1pm to 5pm+
Our annual BC Wine showcase is our biggest tasting event of the year. 3 days of sampling BC wines this Friday to Sunday in conjunction with BowFEAST eat/drink locally.
Start and end times are above but we often have wine left so don’t be afraid to drop in after the official end time.
This event will feature 15+ BC wines over the weekend. Each day we’ll have at least 5 different wines open to taste. As befits the season, the emphasis is on white wines but there will be at least one red each day too. Since we received outstanding support from our winery partners we will also be doing a red wine focused BC wine tasting early in September.
Our feature wineries this year are:-
Both Fort Berens and Perseus are relatively new wineries and this is the first year we have carried their wines. Fort Berens is based in Lillooet, a new wine growing area for BC.
Hope you can join us for a fun event.
Saturday May 19: 1-5pm
at
Bowen Island beer and Wine Cellar, 103-996 Dorman Road (under the Ruddy Potato)
Chenin Blanc is one of the under-appreciated white grapes. It can be made into stellar dry white table wines, delectable sweet wines and smashing sparklers. Its spiritual roots are in France’s Loire Valley where it has been grown for nearly a 1,000 years.
This tasting will focus on table wines suitable for a long and, hopefully, hot weekend on the patio or deck. Expect a line up of quality wines, including a couple of Chenin blends, from BC, France, California, and South Africa. Working on adding a sparkling Chenin into the set as well.
Bowen Children’s Centre (BCC) is holding a wine tasting at Artisan Eats cafe Thursday May 3, 2012 from 7-9pm.
The event features a guided tasting by BC`s 8th Generation winery. A flight of 7 wines from their selection will be served along with cheeses provided by Artisan Eats.
8th Generation are one my favourite BC wineries so this is an event well worth attending. You will also be able to order the wines at winery price at the event and pick them up from us later.
Please join us this #BowFEAST weekend to celebrate eating and drinking locally. This is our 4th annual BC wine fest featuring FREE samples of great BC wines. Wines will be poured over 3 days starting Friday at 2pm.
Tasting session times:
Friday 2pm-6pm
Saturday 1pm – 5pm
Sunday 1pm to 5pm
On Saturday shop the #BowFEAST Farmers market from 9am to Noon. Have a nice lunch in the Cove, then mosey up to our new store on Dorman Road under the Ruddy Potato and taste some great BC wines to go with your fresh, local food for dinner.
While we end formal tasting at 6pm, if we have wine left you are welcome to come in later and try what’s still open
Big line up this year with totally different wines each day:
Participating Wineries and wines. Tasting order is yet to be determined but over the 3 days we’ll be opening wines from among the following:
The View – Frizzante, Gewurztraminer, Pinotage
Quails Gate – Rosé, Chenin Blanc
Tinhorn Creek – Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay
Stoneboat – Pinotage, Pinot Gris
Ganton & Larsen Prospect winery – Sauvignon Blanc, Unoaked Chardonnay
Lake Breeze – Pinot Blanc, Meritage
Dirty Laundry – Gewurztraminer, Merlot
Hester Creek – Cabernet/Merlot blend
Black Cloud – Pinot Noir
Tantalus – Riesling
8th Generation – Sauvignon Blanc
Blasted Church – Hatfields Fuse (white blend)
Fairview Cellars – 2 Hoots
Plus on Saturday ONLY – Red Roof Okanagan cider
We just received the first of Joie’s 2010 vintage – unoaked Chardonnay and their rather delicious Muscat. Noble Blend and Riesling will be in shortly too.
From Joie website
“MUSCAT 2010
Muscat holds a fond place in our travel memories to the north of Italy. There are many different types of Muscat but we particularly prize the fine white and yellow varieties. For our home vineyard, we chose to plant 2 acres of Moscato Giallo, also know as Goldenmuskateller or Yellow Muscat, depending on from where you originate. The 2009 vintage represents our first crop from our home vineyard. Muscat is an intensely aromatic varietal, both floral and fruity. While most other grape varieties seem to be at their best mimicking a broad spectrum of diverse flavours the true charm of Muscat is that it tastes as though you are actually enjoying the grapes themselves. That is why we call our Muscat “The Pure Grape”. “
I was on twitter a couple of weeks ago talking to Jayson Bryant from New Zealand (twitter: @jayson_bryant) about wine when it struck me that the selection of white wine from NZ relative to Australian white wine on our shelves had changed rather dramatically over the 3 years I have been in the store.
Today, our selection ratio of NZ to Australian wine is less than 1:2. 3 years ago it would have been more like 1:5. I thought that we on Bowen might not be representative of the general Vancouver market so decided to check things out in downtown Vancouver.
Much to my surprise, our ratio is not markedly different to most stores. The 5 private wine stores I visited had ratios varying from 1:1 to 1:2 and then I visited the big BCLDB flagship store on Bute and Alberni. Their selection was very much closer to 1:1 and, checking the BCLDB website, the actual listings in BC for NZ white to Australian whites is 54 to 73 or very nearly 1:1!
This is a dramatic shift in market balance from years ago when the Australian powerhouse dominated the two countries white wine sales in BC. How has this come about?
Firstly, although there have been an increase in NZ wine selection, the primary reason the ratio is closing is that there has been a marked reduction in Australian whites in the market here. This is reflective of the shift away from all those heavily-oaked Aussie chardonnays so popular in the late ’90s and early ’00s. Secondly, here in BC, New Zealand was the theme country for the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival (VPIWF) this year so NZ received lots of local exposure for their increasingly diverse selection of both red and white wines.
Both countries still make great wines but the trend is very much in favour of NZ at the moment. While NZ is hugely strong with their Sauvignon Blancs, I was really impressed with the Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminers and Rieslings I tasted at VPIWF plus NZ Pinot Noirs are coming on in leaps and bounds with Syrahs not far behind.
There are potentially lessons for the BC wine industry here too. Although our industry is younger than NZ’s, the total population of NZ is the same as BC’s and their domestic wine consumption is almost the same per capita as here. NZ is growing now on the strength of its export prowess not so much on its local support. Perhaps it is time that the BC wine industry focuses more on exporting than on local marketing – after all, we should have huge advantages in being next door to the USA whereas NZ is 20ookm away from its nearest large market and major competitor – Australia.
On Bowen, we have already increased our NZ selection in both reds and whites and more to come in our new store (opening January 2011) I think the white ratio will drop much closer to 1:1 then. Maybe we’ll even start to see the selection ratio on the reds starting to shift too.
The Bowen Wine Blog 