Wine Festival Kicks Off in Kelowna!
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Wine Festival kicks off tonight with the WestJet Wine Tastings at the Rotary Centre for the Arts. The amazing thing about this event is that you get a real overview of the whole wine industry from around the valley all in one compact location. Imagine, over 60 wineries are involved in this event, and each comes with a variety of their finest wines to sample.
Winemaker Howard Soon pours some of his award-winning wine at the Spring Wine Festival's tasting in Kelowna!
The WestJet Wine Tastings will also take place tomorrow evening at the Rotary Centre for the Arts as well, so check your calendar and hope to see you there! I’ll bet there will be lots of action in the various Artist Studios around the Rotary Centre, which is always an additional treat.
Bonus! The Tasting events tonight and tomorrow night are at the always-creative Rotary Centre for the Arts in Kelowna! Photo by Litti Birker.
The Spring Wine Festival itself is 10 days long, and there are over 100 events taking place all around the valley. There are special events at the wineries, at restaurants, and hotels also throw Bacchian parties! It’s basically a huge valley wide wine party for the next 10 days.
There are so many great events happening in Kelowna over the festival. You don’t have to go far to run into a wine celebration… here are some highlights, but be sure to check the calendar of events since there’s just no way I could list them all.
The Greenroom (downtown in Kelowna’s Cultural District) is doing special food & wine pairings that feature the new releases from The View Winery tonight and tomorrow night. You can make your reservation directly with the Greenroom Restaurant or contact The View Winery for info – that’s the new winery in that great historic Packinghouse on Spiers Rd.
On Sunday morning, Summerhill Pyramid Winery holds its annual Wild & Organic Brunch. There’s always live music, Summerhill’s own Mimosa’s, too much food to list, and generally some kind of fun contest… last year I went and there was a cork popping contest for sparkling wines that all kinds of people got in on.
The vines at Summerhill are still awakening... soon they'll look like this!
Holding a wine festival in the spring is our way of celebrating “Bud Break” on the vines, here in wine country. It’s the time of year when, after a few months of winter, we get to see the buds pushing out all around in our vineyards, and we welcome the new crop of grapes in as joyful and warm a way as we can. Friends, it has been a cold spring, but the signs of renewal are here, and that’s as good as any other reason to let the wine and the good times flow!