If the number 2013 looks a bit weird to you this week, give it some time. But don't give it forever, in this frenetic Internet world. It's not 1970, when cheques trumped credit cards and banks gave you a month's leeway if you inadvertently penned the
As another year slips into the history books or some databank deep beneath the earth, all that's left is to usher in the new one. How you choose to welcome the New Year is up to you, but should you decide to have a drink or two, we suggest you can't go
The best advice anyone can give you about which wines to serve for Christmas dinner is to get out and purchase them this weekend, before the pressure of Christmas Eve arrives and stocks are depleted and the store clerks are frazzled. This week we
It's a funny thing about sparkling wine; it never gets the respect accorded Champagne although most consumers would have a great deal of trouble distinguishing between the two in a blind tasting. It is hardly a knock on Champagne but rather a nod to the
Today's the day you promised to start your holiday shopping, so we are going to make things easy for you if you have any wine drinkers on your gift list. Since simplicity equals elegance, let's look at some useful, perhaps conservative, gift ideas for
With a little over three weeks to go to Christmas, it is time to get serious about laying some wines in for the holidays. It is already taking far too long to get across the city and the chaotic holiday traffic is only going to get worse. So, if you are
The holidays are just around the corner and for many, that means shopping lists long on names and short on gift ideas. Wine will not solve all your problems, but in a city full of wine and food aficionados, we can safely say the fermented beverage is
The final results from the 2012 Wine Access Canadian Wine Awards were released in Ottawa last week and the news for B.C. wineries was very upbeat. The national wine magazine ranks the country's top wineries each year based on their performance at the
Late last month, Italian wine legend Angelo Gaja was in the city to showcase some of his wines and to help raise money for the BC Ride to Conquer Cancer. Thankfully, Gaja's generosity escaped the attention of British Columbia liquor licensing inspectors
Believe it or not, it's been 46 years since Robert Mondavi began popularizing the notion of drinking varietal wine, in essence striking a blow for simplicity in wine consumption. Mondavi and a handful of New World contemporaries focused on a series of
Last week I spent an illuminating afternoon in the Garnet Valley, a small Western side valley that T-bones the northern edge of Summerland, very near where Okanagan Lake makes its big turn north to Kelowna. My guides were Chilean Pedro Parra, renowned
We wine writers love to use the term best buy or best value to make sure you pay attention to our reviews, but what does best value really mean when you open that bottle of wine? If price is seldom a measure of quality, can it possibly be a measure of
Today marks the ninth annual Best of B.C. wines release at 21 Signature B.C. Liquor Stores plus Dunbar, Caulfield, Peninsula Village (Surrey) and Brighouse (Richmond). Top B.C. wines are a rare sighting in government stores, mainly because local producers
Last week the provincial government rolled over and gave the B.C. Government and Service Employees' Union everything they wanted, including a four per cent wage increase and a promise to kill plans to privatize the Liquor Distribution Branch. According
Look outside your window. Is that more sunshine than you have a right to expect? The longer this weather lingers, the happier winegrowers are all across British Columbia. As we head toward the end of the 2012 growing season and the birth of another harvest,
Spending a week with 640 of your closest readers can be a terrifying experience for any writer, but with the voyage complete -- including five on-board tastings and five hosted dinners -- I'm delighted to report I met the vast majority of Sun readers