Okanagan Wine Tour 2011 Day 3

Day 3 of The Travel Group Okanagan wine tour and we are back on the bus with Mike from Unveil. First stop Fairview Cellars to visit with Bill Eggert and taste some of his big beautiful reds. We've visited Bill on our first wine tour and he's agreed to host our group on his day off thanks to Leah at Kensington Square Wines. Bill is educational, funny and everyone in our group had a great time sipping wine outside his tiny tasting room in the shade of an enormous tree with the new puppy and kitten. Bill tells the story of his wines in a way that makes them seem like friends. Names like Bucket of Blood, Two Hoots and Madcap Red make me smile in anticipation of drinking them over this winter.

Next we visited Tinhorn Creek. This was my second visit and although I like the set up of the self guided tour this winery doesn't excite me. Just not the right fit for me.

Back to Hester Creek Estate Winery, this time for a tasting. We were hosted by Rob, the marketing manager, on the deck with 3 bottles of wine and a story of the winery. They had reserved the deck for us to have a picnic lunch and it would be hard to imagine being made more welcome. I am definitely going back to Hester Creek to stay at one of the villas. I think they are setting the bar very high in the Okanagan for everything they do. Try a glass of their Cabernet Franc and tell me I'm wrong.

Next we visited one of my favourites, Road 13 Vineyards. I've drank a lot of their wines and was looking forward to replenishing my stock of Sparkling Chenin Blanc and seeing their new tasting room. Pam made us welcome with a cheese tray, tastings of some of their best wines and a visit to her beautiful cellar. It's all about the dirt at Road 13, helping us all understand terroire. I'm happy to see how successful they are and hope for it to continue.

Final stop of the day was at Moon Cursor, the former Twisted Tree Vineyards. One of the first wineries in the Okanagan I'd ever tasted at I was happy to come back and find the name change was just an opportunity for them to express their sense of the Okanagan and their sense of humour. They are still just nice people, working hard, making interesting wines. Chris went out of his way to show us around and allowed most of us the chance to do our first barrel tasting. An amazing experience and some very good wines.

Mike picked us up for our final trip with him to Miradoro Restaurant at Tinhorn Creek. A lot of things went wrong at Miradoro from the moment we arrived to find our table set for 12 instead of 15. It's a new restaurant but the service was disjointed, ordering confusing, several dishes were cold, a couple of orders confused and an attitude that didn't help. I hope they work out the problems because it is a beautiful room and could be a lot of fun.