With Neil Young and Crazy Horse rocking out of the speakers behind me, it sets the mood for this beautiful day in the valley that runs between sun-dotted mountains, the valley we know as the Okanagan. A valley that produces wines as beautiful as the scenery and as refined and talented as the music I’m listening to.
The wine industry here is young (compared to Old World regions like France), young with a rich history. It can be hard to find one of those bottles that was first produced with longevity in mind. It is about now that we’re starting to discover the long-term age-ability of BC wine. So it can be quite fun to pull out a premium bottle of BC wine and see where the sweet nectar rests on the aging scale. It is even more fun when you have two of the same bottle so you can open one and keep one.
What better time to open that special bottle, whatever that may mean to you, than on Open that Bottle Night? It falls on the last Saturday of each February. It is a day that was created, like so many other wine-related days, by wine lovers. These wine lovers, Dorthy J Gaiter and John Brecher, write a wine column, “Tastings” for the Wall Street Journal. I love any excuse to open a good bottle and celebrate wine. Some folks need that excuse to create a special moment in order to actually get their older bottles out of their cellar – a task that can be very daunting, causing one to ponder if it is time, or worse, past the time, to open that bottle.
