I just got back from 5 days spent in the Okanagan with Jordan Jen and Brando. The weather was amazing- warm and sunny during the day, frosty and clear at night, and the wine was fabulous.
We towed Brando's parents brand new deluxe tent trailer up through Manning Park with the intention of finding a place in Penticton to stay. Apparently most campsites and RV parks close down before the end of October (not according to their websites), and we were left sitting out on the street in front of "Water World RV park", wondering if this is where we were going to have to stay... For those not familiar, this is absically a tarp city with permanent RV residents in the middle of a ghetto section of downtown Penticton. We decided to try our luck further south, and ended up finding a place in Oliver that was clean and quiet.
The next few days we spent travelling around wine country visiting different vineyards through Naramta, Summerland, Penticton and Osoyoos. A definate highlight was visiting Jen's cousin's new restaurant The Victoria Street Cafe in Summerland- it was soooo good! We also got some really good cheese there to have with our wine for dinner :) The scenery was gorgeous with a patchwork design of orchards and vineyards throughout the valley.
We took a tour of Sumac Ridge Winery where we were taught all about making wine, ice wine and and sparkling wine, and most importantly, we got to taste all three! The champagne was amazing, and the Ice wine was unbelievable!! A little too expensive for my wallet, but Brando indulged in his favorite!
On our last day we toured Nk'Mip cellars- the first Aboriginal owned and run winery in North America, and were somewhat less than impressed with the tour guide as well as the wine. We went through their Desert Interpretive center as well and learned a bit about canada's only desert. Kinda cool, but the coyote movie was a bit much...
We made our way home after five days of a little too much drinking, and with a trunkful of our purchases.
