The wine competition portion of the Okanagan Spring Wine Festival is very different than most other wine competitions.  

Normally wines are evaluated by a panel of judges, scores are given based on various criteria and then the wines are awarded medals of recognition (usually gold, silver, bronze) based on these assessments.  

In the Okanagan Spring Festival wine competition, wineries are given an unique opportunity to have their wines compared ”head to head” or more accurately ”wine to wine” with wines made from similar varietals by other wineries through out the province.  Yet another unique feature of this competition is that the judges are mostly comprised of winemakers from here in the Okanagan Valley.  

That being said, I am very proud to say that the 2009 SHV Syrah Rose was selected from the vast number of rose entries in this year’s competition as the Best Rose in the Okanagan Spring Wine Festival competition.  

It is alway nice to have your wines recognized in a competition but in this case it is all the more gratifying knowing that the wine was selected as being the best by a group of my fellow peers that work here in the wine industry.

If that wasn’t enough to make my head swell up with pride, it was just announced today that the 2009 SHV Syrah Rose was also selected as the Best Rose of the Northwest Wine Summit which features wines from all of the Pacific Northwest!  Wow!

If you happen to be in the Okanagan Valley during the Spring Festival, I hope that you will stop by the winery tasting room and give it a try.  I would love to hear your thoughts about the wine.  For those of you in the Lower mainland, the 2009 SHV Syrah Rose is widely available now at VQA retailers and LRS. If your local LRS doesn’t have it, ask for it to be brought in to the store.  You won’t be disappointed that you did. 

FYI. I have attached a link to all of the other award winning wines from this years competitions.

http://www.okanaganwineawards.com/springawards/best_of-spring-2010.pdf

http://www.winepressnw.com/2010/04/28/4728/ice-wine-wins-top-award-at-giant.html

Cheers,

Dwight

We are at T  minus 2 weeks until the start of the Okanagan Spring Wine Festival and if you haven’t booked your tickets for our Assemblage event yet, now is the time to do it before the event is completely sold out.

If you were not part of last year’s event and are unfamiliar with the process, here is a bit of background information for you.

As we always do at this time of year, we will begin the sale of our futures of the Renaissance Merlot.  The 2008 Renaissance Merlot was blended last month and then returned to 4 select barrels in order to give the various components of this wine an opportunity to come together as one before being bottled later this May.  The finished 100 cases of wine will be released in September, 2010. 

Last year during the process of building this wine we had an idea about how we could share the blending experience with everyone who loves our wines.  Based on this idea and the old motto of “if you build it; they will come”, the Assemblage event was born.   

We bottled small amounts of each of the individual lots of wine that we are using in the completed Renaissance Merlot.  With these wines we are providing an opportunity to individuals to taste each of the different, interesting and unique lots of Merlot that were used to make our finished Merlot blend. In addition, after evaluating each of the separate lots of wine, individuals will be placed into groups and will then be given the opportunity to blend them together themselves to build their own variation from these lots. 

After blending is complete, each group’s finished blend will then be judged by a very important and select judging panel, (Larry, Linda and I).  Bragging rights and awards will be presented to the winning group.  To finish up the event, individuals will have the opportunity to sample the Stags Hollow Winery’s finished blend of the 2008 Renaissance Merlot while nibbling on delicious appetizers and mingling with other event participants.

If this sounds like a good time to you, please contact Linda at the Wineshop in order to reserve your spot in this event.  Space is limited and reservations are a must.  The dates are Saturday, May 1 & 8th 2010 at 11:00 a.m. - 13:00 p.m. on both days.  We look forward to seeing you there. 

linda@stagshollowwinery.com 

Phone (250) 497-6162 or Toll Free 1-877-746-5569

P.S.   Yes, Larry will be doing the dishes again this year!

“A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover.”

Clifton Paul Fadiman

Dwight