600 savour, swirl and sip Okanagan wine at spring festival event

KELOWNA, B.C. – Okanagan red, white, rosé, sparkling and Icewine filled the glasses of 600 guests Friday night for the launch event of the 2016 Spring Okanagan Wine Festival.

“We have a lot of hungry people, a lot of thirsty people and more important, 60 wineries from the Okanagan here samplings their wines,” said Blair Baldwin, Okanagan Wine Festivals Society General Manager. “It’s a tour of the Okanagan wine country under one roof.”

The Spring WestJet Wine Tasting event sells out annually.

While many locals attended the tasting at the Rotary Centre for the Arts, the 10-day festival attracts crowds from throughout the Pacific Northwest.

“The dollar hit $0.80(US) today,” Baldwin said. “A lot of Americans are coming up (for these events).”

More than 90 events are scheduled for the 22nd annual spring festival in the Okanagan, which first began to help spread out wine events following the success of the Fall Wine Festival 35 years ago.

The spring event boasts many new release wines from the 2015 vintage, which saw a harvest of 32,848 tons of grapes that is estimated to have produced 21,351,200 litres of wine, according to the B.C. Wine Institute (BCWI).

That was only eclipsed by the 2014 vintage which saw 35,700 tons of grapes harvested for 23,205,000 litres of wine, the most recorded in the history of the B.C. wine industry.

The BCWI says the province is home to 929 vineyards with more than 10,260 acres of planted land.

In 2015, B.C. VQA wine sales topped $254,511,326, according to the B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch (BCLDB), a 12 percent increase over the previous year.

Back in 1992, the BCLDB reported just $6,846,183 in B.C. wine sales.

The B.C. VQA wines are produced from 100 percent British Columbia grown grapes.