Okanagan Spring Wine Festival kicks off for 24th year

It is the official start to the wine-touring season: the Okanagan Spring Wine Festival.

“A lot of people come from all over the place,” Kate Deglow, spokesperson for the Okanagan Wine Festivals Society, said. “It is a deep-rooted tradition. It’s our twenty-fourth year. It’s a long standing festival.”

The Okanagan Spring Wine Festival kicked off Wednesday evening with the 2018 Best of Varietals awards ceremony and reception in Penticton.

The 10-day festival feature more than 90 events up and down the valley and has 120 wineries taking part.

“That’s a lot of different wine events happening in the Okanagan up and down the whole valley,” Deglow said.

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Quail’s Gate Estate Winery is one of the participating wineries. It hosted one of the first festival events Thursday with its Panoramic Pairings luncheon.

“The festival has such an amazing reputation so it’s not just the locals who come out for it. People travel from across Canada,” marketing manager with Quail’s Gate Lindsay Kelm said. “It was ranked one of the number one festivals in the world, the Okanagan wine festival, so it really does attract a lot of people to our region.”

For smaller and family-owned wineries like the View Winery in Kelowna, the festival adds a financial boost.

“We always make sure we have a full staff on for this festival because we know that business escalates hugely and that’s great. And from there, we just roll into a busy summer,” View Winery owner Jennifer Turton-Molgat said.

But this year, some are wondering if the pipeline dispute between Alberta and B.C. and the brief B.C. wine ban imposed by Alberta will result in fewer visitors from that province.

“I am sure there may be a little bit of an impact but I think the Albertans that do support B.C. wineries will still support B.C. wineries in some capacity,” Deglow said.

Many winery operators are optimistic the festival will not be impacted.

“I think that little tiff is over with and I think, generally, Albertans are very, very supportive of our wine industry,” Turton-Molgat said.

Click here for a list of events for the 2018 Okanagan Spring Wine Festival.