Vancouver Wine Festival Recap
Another whirlwind day at Van Wine Fest 2025!
The learning continued for me on Friday as the day started with a seminar on how California producers are making wines, literally, ‘on the edge.’ These wineries are pushing the limits of altitude, coastline, and cool growing regions that defy the California stereotype of overly ripe, jammy wines.
The results are fresh and exciting wines with plenty of acidity and silky tannins - not too different from what makes BC wines special. Diversity is also apparent here, with some single-vineyard wines, while others were regional blends.
A comparison of 5 Pinot Noirs was particularly to the point, exhibiting various expressions of this grape and the influence of fog, cold coastal winds, and intense UV rays. I loved the intensity and aromatic complexity of the Cambria Estate Julia’s Vineyard 2021 (from Santa Maria Valley) and the El Pino Club High Haven 2022 from Anderson Valley.
The parallels of winemaking in BC are fairly obvious, where balancing ripeness and acidity and tannin is the game everyone’s playing. Whether you’re on Vancouver Island, the Kelowna slopes, or in Summerland, important factors will be the amount of daily sunshine, average temperatures and diurnal range, and local weather such as wind and rainfall. These will all affect the style of wine, and at least in terms of northern latitude, BC producers are certainly making wines ‘on the edge’ themselves.
My second seminar of the day is also one of the most highly-attended sessions each year at wine fest, and this one is open to the public. This tasting seminar is an entry-level overview of many different wines from around the world, and a fantastic opportunity for the average wine lover to try some special wines and hear from the winemakers themselves.
Champagne, California Zinfandel, the highest designation of Chianti Classico, Napa Cabernet from the prestigious To Kalon vineyard, and high altitude Argentinian Chardonnay were just 5 of the 10 outstanding wines sampled. The assignment for those of us burdened with the task was to reframe our thinking of different wines being made here vs there, into instead all belonging to one larger community of wine.
Whether you’re a winemaker, sommelier, wine writer, or just a casual consumer, we all play a part in the story of wine and each part is important. When you think of wine in this way, borders dissolve and trade disputes become meaningless. What really matters is that there’s a place for everyone, and that is exactly the feeling you get when participating in the Vancouver International Wine Festival, where the world comes together to celebrate the uniquely unifying power of wine.
There’s one last day of the International Tasting where you can walk around and visit 120 wineries from 15 countries pouring over 700 wines! Don’t wait until next year - get your tickets now and come taste with me!
This Blog Post was written by our contributor: Matt Tinney with MT Wine Consulting (@mtwineconsulting).