Ok, I am back.

Where have I been?  Job interviews, scintillating copywriting tests, the very difficult to navigate back-bush in Nelson BC, and a winery or two in the Okanagan.  If you must know.  It’s been mentally stimulating, sun-drenching and totally awesome.  I have a new love: tasting wine right at the winery.  There’s nothing better then walking up to the rows of vines to see what they overlook, whether it’s a lake, a subdivision, a lake, some houses, or more vines.  It caught up with me at Mission Hill, an emblematic family estate winery on top of a hill on the West Bank of Kelowna, how important a space can be, and how important your effort can make a space.  Large bell towers, statues scattered across the manicured lawns with a natural amphitheatre dramatically dipping down towards a break in the fortress walls, opening up to a rolling hill of wine-vines towards the lake, the mountains beyond, and the sky.  Each winery has it’s own selected elements that make up the flavour, complex or minimal.

Our tasting of the Legacy Series at Mission Hill, a trio of special occasion wines, was countered by our body odour from having camped 4 nights across the interior of British Columbia, rally driving through one-lane logging roads up-hill with the windows down to access free sites next to small lakes, with the most powerful smell of evergreen imaginable.  These campsites were surrounded by so many trees!   Nelson was a gem of a town, Greenwood not so much.  The hot springs in Ainsworth were the most relaxing mid-trip cleanse.  If my last few weeks could be bottled and aged, then served up at someones dinner party, they’d combine to be a Cabernet Sauvignon, widely accepted as one of the world’s best varieties.  Full-bodied, but firm and gripping when young.