Canada's Okanagan uncorked: An expanded spring wine festival showcases more than 100 B.C. wineries

Baseball fans have spring training as an excuse to leave town, escape the cold, wet weather and enjoy their pastime. Wine lovers have a similar refuge.

The Okanagan Spring Wine Festival, one of four seasonal wine festivals in British Columbia's southern interior, offers numerous events, May 1 through 11, that include wine tastings, winery and vineyard tours, seminars and gourmet wine meals.

More than 100 of British Columbia's 136 licensed wineries are in the Okanagan Valley, and many of them participate in the spring festival, now in its 14th year. Previously a four-day festival each May, the spring events have expanded.

"We've now extended to 11 days to mirror the fall festival," said Blair Baldwin, with the Okanagan Wine Festivals. Like an airline adding flights when existing routes near capacity, the spring festival has added events and extended its length to accommodate more wine tourists and promote more wineries, he said.

The fall festival, going for 28 years, has been the big draw in past years, timed in early October to wineries' release of their latest red vintages. While it's growing, the spring festival has kept attendance more intimate at most events.

"That means a better chance to meet and talk with wine managers, viticulturists and winemakers," Baldwin said.

For those who enjoy white wines, spring also is when many wineries are releasing the latest vintage of their whites, he said. And for fans of some smaller producers, it may be the best opportunity to get a prized wine.

"A lot of the more serious wine tourists come out knowing they can get a special wine from a winery that's not easy to find elsewhere," Baldwin said.

Julianna Hayes, a wine columnist for two Okanagan Valley newspapers and commentator for Canadian Broadcasting Corp. radio, enjoys the focus the festival puts on the pairing wine and food at different events, such as wine-and-cheese parties, brunches and winemaker dinners, where one or two wineries serve a particular wine married to the foods in each course of a meal, serving a different wine from soup to nuts.

"It's an excellent way to get that wine and food pairing experience," Hayes said. "If you have a favorite winery, a good thing to do is go to a winemaker's dinner, get a sit-down meal at a great restaurant or winery and an opportunity to taste a variety of wines from a winemaker and sometimes wines not typically available for tasting, such as wines that haven't been released yet."

(Hayes' advice when enjoying wine with a meal: Take a sip of wine as you have food in your mouth so you can appreciate the flavors the wine brings out in the food and the food brings out in the wine.)

"I like going to events that have other cultural components," such as tastings at art galleries. "Most people who are into wine are into other cultural areas."

The festival's large tasting parties, where scores of wineries set up tables and offer samples of some of their wines, can be a good way for many to expose themselves to many different wineries and varieties of wine. The endless selection of choices can seem overwhelming, Hayes said.

"It's like a wine-o-rama," she said, "with a lot of people and a lot of wine."

She advises people to concentrate on a particular variety, such as a chardonnay, syrah or merlot. And if not, then start with the whites and work your way toward the more full-bodied reds. "Don't go back and forth," she warned.

And those buckets off to the sides of tables? Use them. Swirl the wine in your glass, note its aroma, take a sip, and after you've tasted it -- spit.

"Not enough people do that. If you're not spitting, by the fifth wine it all tastes the same and you're not getting the experience," Hayes said.

Hayes will lead her own tasting seminar May 1 at the B.C. Wine Museum in Kelowna. She'll lead a blind tasting where the winery and variety of the wine will be left a mystery for the tasters, at least at first. It's similar to what happens when judges evaluate wines at competitions.

"Everybody will get a sheet and I'll go through what the judges do, give some insight on what a judge is looking for. And we'll award prizes to anyone who can guess the wine, the producers or the vintage," she said.

While guessing a winemaker or a vintage by a blind taste would be a challenge for even a knowledgeable wine nose, Hayes said most people with a little wine knowledge can, for example, distinguish a chardonnay from a riesling by the chardonnay's oaky undertones.

While you're enjoying your wine, you might look around and notice the beauty of the Okanagan Valley, a dry and warm region similar to Washington's own Okanogan, but kept verdant through irrigation.

Spring's a beautiful time of the year in the Okanagan Valley, said Jennifer Busmann with Nk'Mip Cellars (pronounced "in-ka-meep") in Osoyoos. Nk'Mip is owned and operated by the Osoyoos Indian Band.

Spring is bud-break time in the valley, with the vineyards starting to come out of their winter dormancy.

"It's a little quieter now. We're maintaining our cellars and finished pruning the vineyards. But the weather is quite nice now, and we do start seeing more tourists," Busmann said. "The fruit trees are blooming. It's beautiful."