Awards & recognition stateside for JoieFarm Wines

JoieFarm winemaker Michael Dinn speaks with BCWineLover.com

It's really nice to see our old friends at JoieFarm, Michael Dinn & Heidi Noble, getting some well-deserved recognition for their many years of hard work. The story of the couple and their ascendancy in the very competitive Naramata Bench sub-appellation is fairly well-known today, but if you want all the background, see this explanation provided by Michael in 2007 posted on YouTube.

Yesterday the winery announced that they had been recognized as "BC Winery of the Year" for 2010 by WinePress Northwest. The magazine also placed one of our favourite wineries – Stoneboat Vineyards – as a "BC Winery to Watch".

Last year I ran into Michael Dinn at the Playhouse International Wine Festival, and recorded a short interview with him, which is posted above. We mainly talked about their decision to re-brand as "JoieFarm".

Perhaps as exciting for JoieFarm and other fine BC wineries was this review in The Atlantic, one of the most respected publications in the USA:

The city of Vancouver is a great food destination, but it's the locally produced wines that are sure to have oenophilic tongues wagging. Some 200 miles east of Vancouver, in Canada's only desert, the Okanagan Valley produces wonderfully unconventional and good-value wines that pair well with everything from curry to caribou.

Getting a plug in a highly influential publication like The Atlantic is the kind of exposure you can only pray for. It's really exciting for us to see our friends in BC's wine business getting this kind of acknowledgment.