Congratulations to BC’s Platinum Wine Align Award Winners!

A selection of BC wines shone at this year’s WineAlign awards. Congratulations to Deep Roots Winery**, Church and State Wines, Road 13 Vineyards, CC Jentsch Vineyards, La Stella Wines, and Mission Hill Winery for their respective “platinum” category award winners. You can find the full list of award winners here.

David Lawrason, co-head judge of the awards describes some of the overall results:

We handed out a record number of awards as well – 14 Platinum, 101 Gold, 263 Silver and 375 Bronze. Given that a bronze must have been scored 87 points by a panel of a minimum of three judges, we have hundreds of wines in Canada that our experts felt were ‘very good’or better. That should instill some confidence among consumers.

Among the list of 14 Platinum winners – the top 1% of wines in the country – there were three gamays from B.C. and Ontario, three “Rhone/syrah” inspired reds and one Rhone inspired white from B.C., two cabernet francs from Ontario and one merlot-based blend from B.C., two chardonnays from Norman Hardie in Prince Edward County, a great Niagara riesling, and a classic vidal icewine from the Okanagan Valley.

Among the 101 Gold Medals, we again saw a huge diversity of styles and varietals on the podium, although two thirds were reds, which may come as surprise to those who perceive cool climate Canada as a white wine hot zone. And within the reds there was a fairly equal split among the main genres – pinot noirs,  cabs and merlots as well as syrahs and blends thereof. Both British Columbia and Ontario were dealing with good red wine vintages in 2012 and 2013, the vintages that dominated this year’s competition (To qualify a wine must be bottled and available commercially in 2015).

Read David’s full article here.

Vancouver Sun wine writer (also one of the Wine Align judges) celebrates the BC wine successes in his latest holiday weekend themed column.

It’s fitting that on this B.C. Day long weekend we look at some of the amazing results attained by so many British Columbia wineries at the 2015 Wine Align National Wine Awards, the granddaddy of all Canadian wine competitions. The event attracted the largest ever number of entries at 1,408 entered in a Canadian wine competition by a record 205 wineries from across the country.

Al
ong with my co-head judge, David Lawrason a Toronto-based wine critic, we came away blown away by the rush to the top of so many wineries. There is clearly a new-found depth and breadth of producers that can make very fine quality wines. Do wineries produce too many wines? Yes. Should they tighten their lineups, certainly, but most would argue there is a wine out there for everyone.

…The Okanagan is stretching its legs and just in time for B.C. Day.

**UPDATE: We forgot one!!

Deep Roots Winery on the Naramata Bench was also one of WineAlign’s Platinum Award winners. Their 2014 Gamay Noir (which we know is lovely because we tasted it up at the winery in August!) was among the great BC wines chosen by the judges. Sorry that we missed you when we first published this post, guys. We think Deep Roots is one of the best new discoveries in the world of BC wine, and highly recommend visiting their gorgeous tasting room on Aikens Loop in Naramata, BC.