Get your fest on
Dine in a teepee. Consume copious amounts of garlic. Sip award-winning wines.
Pair food-truck fare with select vintages.
And-or have lunch in the vineyard.
All is possible during the 37th annual Fall Okanagan Wine Festival coming up Sept. 28 to Oct. 8.
The 11-day wine party is the Valley’s largest and best-known annual fest attracting more than 100,000 people who attend more than 100 events and visit wineries for tastings and purchases.
West Kelowna’s Indigenous World Winery’s Teepee Dinner Series is poised to be the most unique offering of the fest.
“It’s just so powerful to be in a teepee. It’s the most recognizable Aboriginal symbol and has incredible energy because it connects people in its simple circle created by sticks and cloth,” said chef Andrea Callan of Indigenous’ Red Fox Club restaurant.
“When the teepee first went up at the winery three months ago, I started to think: What special events can we hold in there?”
Indigenous’ teepee is 30 feet high and 16 feet in diameter, making it the perfect size for a horseshoe-sized dinner table for 20.
The winery will host six dinners in the teepee during wine fest on Thursday and Friday and Oct. 1, 2, 6 and 7.
The cost is $155 per person on EventBrite.ca and includes welcome reception on the teepee’s lakeview patio and dinner with wine pairings in the teepee.
Callan hasn’t completely finalized menus yet but expects to serve up what she calls modern Native cuisine such as Arctic char with berries, elk, bison ribs and salads of foraged greens.
She plans to pair the dishes with red and sparkling wines Indigenous is releasing in time for the fall fest along with Red Fox rose, the restaurant’s namesake vintage.
The official kick-off event of the fall festival is the British Columbia Wine Awards Thursday at Kelowna’s Laurel Packinghouse.
Platinum, gold, silver and bronze medal winners will be announced, along with a wine of the year Premier’s Medal, and then people have an opportunity to taste the winners.
Tickets are $55 at TheWineFestivals.com.
On Sept. 30, Hester Creek Winery in Oliver is hosting its sixth annual Garlic Festival as part of wine fest.
Twenty local garlic growers and crafters will be on hand.
There will also be food carts and live entertainment.
Hester Creek’s wine shop will be open for tastings and sales.
One of the items the wine shop sells is Original Garlic Scape Salt from FarmersDotter in nearby Cawston.
The salt jazzes up everything from steak to popcorn and is a favourite of Hester Creek’s director of hospitality Roger Gillespie, who uses it liberally in his cooking classes at the winery.
Hester Creek’s restaurant, Terrafina, will also be open serving chef Rod Butters’ RJB, a gourmet steak sandwich featuring an astounding eight cloves of garlic in the caramelized onion jam that tops it.
The ideal wine to stand up to all that red meat and garlic is Hester Creek’s newly-released 2 0 1 5 Syrah Viognier ($27).
It features aromas of violet and salami and flavours of dark cherry and pepper.
Three other Hester Creek wines released just in time for the wine and garlic fests are the creamy and citrusy 2016 Chardonnay ($25), crisp and juicy 2016 Character White blend ($18) of Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer, Trebbiano, Pinot Blanc, Chardonnay and Semillon and Reserve Cabernet Franc Block 2014 ($29) featuring ripe raspberry and current fronting hints of dill, sage and underbrush.
Check out the full list of fall wine fest events at TheWineFestivals.com or in the booklet distributed in last week’s Okanagan Weekend newspaper, which is also available at most wineries, tourist information centres, hotels and restaurants in the Valley.