Taste the grape

In wine-making circles, the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia is known as Napa North, after the famed wine-making Napa Valley in California. And one Aboriginal band is taking full opportunity of the fruit basket of Canada.

Visitors to the lush Okanagan Valley can stop at the Osoyoos First Nation and tour wine-making facilities and taste wine produced from the only Aboriginal-owned and operated wine-grape vineyard in Canada. Tours are scheduled every Monday to Friday between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. from May to August.

Vincor International, the largest wine company in Canada, owns the Inniskillin Winery located on leased Osoyoos First Nation land. Vincor produces several quality wines under different labels, including Jackson Triggs, a favorite at Vancouver's upscale restaurants such as Umberto's and Bishop's.

Osoyoos is an Okanagan Indian word meaning "the narrows" or "the place where two lakes come together." The earliest inhabitants came around 1100 AD and their presence and history is recorded on ancient petroglyphs on mountain cave walls. These petroglyphs, or rock drawings, are incorporated into the Inniskillin label.

Visitors to the winery are taken through the bottling shop and then walk by the 145 stainless steel vats in the tank room where wine is aging. Through the tour, visitors get in on several sessions ot wine-tasting from the grapes grown strictly in the Oliver/Osoyoos vineyards. The award-winning wines tasted are all black label, which are selected wines 100 per cent B.C. grown.

#Tastings are one to two ounce servings of wine beginning with the driest and moving to the sweetest. Tour guides begin with a Chardonnay, go to a Reisling, then a red and finally a dessert wine.

Tour guides prefer between 10 to 15 visitors at a time, but have taken up to 90 people at once. There is no fee for the tour or tastings.

A yearly grape festival is traditionally held in Osoyoos the first week in October and brings together all the winemakers and vineyard owners in the province. Sam Baptiste, Inkameep Vineyard manager and president of the B.C. Grape Growers Association, always manages to attend although the festival falls during harvest, the busiest time in the vineyard.

Restaurants feature different wines and invite the wine-makers in to talk about their products. Competitions are held, with judges selecting the best grapes and wine of the season and winemakers and growers are invited to display their wares.

There are 36 wineries in the Okanagan Valley, most of which are farm-gate and estate wineries. Farm-gate wineries are generally small family operations. Estate wineries are larger but limited in production. Vincor is the largest and only commercial winery with unlimited production.

Vincor is a merger of several winemakers who have been in production since the late 1800s and includes names such as Bright's, Cartier's, Casobello, Chateauguay, and the Canada Cooler Co. It's main plant is in the Niagara Peninsula, Ont., and a new plant recently opened in Rougemont, Que.