Canadian Wine – The Sipster's Guides with Luke Whittall

Crushing It, Niagara Style

You will hear 2 other voices on this week’s podcast and those will be of Graham Rennie and Matt Loney. Graham is the found of The Niagara Custom Crush Studio in Vineland, Ontario and Matt Loney is the General Manager. They are innovative and pushing the envelope for a new style of custom crush facility. They are just getting started now but they are on track to become a focal point in Niagara’s wine industry, acting as an incubator for new brands to get established and as a home base for their own brands. Graham’s flagship is Rennie Estate Winery, which produces some of the most amazing red wines ever to come out of Ontario, in my opinion. That’s why I featured one in my first volume of the Sipster’s Pocket Guide to 50 Must-Try Ontario Wines. I sat down with Graham and Matt to taste through some of their portfolio and what you will hear now is the discussion that happened at that tasting.

If you have not heard of appassimento styles of wines, you should really check this out because Ontario is really making some beautiful wines using these techniques.

Listen to this week’s podcast here or on your favourite podcast player.

Email me your experiences at sipsterswinepodcast@gmail.com!

Purchase copies of “The Sipsters Pocket Guides” here!

Support Sipsters by subscribing!

Thank you for listening!

Catching up with Noelle Starzynski

Noelle Starzynski, wine marketer extraordinaire, joins me on the podcast this week. She is perhaps best known for her work with Lakeside Cellars in Osoyoos, BC where she has been working for the past 5 years helping to build their brand and hospitality program. I first met Noelle in the middle of the last decade and we have been running into each other at various events and stores ever since. We didn’t see much of each other during the pandemic of course. Events started back up just as I was getting this podcast started last year but was only recently able to follow through on her threat to make an appearance on it, which happened right before I was to set off to Ontario a couple of weeks ago. It’s a fun conversation filled with mystery wines (including a beautiful Ferox Merlot from Virgil, Ontario) and excitement. Clearly, we had lots of things to talk about.

Listen to this week’s podcast here or on your favourite podcast player.

Email me your experiences at sipsterswinepodcast@gmail.com!

Purchase copies of “The Sipsters Pocket Guides” here!

Support Sipsters by subscribing!

Thank you for listening!

Wine art at Rigour and Whimsy

This week’s podcast was recorded last summer at Rigour and Whimsy Winery in Okanagan Falls. This is the unofficial Part 2 from the episode I did with Jess Hopwood from Farm to Glass Wine Tours. If you haven’t heard it, it is totally worth going back to listen to it. I had planned to cut this into Jess’s episode but the tasting went longer than I thought and Jess and I talked WAY longer than I thought so I’ve given it its own podcast.

You will hear the voices you will hear along with Jess and I is Rigour and Whimsy owners Costa Gavaris and Jody Gavaris, the team behind this super-creative winery up behind Peach Cliff in Okanagan Falls. It was tons of fun and the wines were amazing and super-expressive. One of them may even end up in a future book somewhere…

Listen to this week’s podcast here or on your favourite podcast player.

Email me your experiences at sipsterswinepodcast@gmail.com!

Purchase copies of “The Sipsters Pocket Guides” here!

Support Sipsters by subscribing!

Thank you for listening!

Join the Club!

This might be get loud. Do not adjust your devices. This is what real enthusiasm for wine sounds like. Carl and his wife Mira are partnered in running Carl’s Wine Club. Carl joined me recently in the Sipster’s studio for a chat about Canadian wine. He’s got an amazing perspective on it and tastes so much wine over the course of his working year! Nobody in this country has the unique perspective that he has and it was fascinating to hear his views. He brought along a bottle of Merlot from Ontario producer Bella Terra that we taste while talking about the stigma that still surrounds wine in this country.

Listen to this week’s podcast here or on your favourite podcast player.

Email me your experiences at sipsterswinepodcast@gmail.com!

Purchase copies of “The Sipsters Pocket Guides” here!

Support Sipsters by subscribing!

Thank you for listening!

Getting Busy in Season 2

The fall is always a busy time in the industry and even though I no longer work in the cellars as part of the harvest, I am still busy busy busy. I’m kicking off the second season of The Sipster’s Wine Podcast with tons of announcements!

PLUS! You will get to hear excerpts from the Sipster’s Pocket Guides – BC Volumes 1 and 2 as well as a sneak preview of a chapter from the soon-to-be-released Sipster’s Pocket Guide to 50 Must-Try Ontario Wines.

Links from this episode:
Summerland Reading October 24th
Kelowna Canadian Italian Club

Wines featured in this podcast:
Gehringer Brothers Old Vines Auxerrois
Moon Curser Dolceto
Nagging Doubt Siegerrebe
Lola Cabernet Sauvignon Cabernet Franc

Listen to this week’s podcast here or on your favourite podcast player.

Email me your experiences at sipsterswinepodcast@gmail.com!Purchase copies of “The Sipsters Pocket Guides” here!Support Sipsters by subscribing!

Thank you for listening!

That One Time in a Tesla

If it’s one thing I’ve learned from my years of producing a podcast, it’s that I can plan anything I want to, with as much detail and precision as I am capable of, but in the end the results are usually out of my control. I don’t have a journalism background and therefore, no training about how to maintain perspective or ask the tough questions or anything like that. Sometimes, I just have to go along for the ride and see where it takes me.

This is literally what happened with I met Jess Hopwood and spent the afternoon zooming around in her Tesla talking about wine touring. Jess owns and operates Farm to Glass Wine Tours, an extraordinary eco-conscious wine tour venture offering high-level private tours all through the Okanagan and Similkameen valleys.

Jess with a recent vintage, Chateau de Laine perhaps?.

My original plan was to drive around, chat about wine touring, and maybe get a little of that Tesla road ambiance at the same time. Jess, whirlwind of enthusiasm that she is, had more ideas. In this podcast, we talk Tesla’s, EV’s, emissions, visit a winery, and then taste a wine back at Sipster’s HQ. It is a fantastic conversation and, like the tours that Jessie offers, an amazing experience.

She also has a special offer for listeners of the Sipster’s Podcast. Listen for the special code to get 15% off any wine tour from Farm to Glass Wine Tours. She even made a special Sipster’s page on her website that has more of a backstory about how this podcast came to be.

Listen to this week’s podcast here

Email your answers to this week’s Big Question, your comments or questions, or your special wine experiences to me at sipsterswinepodcast@gmail.com!

Support Sipsters by subscribing!

Thank you for listening!

The One with Laura Milnes

I first met Laura in early 2018, I believe through social media (although it was a bit of a blurry time in my life at that point so I might be wrong). In any case, we spent the afternoon chatting about wine and looking at the lake in the warm spring sun. Laura was not like other people that I had talked to about wine. Her questions to me where very different and I liked that immediately. We stayed in touch and I always thought back to that conversation and how great it would have been to capture it for a podcast. Problem was, I wasn’t doing a podcast at that time.

However, within the year she created a vlog to accompany her blog, called Silk and Coupe and she invited me to be a guest on it. She interviewed me about my first book, which hadn’t even been released at that point) and we again went our separate ways. But we stayed in touch casually over the years and when I found out that she was going to be in the Okanagan visiting family, I jumped at the chance to finally get a podcast interview with her.

Her evolution as a wine personality is unique in that she has experience with all of the major wine producing regions in Canada. In this chat, we get into Dad Wines & Natty Bros, and how she learned to hold a wine glass properly. Of course, the infamous Titty Tees will make an appearance too. She’s outspoken, opinionated, very well spoken, and informed. Enjoy part 1 of my conversation with Laura Milnes.

Crushable Wine Club

Listen to this week’s podcast here

The One with Eagles in the Distance

It’s another flashback episode this week featuring Steve Venables from Forbidden Fruit Winery in the Similkameen Valley. This is a slightly ASMR interview since it was recorded outside in February on a beautiful day while sitting near the banks of the mighty Similkameen River. This was originally recorded February 2012.

During the pandemic, I had to really temper my habit of stopping in to places to say hi and catch up but am slowly getting back to doing that whenever I can. I visited Steve just last spring, stopping in to say hello, and we talked about recording this interview. With that memory flooding back, I thought it would be great to revisit and share it with all the sipsters out there who might appreciate growing things naturally and learning that ‘organic’ is more than just a way to grow food.

Listen to this week’s podcast here

The One Where Luke Disappears

Uh, hello? Is there anyone producing this podcast?

Ok, I’ve been busy. The late spring and summer have been a bit abnormal for me and I had to step away from the podcast world for a short time. But, I’m back and plan on bringing more crisp and refreshing podcasty goodness to your app in the coming months.

Officially, this will be the beginning of the end of Season 1. I have noticed that the word ‘season’ when referring to podcasts is a little vague. Some podcasts have seasons that are 6 months long. Others produce 6 episodes, release them in one shot, and then call that a season. Some produce constantly throughout the year and declare a new season when they reach their anniversary. Prolific YouTubers seem to do that.

That’s also what I did for my old podcast, which lasted 5 ‘seasons’. And then I burned out. And stopped for 8 years. So maybe I won’t do that with the Sipster’s Wine Podcast. The first Sipster’s podcast was launched in October so I will keep to that anniversary date but I think I’m going to take some time off now and then.

That’s what I did in the past couple of months. Listen in to find out what happened…

Listen to this week’s podcast here

John Schreiner’s Memoirs Part 2

Listen to Part 1 and 2 on your favourite podcast player.

If you think you know something about BC Wine but you don’t know who John Schreiner is, then you still have a lot to learn. Wine in BC (and Canada) has not always been as good as it is now. At least a generation of wine drinkers (or maybe two) now does not remember when Canadian wine was the butt of jokes and probably shouldn’t have been consumed by humans before 1994. John saw the potential and began writing about it in the 1970s, publishing his first book about BC wine in 1984. As he says, he was a friend of BC wine when BC wine had no friends.

I first read one of John’s books more than 20 years ago, met him for the first time soon after that, and he’s been an inspiration and a mentor to me for well over a decade. John and I can talk about wine a lot and we both seem to lose track of time. Our affinity for the wines, the industry, and the personalities of the people in that industry seems to drive both of us. It’s always such a joy to get to chat with John.

He’s got a new book of memoirs out now called “Goodgrog: A Life in Wine and Journalism”. It is filled with stories of his vast experiences from growing up in small town Saskatchewan to travelling the world as a journalist. This provides the “terroir” from which Canada’s most prolific wine writer emerges as the author of 19 books about wine in BC and Canada. It’s a truly fascinating read to learn about someone who is more often out of the spotlight than in it. He knows so much about the wine industry in BC but that information only flows one way. Who is this guy? This book answers all of those questions.

It was a beautiful spring day on the back deck at his home in North Vancouver. We began the chat over a beautiful glass of Mirabel Chardonnay and chatting a little about one of his few non-wine books.

Read John Schreiner’s Wine Blog.