VinoCamp 2008 – Overview

August 17, 2008 | 9:25 pm

VinoCamp 2008 has come and gone, and what a great success it was.

This was part of my birthday present to Russ. It was a combination of wine tasting and education with a splash of geekiness thrown in.

Getting to the event proved to be harder than I had thought, and even my trusty GPS on the iPhone failed me to find my location. I was glad that I was at least able to get online and find a map of the UBC campus to get me to the UBC Botanical Gardens before the 10am start. Luckily we weren’t the only ones that were lost as the even was about 1/2 hour late in begining.

Thankfully when we arrived I had spotted Colleen who was live blogging the event over at Drinks After Dark.

The morning began with an opening address from Dr. Hennie JJ van Vuuren, Founding Director of the UBC Wine Research Center. In his address he discussed how UBC was isolating specific genes of the yeast to help in wine production. Most of it was fairly technical and even with my biochemistry background it was hard to keep up. I think it was also hard to hear him though he was only 2 tables in front of us.

We then had a great discussion of the BC Wine Regions by Kathy Malone of Township 7. She went through the specific regions in BC which produced wine and which specific grapes they grew. Of course most was centered around the Okanogan area as they produce over 60% of BC wines.

Our next speaker was Brad Cooper, also of Township 7, and discussed better ways of making homemade wine. He discussed how a new start up company, Crushpad, has elevated the premium homemade wine industry. Crushpad allows you to to create your own distinct wine. You have access to a variety of grapes, as well as access to their own specialized winemakers. All this allows you to create your own specific wine which you can then market and sell to restaurants or other sellers, all without having to have your own production facility. Truly awesome!!

Our next presenters were Michelle Bouffard and Michaela Morris of House Wine. They discussed how you pairing of wine with foods is important. They let everyone know that when having a very hearty and heavy meal, you should pair the meal with a more flavourful and robust wine. These two will always compliment each other. This was a perfect gateway to what was next, our lunch.

During lunch we had the opportunity to try specific wines with each portion of our meal. Although I didn’t try out the wines during lunch, Russ said the combination of the food with the requested wine was actually very refreshing.

After lunch we were treated to what I would say was one of my highlights of the event. David Sanders of Riedel Crystal, discussed how the glass shape actually affects the taste of the wine. Of course I was very skeptical of this, but as we tried wines and then tried them again with different shapes, you actually noticed a difference. The main reason David said was that the wine glass is meant to help target the specific taste buds in the mouth. Colleen has a better write up on this.

We were then treated to Bal Arneson, how showed us that even through Indian Food you can always pair a specific wine to go with your meal. Anthony Nicalo discussed about Organic and Sustainable Winemaking and closing off Kelly Robson who writed a wine blog called Full Bodied. She started this blog as a hobby which caught the attention of Chatelaine Magazine, who she now writes for.

I couldn’t believe all the wine that we got try, who knew that drinking wine starting at 10am would be so much fun!