Ya Ya Wine Weekend

Ya-Ya SisterSpeak: "Which Way to the Wine Festival?"







I'm thinking that this weekend will go down in our family history books as one that required mucho recovery (ouch)!

Present for this wine-0-rama were... my mum's many zany sisters, plus Wunderfull Winnipeg cousins & kooky kid, plus Awesome Ottawa cousin, plus Ever-Lovely Edmonton friend, plus a few fun tagalongs here & there, as well! Phew. Needless to say, wine flowed all weekend, along with conversation and food and craziness (did they really dance to Bryan Adams on Saturday night??)....

On Saturday, the requisite day-o-touring was performed here in Kelowna -- with visits to Summerhill Winery, St.Hubertus and Cedar Snobby Creek (the last winery being too damned uptight to even bother tasting there.... seriously, a reality check for folks-working-at-local-wineries: it's Kelowna fer gawd's sakes...as in, l'il ol' Canada! not the snotty south of France! )

Then it was off to Carmelis Goat Cheese heavenly cheese shop for delectable samples of their extremely wine-friendly products (which we later consumed in mass quantities at home!). Then a quick trip up to Mission Hill Winery to see if we could make their wimpy wineshop staff cry (I won that competition in record time, too!!) and Quail's Gate for a last stop on the Kelowna arm of the tour.

By Sunday, we poured our remains into a few cars and drove down to Oliver, at the South end of our Okanagan grape growing region, for the annual Festival of the Grape and Grape Stomp competition (note, a few pictures up, that even the youngest generation was enticed to smush grapes between his toes!.... which, by the way, were not washed at all for the rest of the weekend...!)


Grape Stomp is a festival that's growing in popularity down here, due mostly to the fact that, well, it rocks. Killer music all day (see funny, "puffy" photo of The Nylons above), awesome & various food, lotsa hippie-inspired clothes & jewelry and, of course, wine wine & more wine to slosh into your glass & then gulp down yer gullet (as demonstrated by this hairy pair at left!)

And somehow, our livers and this little fella below survived the whole weekend. Which begs the question: will Grape Stomp become an annual event for the Ya Ya Familyhood? I know that if we buy just a few more cap-guns, that one little critter will already go out & buy his plane tickets tomorrow!!