The Vancouver Island Wine Experience
We visit the Cowichan Valley and translated means “warming your back against the sun” in the First Nations Coast Salish language. Cowichan Bay and the surrounding area is home to a number of great artists, craftspeople and cottage industries – and of course fine hand-crafted local wineries. The Cowichan Valley’s regional wines and ciders are consistently winning major awards. The area is noted for having more hours of sunshine than anywhere else in Canada, along with the right amount of precipitation and excellent soil, which makes this the perfect setting for wine and cider production.
It is British Columbia’s newest wine-growing region and has become known for its Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir, Foch, Marechal varieties and wonderful bubbly sparking wines. This shows the region has the ability to make really great wines, even in years when the weather doesn’t co-operate.
The Cowichan Valley is quite a neighborly environment with very responsible members and vineyard owners who are very environmentally conscience and don’t use pesticides to control the pests or weeds and they try to minimize waste wherever possible.
Most of our local wineries are small independent wineries’ that are operated as family businesses. The wine tour season seems to really kick off between May and October, but that doesn’t mean that all the wineries’ close from November to April. Some of the wineries’ take this time, to have some much needed rest after the busy growing season, while some of the larger wineries’ are open so you can still have a great tour during the off season as well.