Black Hills Paradise

A couple of weekends ago, Scott and I met up with some friends that were in the area for the weekend for an afternoon of wine touring. of course Originally, it was planned as a lunch date but when you start with one winery it is really hard not to do another. They are addicting like Lays only better. Bet you can’t drink at just one.

Our lunch was set to meet at Black Hills Estate Winery in Oliver. Which is the wine capital of Canada, by the way. I know, this is such a terrible place to live. It is a burden but we are totally willing to bear it. I had heard a lot of great things about this winery and it was on my list of places to hit but we just hadn’t got around to it yet. There is a lot of buzz on social media about it. They like host events it seems. I have seen posts with celebrities partying it up there. It seemed like a cool to say the least and I was pretty I was going to like it. I was definitely not prepared for the amazing experience we had.

We were actually in for a special treat at this winery. One of our friends had won an exclusive wine club members only tasting.  This meant we got a special wine tasting experience out on the back patio.

From the front, it looks pretty much as you would expect any winery to look. We headed round the back as we saw our the party and it was an immediate WOW. They have cabana style seating around a beautiful pool. It felt a lot like a vacation getaway. I had to constantly remind myself that we were not in Caribbean AND that it was October! I mean, granted I was not sweating to death from the heat which I actually count as a bonus but it was a gorgeous day. The sun was definitely out and it was patio weather for sure.

Our hostess was great. First she brought out a selection of whites for us to try and gave us all the details about them. Then she left us to try them at our leisure. One bonus of going in October/slash the package Thorna won was that they were sold out of a lot of their regular wines so we got to taste some that were exclusive wine club members only. My favourite white was the Viognier. Just delicious. It was much the same story with the reds.

I really enjoyed all the reds. I would be hard pressed to pick a favourite but I must say their Nota Bene is definitely a few notches above the rest. This cult wine is so superb. It is a Cab Sav, Merlot and Cab Franc blend that I would love to buy by the truckload. Unfortunately with an almost $60 price tag it is a special occasions type wine and not an everyday wine for us. I may be a princess but an heiress to some great fortune I am not.

We decide it was time to order some food to go with all this great wine. There was six of us and we ordered a little of everything and shared around. Everything was delicious! You’ll have to excuse the fact that some of these food pictures aren’t set up well. I didn’t realize I was going to be blogging this when I took them. I was more concerned with quickly capturing it and more importantly stuffing it into my face.

We wined, dined and lounged around to our hearts content for about 3 hours. It was amazing! We had to pry ourselves away from there to get on with the afternoon. We hit a couple more wineries heading back into town. All in all it was a perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon. We will definitely be back. Also, clearly I am looking into joining this wine club so we can repeat this again next summer.