Oliver and Osoyoos are some of our favorite hangouts in BC. We love the wine, the restaurants, the views, and the vibes in the southern Okanagan. We used to go all out every time we came down to this area, trying to taste as much as possible. In the last few years, we’ve started limiting ourselves to about 2-4 at most. We have to hit some of our favorites, and we try to check out a new-to-us winery.

The Oliver Osoyoos Wine Country Association has this “Passport Program” that encourages you to visit all these wineries for tastings and get stamps, and you get entered into a draw of some sort. We used to do it every time we visited the region, trying to taste as much as possible as the stamping system brings out our competitive side.

As we’ve grown over the years, we slowly stopped doing that because it gets pretty tricky after a few wineries. It made sense at first because every winery was new to us. Eventually, some wineries became favorites, and so we’d know what to expect. But when you go to too many wineries in one afternoon, at least in our case, everything starts to taste the same.

It was finally time to try out Le Vieux Pin Winery. We’ve driven by it many, many times because we’re always on Black Sage Road. The wine ambassador was really lovely and let us try everything. All of their wines are French-inspired, and we loved them all! We’ll have to go back and document our tasting more closely.

Black Hills was no different, they were awesome as usual! We’re wine club members and have access to the cabana tastings. We didn’t have the chance to stop for lunch, we typically like to stop by Miradoro, the restaurant at Tinhorn Creek Vineyards.

We used to take weekend trips to Oliver/Osoyoos when we lived in Vancouver. Now that we live in Kelowna, it’s easy to make a few winery visits into a day trip. In the summer, there are tons of fruit and veggie stands open, so we make sure we start the day on the earlier side, so we can swing by those stands before they close. A good portion of the drive is along Okanagan Lake, so the views are simply stunning.

We’ve seen people cycling from winery to winery around here. We’ve cycled Black Sage Road before. And we’ve participated in the Half Corked Marathon with running from winery to winery. All the power to you, but it’s more enjoyable to drive around for tastings! If you have an electric vehicle, there are a few places and a few wineries that have “free charging”, like Black Hills. However, those chargers charge so slowly, it’s not even really worth plugging in. The temperatures are super hot, so think about bringing a cooler for your wines. And it’s way too toasty to bring a dog during the summer, so it’s best to leave them back at the hotel or at home.

Have you been to Oliver or Osoyoos? What are your favorite wineries?

The post Southern Okanagan Day Trip to Le Vieux Pin and Black Hills appeared first on The Lifestyle Of Us.

Friday Afternoon – Wineries and Golf

I was expecting my friend to show up a little closer to noon, so that we could possibly have lunch before heading out for wine tastings. And also have time to get in a round of golf afterward. She was wrapping up her work trip “nearby” just north of Vernon, but there was so much traffic so it took her a bit longer than expected to get into Kelowna. Though, it really really didn’t matter what time we started because you can only really hit up so many wineries before they all start to taste the same… if you know what I mean.

We headed out to Summerland because we like a lot of wineries out there, and since it was the long weekend we thought we would try and avoid the crowds locally in Kelowna. We drove down and started our tasting up at Thornhaven. The last time we went, we loved everything they had to offer. This time we found everything to be much sweeter than we remembered. It was good, but today it was not to our taste. We had a great time in the tasting room though, as we lucked out between crowds and had the whole place to ourselves.

In addition to Thornhaven winery, we also went to Lunessence, Silkscarf, and Sumac Ridge before we headed back. Lunessence has great red wines and beautiful views of the vineyard and the lake. One of our friends really likes Silkscarf so we went back, but again we really didn’t care for it so I think we’ll stop trying. Shelby really likes wines from Sumac Ridge so we brought her there to wrap up the winery tastings. Sumac Ridge had a great range of wine to try, and we really like the Stellars Jay bubbly from there. After trying not to buy too many wines, we had a decent haul for ourselves to bring home.

Summerland is a quick jaunt away from Kelowna, so it didn’t take very long to get back. We put on our golf gear before we went wine tasting, so we were able to drive straight to the golf course. We decided to take Shelby to 2 Eagles in West Kelowna. She said she hadn’t played in a while, and we thought the front 9 offers beautiful views, isn’t terribly challenging, super walkable and gives you a good opportunity to socialize.

Since we were playing a twilight round and it was getting late, we decided to just eat at the course. The weather was super nice and we sat out on the patio.

Saturday – Hikes, Brunch, Charcuterie and Dinner

Sunday started off with a hike at Knox Mountain. If you’ve never hiked anywhere in Kelowna, Knox is a great place for it to be your first. We parked in the lower lot, and took the trail up to the top. We hiked Apex to Camelot to Ogopogo to Paul’s Tomb.

It took us a little over 90 minutes to do the hike, and then headed out for brunch at Central.

The food is pretty consistent at Central. We ended up crashing their luau party, so they had an even more fun selection of food. But we all ended up deciding to order off the regular menu. Brunch was really filling, so we decided that the beach was in order to relax and enjoy the afternoon.

There are tons of beaches in Kelowna, but Gyro is a nice place to go if it’s your first time. There’s plenty of parking, and the beach is quite large with a mix of sand, and grassy areas at the back. There are nice restrooms and change rooms nearby, as well as a simple food kiosk. There’s also a ton of shops and restaurants nearby, so it’s really quite a good setup.

Since we had been out all day, we headed home for our own little happy hour and dinner. Our friends turned us onto truffle salami, so we put some of that out with home made hummus and garden grown cherry heirloom tomatoes. We love snacking at our house, so we think we put together a pretty mean charcuterie. We will soon have to get ourselves a graze board since those seem to be all the rage, but I like keeping all the snacks separate so they don’t get soggy and mixed up.

Justin made lightly grilled albacore tuna, Shishito peppers, yams, yellow zucchini and grilled romaine for dinner.

After dinner, we ended up hanging outside on the patio some more with a couple bottles of wine. It was the perfect temperature, not too hot and not too cold. There was a slight breeze and didn’t seem like there were too many mosquitos out. We fired up the outdoor fireplace, and turned on the string lights. It was a perfect way to cap off Shelby’s visit.

Sunday – Chilling and Mountain Biking

Shelby wanted to hit the road early since she was heading back to Vancouver, so she left in the morning. Justin and I ended up going mountain biking to wrap up our weekend.

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