Our best experience in Okanagan Valley for both food and wine! The estate is gorgeous, on a hill overlooking Lake Okanagan. We dined with some great views on this trip, but this one beat them all. The food was also, complex, delicate, and thoughtful, accompanied by flexible wine pairings, which gave us an opportunity to test five of their wines, all terrific. 

The server here was also terrific, and saved us a trip to the tasting room by letting us sign up for the wine club right there. It’s very flexible, just asking for three purchases a year, so we made the first right then, and I selected wines for a case that she even carried to our car.

https://www.yelp.com/biz/mission-hill-family-estate-west-kelowna-6

This might be the most expensive winery we visited on our trip. It’s gorgeous. But it’s in the cold weather region of North Okanagan, and we really didn’t like the wines, even their flagship pinot noir. Let’s just say we had cocktails during lunch. Their restaurant, though was great. We especially loved the Aguachile Negro, a ceviche with fish and a VERY generous add-on of prawns. The entire staff of the outfit (who all looked like they came from central casting) were fantastic.

https://www.yelp.com/biz/block-one-lake-country-2

A lot of money went into this beautiful facility a couple of miles south of Kelowna. We had a late lunch at the restaurant, which is dramatically positioned overlooking the valley. It was very popular with the “in” crowd. We were definitely outnumbered by YSL purses. I’d like to say that the food was good, but it wasn’t. The “Crispy Mushrooms” were particularly ghastly: a mushy mushroom with mushy batter around it, topped with flavorless lentils, and on top of a good horseradish sauce that couldn’t fix it.

With lunch we had glasses of the chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, pinot noir, and cabernet franc. The wine was okay, but nothing we would purchase. Despite the receipt saying “estate” most of these grapes were brought in from elsewhere because of the freeze damage. The sauvignon blanc came all the way from New Zealand. They’re definitely trying to deal with a cold climate here, which tends to favor austere whites, not really our style.

https://www.yelp.com/biz/home-block-at-cedarcreek-estate-winery-kelowna-2