Howard Soon

As you know one of my main goals during this Co-op was to learn more about wine. Today I attended a seminar at Canoe hosted by Howard Soon . Many different people where there some from different hotels around Victoria , and the majority of the people were from Cascada liquor store. Howard Soon is the Master Wine maker for Sandhill winery . This year Sandhill won for best wine in the Canadian wine championships. He was a very interesting man . As a business man he always puts wine quality first . This really came through when he said that the Sandhill winery would rather have a larger yield , because this means that they are only using the highest quality of grapes. Howard has been working in the wine industry for over 35 years and now. As well as teaches other wine makers the art of wine making. Many of his students make wine for other VQA wineries loacated in Okanagan. Some of this wineries are X0X0, Red Rooster and Peller Estates all these companies are under the same company of Sandhill winery .

We all got the opportunity to try many different wine varieties. Here is a list of the wines we got to taste. Pinot Blanc, Pinot noir , chardonnay , unoaked chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc (my favorite) Gamay Noir, and two different types of merlots. Personally I Preferred the White wines over the Reds . Although I have been enjoying wines for the last couple years I still find red wine to be to full bodied and tannins. During the end I got to personally introduce myself to him and ask him a few questions . Then he asked us questions based on his seminar. I answered a few questions right and won myself a prize. A Peller camping chair . It was the perfect ending to such a informative gathering .