Wine tour recommendations - Kelowna

[taco.vidal]

Ive never used these guys but always see them at wineries when were doing our own visits.
http://www.topcattours.com/

You may want to check them out and find some reviews (Tripadvisor, etc)

[Ducay]

Originally Posted by SeeGeeWhy

Dirty laundry is fun and all of the wines are great. Just outside of west kelowna.

Its in Summerland, which is just a few minutes up from Penticton. Not really close to West Kelowna at all. While it is a gorgeous patio there, its basically a giant tourist trap and feels horribly contrived. There are many way better places to visit in the area. Reminds me of the Enchanted Forest (minus the paper mache dolls).

Really depends on the type of tour you're looking for. Small wineries are more likely to give better access, but many aren't set up for formal tours. The larger ones (Mission Hill, Quails Gate, etc) do lots of tours, but they're fairly generic and you don't get much interesting in terms of seeing cool things, etc. Now is a pretty boring time for wineries. Not much to do until vintage, which is more into October.

If you're in Westbank (aka "West Kelowna", but don't get me started), its much better to just go from winery to winery and do tastings, and then if you can swing a quick informal tour, go for it. Head up Boucherie Rd and hit Little Straw, Mt Bouch, Quails, Mission Hill. If you don't drink too much you can do it all the way down to Penticton, and hit up Sumac, Crush Pad, etc.

[JohnnyB]

Originally Posted by Ducay

Its in Summerland, which is just a few minutes up from Penticton. Not really close to West Kelowna at all. While it is a gorgeous patio there, its basically a giant tourist trap and feels horribly contrived. There are many way better places to visit in the area. Reminds me of the Enchanted Forest (minus the paper mache )

I hate to have to agree with this. Dirty laundry was a place I really enjoyed going to when I started 6 years ago, but since it's branding was reinvented and took off it's always packed with bachelorette parties and merchandise. The wine isn't good enough quality to make it worthwhile.

[Madman]

Agree with the two previous in regards to Dirty Laundry - not worth the stop any more.

If you have the time, heading down south of Oliver is well worth it also.

[JohnnyB]

It's certainly the Southern Okanagan where the wines really shine. OK Falls has some very good quality without going too far South (apart from Tangled Vines) including both red and white varietals. Truthfully, the Naramata bench has a couple of stand outs, like La Frenz, but is mostly full of just average quality. Nonetheless, it is the highest density of wineries around the valley so works very well for a wine tour that doesn't require tons of driving time or can even be easily done by bike.