Cruising the Straits

It's the Canada Day long weekend (more-or-less the same thing as the Fourth of July for all our American friends out there) and Boo and I are off to the Gulf Islands, in the Georgia Strait between the Vancouver mainland and Vancouver Island. It's Tyrant's turn to host the next Dinner Club and he's invited the gang over to his new place on Salt Spring Island.

Tyrant has graciously welcomed Boo and I to come over a day early to take in a bit more of the bucolic lifestyle. Even the one extra day is a welcome respite. We were lucky to grab a ride on a direct ferry to Salt Spring and not one of the milk run ferries with a number of island stops. It's still a good hour and a half ride though - far too long to go without some sort of refreshment.

Funny, but my choice of pick-me-up was a nice glass of wine to refresh with while taking in the ever enjoyable scenery. Opening the bottle is no doubt completely against ship policy, but we tried to be discreet about it and no one that might have caught a peak of our transgression seems to have reported us. No outraged shipmate came by to pour the wine over the side or make us walk the plank.

I thought it was all rather civilized.

843. 2003 Burrowing Owl Merlot (VQA Okanagan Valley)

I've added enough Burrowing Owl wines to The List to make it difficult at times to pull out a vintage that hasn't already been counted in this little Odyssey. Boo is twisting my arm (perhaps rightfully so) to start drinking more of the wines that we've laid down for a bit. "After all," he says "we don't know if any of the old BC wines were even made for aging."

I think it's safe to say that this one was. The wine was still a big sip - and one that hadn't lost its fruit or balance. If anything, it still might have been a bit much to just sip on without any further nourishment. There was plenty of breeze and cloud to keep us cool enough to handle the heat of the wine though.

Being the good boys that we are, we didn't finish off the bottle with a final chug as we started coming into Long Harbour. The island roads can be pretty curvey and we didn't exactly know where we had to go.

Besides, I thought that arriving with a nice glass of Burrowing Owl in hand to greet our host with would be a nice way to make an appearance. In retrospect, a full bottle might have been nicer but we brought along plenty of other bottles as well.

What a welcome start to island time.