Wine Tasting at the Gray Monk Estate Winery near Vernon, BC

by Keith and Heather Nicol

Sampling wines in the Visitor Centre

   While on a tour through BC’s Okanagan Valley we decided to check out some wineries near Vernon and one we can fully recommend is the Gray Monk Estate Winery.  This award winning winery was started in the mid 1970’s and the Heiss family is proud to remain as British Columbia's oldest family owned and operated winery.  They were the first in BC to plant grapes for making Pinot Gris wines which are just one of many celebrated wines from this winery. We were with friends from Vernon (Jill and Kim Harker) and a roommate from university days and we enjoyed tasting the wines at their scenic visitor centre.  We were especially appreciative of our server that afternoon who guided us through the extensive tastings with good humour and lots of laughs. She even suggested we head out to the expansive deck so we she could take our picture. The deck overlooks Okanagan Lake as well as part of the 75 acres of vineyards that Gray Monk Estate Winery now owns.  We ended up buying several of their wines but if you don’t buy a bottle then tastings are a standard $5 per person.  You can also have a bite to eat at the Grapevine Restaurant which we will have to check out next time. For more information and to see their upcoming events visit : http://www.graymonk.com/  

Jill (middle) and Heather (right) chat to our server who treated us royally