Kelowna Festivals: Wine, Fruit, Art, Film, and Sports
Wine
Okanagan Wine Festivals
Kelowna, BC, Canada’s wineries are involved in the four Okanagan Wine Festivals in the Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. These four wine festivals mix wine tours, wine tasting and wine seminars with great entertainment and fabulous restaurant cuisine. Wineries, restaurants and resorts tease drooling senses with tastes and aromas that come straight from the vine and stir the Soul. Buds come out in May at the Okanagan Spring Wine Festival, and so do wine lovers who wish to celebrate with fine wine and food. Gourmet meals fill hungry bellies on a hot August week-end of arts, music and other activities at Silver Star Mountain Resort during the Okanagan Summer Wine Festival. Sipping a glass of Okanagan wine is just a divine way to celebrate grape harvest while enjoying the Okanagan Fall Wine Festival’s food and festive atmosphere. The Winter air is fresh high atop sunny peaks while the Icewine is crisp and refreshing at the annual Okanagan Icewine Festival that is full of food, education and snowy recreation. Annual Wine Awards at both the Fall and Spring Okanagan Wine Festivals recognize Okanagan wineries and restaurants for their wines, labels and wine lists.
Okanagan Wine Festival Awards
Okanagan wineries showcase their best red, white, ice, and dessert wines in the Fall and Spring Okanagan Wine Festivals’ wine judging competitions. Highly respected wine judges evaluate wines according to their taste and presentation; they also award restaurants that offer the best selection of wine to diners. Summerhill Pyramid Winery, Mission Hill Family Estate Winery and Tinhorn Creek Estate Winery have all won wine awards at the annual ‘Okanagan Fall Wine Festival Judging Awards’. Hotel Eldorado’s Lakeside Dining Room won a Bronze Medal award for offering the ‘Best BC Wines-by-the-Glass’ at the 2008 Okanagan Fall Wine Festival. The BC Wine Museum hosts the ‘BC Wine Label Awards’ every second year in association with the Okanagan Fall Wine Festival. In 2003, a winery destroyed during the Okanagan Mountain Park Fires won an award for a wine label honouring firefighters; a year later, Tinhorn Creek Estate Winery won a wine award for ‘Overall Presentation’. Mission Hill Family Estate Winery and Summerhill Pyramid Winery have both won wine awards in the annual Okanagan Spring Wine Festival’s ‘Best of Varietal Wine Awards’ competition.
Fruit
Annual Apple Fair
Kelowna’s Annual Apple Fair in October is like the grand finale to a year of celebrating all that is great about the Okanagan apple. This festival is hosted by the BC Orchard Industry Museum and includes live entertainment, a colouring contest and opportunities to sample many varieties of apples. There are several other ways that visitors to Kelowna can celebrate the apple before harvest-time in the Fall: golfers can drive, chip and putt holes carved from former apple orchards; wine lovers may stop at a winery to taste Okanagan apple wine; apple-pie that is made from Okanagan apples can be eaten at restaurants and the Kelowna Land and Orchard (KLO) company.
Art
Festivals Kelowna
Kelowna is a festive place to be in Winter, Fall, Summer, or Spring thanks to Festivals Kelowna and its year-round line-up of outdoor and indoor events. There’s plenty to celebrate at the Parks Alive! Summer concert series in Waterfront Park, the Life & Arts Festival in Kelowna’s Cultural District or the Fall Okanagan Wine Festival in October. Buskers add to the festive mood at the lakefront by singing, dancing and entertaining, while local artisans enrich the cultural experience by selling hand-crafted art. Amid this festive atmosphere, passengers wait for their lake okanagan boat cruise, shoppers cruise Bernard Avenue and diners dash to a restaurant in the downtown Kelowna core.
ArtWalk
Not all works of art are served in a wine bottle, presented as a fancy restaurant meal or attempted with a golf putter from behind a tree: the annual Lake Country ArtWalk Fall art show and sale features photography and other masterpieces from over 200 Okanagan artists. Musical entertainment and live theatre productions bring Lake Country alive with the sights and sounds of Kelowna’s Cultural District. Taking a Self-Guided Walking Tour of Kelowna or visiting the city’s Sculpture Gardens and Gallery aren’t the only ways to enjoy sculptures. ArtWalk features original sculptures hand-crafted by Okanagan artists with the same care that engineers pieced together a new structure to replace the Okanagan Lake Bridge.
Film
Okanagan International Film Festival
Kelowna’s great scenery of water, mountains and parks isn’t the only thing showing for five days each Spring. Short, documentary and feature films produced by local, Canadian and international filmmakers are on screen at the annual Okanagan International Film Festival. Passes can be purchased to gain admittance to Lake Okanagan boat cruises with filmmakers or awards ceremonies and brunches at area hotels and restaurants. Tickets to screen individual films at one of two participating theatres may also be purchased. Great theatre seats can provide the same great views of movies as The Bluff and Knox Mountain Park do of Lake Okanagan and the Okanagan Lake Bridge. The annual infusion of culture adds to Kelowna’s already artsy atmosphere created by the Cultural District and outdoor public art that is located throughout the city.
Sports
BMO Okanagan Marathon
People travel from all over to Kelowna just to run around its streets for charity in the BMO Okanagan Marathon. Runners of all ages may choose to run different distances: 5, 10 and 21.1 kilometres, or a full marathon of 42.2 kilometres. All runners begin their route at City Park in the Kelowna South real estate neighbourhood: eventually traveling South on Abbott Street by numerous beach access points in the Kelowna North real estate neighbourhood. The two shorter courses go no further than Strathcona Park, staying close to Waterfront Park and Bernard Avenue’s boutique shopping district. The half and full marathon routes stretch further South into the Lower Mission real estate neighbourhood; near wineries and not far from the Father Pandosy Mission historic site at Benvoulin Road.
Kelowna International Dragon Boat Festival
Dragon boats march to drum beats at the Kelowna International Dragon Boat Festival held on Lake Okanagan. Similar races that take place around the world are rooted in an ancient Chinese holiday celebrating the ‘fifth day of the fifth moon’. Teams race to paddle their boat in narrow, 13-metre wide racing lanes across the finish line near Waterfront Park. Hundreds of dragon boats, each decorated with the head and tail of a dragon, share the water with Lake Okanagan Cruise vessels. Food vendors, beer gardens and activities make the Kelowna International Dragon Boat Festival a fun three-day event for the whole family.
Ski 2 Sea Race
It takes only one day to race 95-kilometres from Big White mountain to Lake Okanagan: all one needs are skis, a mountain bike, running shoes, and a canoe or kayak. Driving by car is possible, of course, that wouldn’t test the endurance of racers like the annual Ski2Sea race does. Individuals or teams of racers ski, pedal, sprint, and paddle against the clock to complete the 95-kilometre course from snow peaks to lakeshores. This race is much more intense than a shopping spree at Orchard Park Mall or a casual stroll along the Mission Creek Greenway. It’s likely that many racers do some of their training for this event at the Myra Canyon Trestles .
