Today was not a winery day, but we did hit a few in addition to enjoying the sun, beach, water, jet skis and a bbq steak dinner.

We decided to take a dip down into the US at Oroville – although the US Customs Agent was incredulous that we had considered it. Upon reconsideration, she exclaimed, “You must go to Prince’s!” We drove through Oroville (all of 3 minutes) and onward to try out Esther Briques Winery just south of the ‘thriving metropolis’. They were closed. Anti-climatic.

Back into ‘town’, we hit the Okanogan Winery tasting room. I know the lady was trying, but it tasted like kit wine to me. If you ever see it, run. Not even ‘acceptable’ in my books.

We decided at this point to buy gas (at least that was a bargain) and get back to the border. On our way we went to the tourist info and found out about Copper Mountain. Enroute to the border, we stopped in and had a lovely experience with the daughter of the owner who took me through a quick tasting. We bought lots of unrelated goodies because we felt (like the good Canadians we are) guilty that we couldn’t purchase wine, wine stoppers, bbq sauce and blackberry preserves plus eventually a bottle of Cabernet Franc that we spirited past the “I’m on the Freedom 55 Train’ border guard at Oroville.

Back across the border, we popped into the Burrowing Owl offshoot, Young + Wyse where we enjoyed the banter with the lovely ladies at their tasting room and purchased the Amber (white blend named for their daughter who is also a ‘blend’…we told them about Hawaiian ‘hapa’), plus their Cab Sauv. More on those later…