Photos

This is the show cellar of the Mission Hill Winery in Kelowna, in the Okanagan Valley. Canada has three major wine regions, the Niagara peninsula in Ontario, the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia and the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia. By local standards, Mission Hill Winery is quite large, but in comparison to world's major wine producing areas it is tiny. You should nevertheless be able to buy this wine in most areas of the world.
As a relatively new winery, Mission Hill seems to be concerned with establishing an image, and hence a winery tour emphasizes the very short history and architecture of the estate. As opposite to Europe's old wine cellars, this one is built immediately under the surface and the temperature and humidity are maintained artificially. The wine is nevertheless aged for roughly one year in carefully selected oak barrels, at least in the show cellar. Did you know that these barrels are reused only five times and then transformed into flower pots? I didn't. What a waste of high quality wood! One almost wishes that the other five cellars that are not open to the public would use stainless steel drums and some oak shavings... The barrels are stored on gravel that is meant to absorb vibrations.
In the absence of a tripod, I used ambient light and a wine barrel as a support.