♪ [Brandy] I'm a journalist and I'm traveling across my home country, Canada.

On this journey I'll be experiencing some of Canada's most fascinating destinations.

My next journey begins in western Canada, in the Sidney Harbour, on the Salish Sea.

♪ ♪ piano I've come to British Columbia.

On this trip I'll be learning about the province's wine regions.

I'll be exploring the southern Gulf Islands and part of Vancouver Island on an expedition vessel.

♪ The Gulf Islands are in the Strait of Georgia between Vancouver Island and British Columbia's mainland.

There are 200 Gulf Islands.

On my trip there's 14 passengers plus the crew, and we're traveling for five days on a 130-foot catamaran called Cascadia.

During the day, we'll be exploring the islands and wineries by foot, but returning to the ship to sleep, eat and learn about the wines coming from British Columbia.

My favorite part of this trip is exploring the Gulf Islands on the Cascadia, which is a catamaran, and I'm with Kevin Smith.

He owns Maple Leaf Adventures, which also owns this beautiful ship.

Tell me about the Cascadia?

Cascadia, she's an absolutely beautiful, capable expedition catamaran.

She can take us anywhere in the world in comfort and safety.

So we have her here on the West Coast of Canada, and we do trips up and down the West Coast.

And yeah, it's a perfect vessel for what we do.

I know that Maple Leaf Adventures does lots of different trips, but this one is focusing on the wine and islands in the Gulf Islands here in British Columbia.

Why did you decide to dedicate a trip to wine and islands?

We have a solid food program at Maple Leaf Adventures, and obviously wine-pairing is really important with that, and we really like to showcase the best of the best of British Columbia wines.

And having done that for years and meeting the owners and the vintners and just getting excited about their products, we just decided that we wanted to focus a trip a year to come out to the Canadian Gulf Islands and explore and taste and sample.

And what these winemakers are doing is really exciting.

They're not afraid to take risks and they're, they're getting some incredible products.

So much fun.

Tell me about where you take people on this one and islands trip.

Sure.

Yeah, we're in British Columbia, Canada, and we depart from Sidney and, and we, you know, we'll, we'll go up to Salt Spring Island and then over to Pender Island, sometimes to Saturna, and we'll go and also spend time in the Cowichan Valley.

So these are all the the hot spots for, for the islands and Cowichan Valley for wines right now.

I know that Maple Leaf Adventures also focuses on taking people into the forests and teaching them about the animals that are in there and the trees that you see.

Why do you care so much about that?

Oh, (laughs) you know, Maple Leaf Adventures, we are conservationists, really, and we want to tell the stories about what makes this place so special and why it's so worthy of protection.

Our old growth forests, the areas that we travel through in the Gulf Islands here, the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve is so, so special and so worthy of protection, and we can go there in a very, very sustainable way.

We have zero impact on it.

Yet we we're part of an emerging conservation economy, which we're really proud to be part of.

We're bringing in dollars, we're employing people, but we're also - we're not, we're not damaging the landscape at all.

And I'm thrilled that you have taken this chance as an entrepreneur to have these ships and take so many people like me into these beautiful places that really we probably would never have access to if we weren't with you.

So thank you so much.

[Kevin] You're so welcome.

♪ (orchestra, tango-beat) ♪ (orchestra, tango-beat) One of the most exciting parts of being on this wines and islands trip with Maple Leaf Adventures on the Cascadia is that they have a local wine expert on the ship with you the entire time, and I'm with Tania Tomaszewska.

She is a wine consultant and a sommelier.

Tanya, tell me about the wine region of British Columbia.

How large is it?

Well, we have about 13,000 acres under vine.

So, to give you some context.

Napa Valley would have about 40,000 Australia, 300,000, Mendoza, 300,000.

So, in the global production sense.

We're very, very small, but we're mighty and we're a very large province.

We have about nine different wine regions here and we have such diversity.

Our climate goes from everything like cool climate, lake country in the north to very, very hot, true desert in the south.

So, because of this, we can have a diversity of the wines that we produce.

Give me a sense of this trip, the Wines and Islands trip.

Why is it so different and unique compared to sort of jumping in a car and doing a wine tasting?

I love this trip because you get to see the land from a completely different perspective.

We're not in a bus.

We're not in a car.

We're floating around in the Salish Sea.

We get to see the composition of the islands, the rocks, feel the sailing on our faces, and it all is being part of an immersed in our region, which is making beautiful, fresh coastal wines.

Tania, do you think that people around the world are aware of British Columbia's wine industry?

Absolutely.

Our first breakout was in 1994 when one of our Chardonnays won "Chardonnay of the World" award in the London competition, and from there we've gone from strength to strength.

We have a lot of wine industry experts from the world coming here to be part of our growing industry, from a technical point of view, a winemaking point of view.

But we also have a lot of visitors and wine adventurers looking towards us.

We are getting on the global map.

It's so exciting to have you here because I love learning from people who are experts just like you, Tania.

What are we going to try together?

Well, on this trip, we are going to try a number of wines from this region and from other parts of British Columbia, from some of the... made from some of the grapes that we grow really well in large, in large amounts, for example, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Riesling, Chardonnay, Pinot Gris.

It goes on, but right now I've decided to choose something for us to taste, that's a little bit different.

It's a little bit different for British Columbia, and it's really unique for Canada, if not the world.

We're going to try a white wine called the Fandango from Terravista Vineyards.

Terravista Vineyards is a Naramata Bench in our Okanagan Valley, and Fandango means 'lively dance' in Spanish.

Why did I choose this?

Well, it's a lively dance between two grape varieties Albariño and Verdejo that normally come from Spain and Portugal but we have small plantings here in British Columbia, so it's not only unique to B.C., it is to Canada.

And I understand that even in Spain and Portugal, you don't find many blends like this.

I love that people take chances and are experimenting here in British Columbia.

Absolutely.

The beauty about being a youngster wine region without a lot of rules and terms of similar to the old world is that we can experiment.

We can pioneer.

We're not sure where we're going yet, exactly.

We know we have great diversity and so it's about play as well as being serious.

Ok, let's play.

(laughs) That smells very yummy.

So, it looks wonderful, golden hue.

My favorite part about wine tasting is smelling the wine, so close my eyes, put my nose in the glass and just experience what you're smelling.

What does it remind you of?

It's very crisp.

It's very crisp.

I'm smelling lemon and stone fruit and apricot.

I think even a bit of honey.

And when I taste it, it tastes like I was smelling it, and with that honey for sure and a beautiful mouth feel, a wine like this is fantastic on its own, but it's also really food friendly with the high acidity that we have in British Columbia.

That's one of our hallmarks here because of the big diurnal range we call it, which is hot days and cool nights.

This helps to keep the fresh acidity in the grapes.

And so we can make wines like this really fresh that go really well with food and they dance.

Here's to your passion for wine.

And here is to our voyage.

Cheers.

Cheers.

In order to explore the islands, we travel in a smaller boat from the catamaran to the shore.

Our first stop is Salt Spring Island.

It's the largest and most populated island of the southern Gulf Islands.

Eleven thousand people live here year-round, and the island is seventy square miles, or 180 kilometres.

Salt Spring Island is famous for its farmers, artisan producers and vineyards.

You can take a ferry there from Victoria and the Cowichan Valley.

♪ I really wanted to learn about wine that comes from the Gulf Islands, and I'm on Salt Spring Island at Kutatás Wines.

I'm with one of the owners and winemakers, Dan Dragert.

Dan, tell me what does Kutatás mean, first?

Well, Kutatás is a Hungarian term for 'research' or experimentation, and my partner Mira is Hungarian, and it is a term that we kind of came to feel really represented our winemaking style and ambitions.

Give me a sense of your wines and what it's like to make wine here on Salt Spring Island.

What's so special about it?

Salt Spring Island and the Vancouver Island region is a cool climate region, so we have a very long and yet cool growing season.

So, the challenges are definitely we have to be low yielding in order to get our fruit ripe.

We have to do a lot of extra work that maybe we don't have... You have to, you don't have to do it in a warm region, but the rewards are, are vast.

We get wines that are really aromatic and hold their freshness and acidity.

Would you say it's challenging to grow wine here and make it on Salt Spring Island?

It's certainly very challenging.

We're a cool climate, but it's very rewarding.

It is a very unique terroir.

We're on a lot of sand here, which is great for grapevines.

We have a very Mediterranean climate and the challenges come mostly in the fall when the rains inevitably show up.

And how many wines do you make?

Oh, there's probably ten or twelve different rotating wines.

So, lots of small lot winemaking, which keeps us very interested, very focused.

I love it.

Well, let's talk about the wine that we're going to taste today.

What is this?

We're going to taste Pinot Noir, just released 2019.

This is a blend of pinot noir from the vineyard, and we have here in the vineyard we lease in North Saanich.

It's fantastically expressive, it's very intense in its aromas, and all the pinot noirs are going to be nice and juicy and soft.

Ok, let's try this.

(loud pop) Ok. And first, we're going to smell it, right?

Oh, yeah.

We're going to smell it.

We're going to swirl it and smell it.

What do you smell, Dan?

I smell intense orange peel.

I smell... a lot of red fruit.

It's very expressive.

You smell a lot of hard work?

A lot of sweat and tears.

(laughing) Hard work.

Yeah.

I believe it.

Ok, and I'll go for a taste now.

That is yummy.

What do you taste when you taste this?

I taste the freshness, I taste the suppleness, the savouriness, everything that Island Pinot Noir can offer at its best.

And do you think it's dry?

It is definitely dry.

Yeah, I taste that it's dry.

Yeah.

All the the wines we make are going to be dry.

If there's any perception of sweetness, it's just because there's so much fruit on the nose and in the wine.

Tell me why you decided to have this winery here and to make this wine?

Well, we both were intrigued by the region.

We've been working in the region for other people now for quite a long time, and it just... the stars lined up this way.

It was just a winery that was available, and we were making wines under another winery license, and it just seemed like a great opportunity for us.

[Brandy] It's such a beautiful place.

I want to congratulate you and your wife, Mira on this wonderful adventure.

Thank you so much.

Cheers.

Cheers.

To all your hard work with Mira, and I'm so happy to be here on Salt Spring Island.

I'm happy you're here with us.

What a gem.

And this is tasty.

♪ Our guide, Kevin Smith, has spent years exploring British Columbia's coast.

He grew up in the area and is a geographer by training.

Kevin makes sure we get a chance to explore the islands on foot.

One of the places we go ashore is the Beaumont Marine Park, which is located in the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve.

♪ [Kevin] I'm going to be trying to get to a, you know, a few interesting spots, maybe scenic spots, but also stop and talk a little bit about what we're seeing here in terms of the forest ecology and why this place is so unique and so special and so worthy of protection as a part of the National Park Reserve.

Ok. ♪ [Kevin] I just get so excited in these places, this is, this, this is my home turf, right?

And on the shoreline, the Gulf Islands here, I've just, you know, dry Douglas Fir Forest.

We've got some beautiful big arbutus trees.

I just wanted to take a few minutes to talk about some of the processes that are going on here, and I'm being helped right now for my little display because of the windstorm in the last couple of days - a lot of these branches are obviously blowing down off of the the forest canopy.

But up there we have really, truly one of the most important parts of this forest going on, and that's what we're finding growing on these branches.

This is fungus and algae.

The fungus is providing the actual structure, and the algae is providing the food for both.

And together, they're actually called a lichen, and there are different types of lichens.

There's hundreds, lichens very, very important in coastal forest ecology because the one limiting factor for growth in these forests is actually the nitrogen.

We have long, long days in the summertime, lots of growing hours of sunlight.

There isn't, over the course of the whole year any shortage of water for the trees to grow.

But the soils are quite thin.

They're not particularly rich soils because the whole area was scraped clean by the last glaciation period about, uh, fourteen or so thousand years ago, the lichens are able to get nitrogen from the air.

Right.

So, we know the air is, is full of nitrogen.

It's not available to the trees through their, their needles.

They're not getting, they're not getting nitrogen in, but the lichen is, it's fixing nitrogen.

And then of course, it's got a limited lifespan.

Right.

And it's, it's going to collect all that nitrogen into its body and then in the storm, fall to the forest floor and slowly rot away.

And as that happens, that nitrogen becomes available to the trees through the soils.

And science is now telling us that areas that have lots of this lichen and the associated nitrogen, those trees are much, much healthier, much healthier stands.

And what's interesting is that the lichen will only grow in places where there's really good clean air.

So, breathe it in, this, this is beautiful clean air for your lungs.

Good stuff and we'll keep on going.

♪ [Brandy] One of my favorite things to do here in the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve is explore these beautiful trails on South Pender Island.

As you look around, you can see all this vegetation.

You feel safe.

You're on a trail and you're not disturbing the trees and the bushes and all the different lives that are living in the forest all around you.

♪ I think this is, this is a cool, little, little whodunit, because, of course, here we are, going on a nice little coastal hike, right?

And what do we find in the forest, but parts of the ocean?

Ok, so everybody probably recognizes that as a crab.

That's specifically, it's a, it's a red rock crab, just a little one, far too little for us to have kept if we were going crabbing, that's below legal limit sizes.

But of course, the river otters or the eagles, they don't know how to read the, the fishing regulations.

And they're, you know, they're perfectly in tune with this environment.

So, if somebody has been down here, got themselves a little lunch and this is a really nice spot to come up and, and eat and just num num num num num num num, nice little red rock crab.

♪ In this spot, all of the forest floor is covered in the beautiful, great big maple leaves, so this is coming from the, the big leaf or broad leaf maple.

And here is a great example of one of these trees.

Different from the, the other trees we've been looking at, you know, from Maple Leaf Adventures, I do have a a certain affection for the maple tree.

And of course, I wanted to point out a little neat trick of, sort of forest ecology and the evolution of these trees and these forests.

It's a thin soil.

It's relatively new.

It's not particularly rich.

And of course, now in late October, we're going into the winter when we do get quite a bit of rain here in the southern Gulf Islands in the wintertime.

And that rain can certainly lead to soil erosion, and it can be taking out a bunch of the soil just from all that pounding rain.

So perfectly timed is the the big leaf maple loses its leaves and these come down and fall onto the forest soil and protect it from that constant rainfall.

And if I, you know, if I just get rid of the leaves for a bit, you see how exposed that soil is to just erosion from rain.

So, it's kind of a neat little trick of nature.

I'll put that back.

♪ [Brandy] One final activity we did in the forest is doing nothing at all.

We took the time to do some forest bathing or what the Japanese call Shinrin -yoku.

This forest therapy helps you to relax and is said to be good for your mental and physical health as it lowers your cortisol levels or stress hormones.

It was a wonderful feeling to escape into nature and smell and see the forest without talking.

♪ Our next adventure takes us to the Cowichan Valley.

This area is famous for its pristine coastline, green forests, orchards and vineyards.

♪ I'm here in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island.

This is a unique and distinct wine-making area, and I'm at Blue Grouse Estate wineries.

I'm with Bailey Williamson.

He is the winemaker here.

Bailey, tell me a little bit about Cowichan Valley, describe what it's like and why it has its own winemaking region?

The Cowichan valley is unique because it's a cool climate, wine growing region.

What we get is we get warm days and cool nights.

That's the perfect combination to maintain the natural acidity and freshness in the grapes, which translates into the wine.

And for that, that's what makes us distinct and the wines so lovely.

So, Bailey, I know you worked really hard to help the Cowichan Valley become its own distinct region when it comes to winemaking.

Why did you care so much?

I thought that it was important for Cowichan to be recognized as a legitimate, understood wine region in British Columbia because it gave reputational and credibility to the whole region and everybody that was working here.

[Brandy] Tell me a little bit about Blue Grouse Estate Wineries and the wines that you make here, how many there are and what they taste like.

We are one of the oldest wineries in the region and we grow a lot of different varieties, mostly because we didn't... they weren't sure what was going to grow in the beginning.

We make a lot of different wines, mostly Germanic white wines, but we've started to focus more on pinot noir, pinot gris and chardonnay we're trying out and also sparkling wine, which I think has a lot of potential here in this region.

And what are we tasting today?

We have the Paula sparkling wine today, which we'll taste.

How exciting.

And how old is this?

This is the 2017.

It has been sitting on the lees for two years now, actually a little longer than two years.

And yeah, we're excited.

Has lovely mousse.

And what do you smell?

Smells like that bree-- toasted brioche.

Green Apple.

Oh, that is delicious.

Well, I'm glad you like that.

That's something I want to have at the start of a party and all night.

(laughter) It sounds like you have such a fun job.

Is it a lot of work?

There is a lot of work.

It...

Most of that happens at the end of the year during harvest, but it's what you get up for.

It's, it's the one time of year you get to realize your dreams and ambitions for the grapes.

And so, it's, it's a lot of work, but it's very rewarding.

[Brandy] And why should people try wines from British Columbia?

[Bailey] Because they're unique.

They're not like wines from everywhere else, but you've got to come here and try them because this is where they taste best.

Wonderful.

Well, I can't wait to explore the winery here and learn even more about your process.

Cheers.

Thanks, Brandy.

(glasses chime) (engine noise) I love exploring British Columbia in an expedition vessel on the water, I've had so much fun.

I've learned all about the wines that are available in this province, and I've explored the forests and seen sea lions, seals.

I think it's been an awesome vacation and I can't wait to come back, meet more people and learn a lot more about this incredible province.

♪ ♪ ♪