RemyScalza.com: Independent Journalism

Water into Wine: Drought in Canada's Wine Country

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Photo: Remy Scalza


The Okanagan wine country in western Canada is an amazing success story.  Twenty-five years ago, nobody had heard of the place and the only wine being made there was barely drinkable plonk.  Today, it’s one of North America’s most promising wine regions, lauded by The New York Times as the “Napa of the North.”  But behind the beautiful countryside and increasingly impressive wines is a big problem: lack of water.  Much of the South Okanagan is desert, and the demands of agriculture and a new wave of wine tourism have stretched limited water resources nearly to the breaking point.  I wrote about the region’s water problems and growing pains in a recent article for BCBusiness, a magazine based in Vancouver.

Tourism Threatens Water Security in the Okanagan

By Remy Scalza for BCBusiness Magazine

In the bone-dry southern tip of the Okanagan Valley, just outside the town of Osoyoos, a network of footpaths winds through thickets of sage and antelope brush. Braving the midday sun, a few hardy hikers – red-faced and sweating – push down the trail, leaving faint footprints in the sand and keeping an eye out for the rattlesnakes that make their home here, in Canada’s only desert.

What awaits around the final turn in the trail must first seem illusion, a trick played on the eyes by the shimmering South Okanagan heat. Abruptly, brush gives way. Neat rows of vines rise from the desert floor, leaves interlacing into a vast and improbable tapestry of green.

Here the path dead ends, sparse foot traffic giving way to the steady pulse of people and cars in the parking lot of Spirit Ridge Vineyard and Resort, one of a wave of new wineries and resorts to open in the South Okanagan in the last five years. In shorts and visors, visitors by the mini-busload spill into the wine shop, restaurant and wellness spa. Out back small children throng an oasis of pools, while duffers hack away on the Technicolor greens of a nine-hole course edged by sand and sagebrush just beyond. Surrounding it all, running right up to the 226 desert suites and vineyard villas at the sprawling resort, are grape vines: Pinot Blanc and Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Merlot, ripening in the summer sun.

Click here to read the full article on BCBusinessOnline.ca.

Brazil's Backyard Jungle

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Pretty much everyone knows that Brazil is home to the Amazon jungle: one of the wildest and most biodiverse places on the planet.  But Brazil also has another jungle: the mata or Atlantic rain forest.  And, in contrast to the Amazon – which is hard to get to and tends to attract mainly hardcore adventure types – the mata is right next door to some of Brazil’s biggest cities – Rio and Sao Paulo.  For travelers who might not have the budget or inclination to see the Amazon, the mata offers a unique glimpse of real jungle – howler monkeys, toucans, isolated and unsettled beaches, dense old growth forest.   Plus, you’re never far from a clean bed, a nice restaurant and a cold caiparinha.  I wrote about some recent experiences in the mata for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Brazil’s backyard jungle a rugged, restful strip

Remy Scalza, Special to The Chronicle

Sunday, July 18, 2010

In downtown Rio de Janeiro, in the shadow of one of the city’s most famous landmarks, concrete jungle meets the real thing.

Just past the double-decker tour buses and cable cars that zip up Sugar Loaf, Rio’s granite dome, an inconspicuous footpath makes a beeline into thick forest. Winding past trees draped with vines and clinging plants, I climb higher and higher above the city. At one turn, micos – tiny monkeys with pinched-up faces – glare from a tangle of treetops.

Though the Amazon gets most of the press, Brazil is also home to another jungle: the Mata, or Atlantic rain forest. Defiantly wild – with biodiversity levels rivaling the Amazon’s – the Mata surrounds Rio and Sao Paulo, stretching in a thin strip all along Brazil’s central coast.

For travelers like me – nature lovers but not full-blown “Survivor” men – this translates into a unique one-two punch. Choose your trails right, and you can start the day tramping through protected Mata in the company of toucans and howler monkeys and finish it sipping caipirinhas on the beach with Brazil’s buff and beautiful.

Click here for the full article at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Mudslide Buries Vineyards in Western Canada

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The Okanagan Valley has been called a Canadian Garden of Eden.  Wedged between two mighty mountain ranges, the valley is dominated by glacial lakes and sprawling vineyards and orchards.   Balmy summer temperatures have drawn growing numbers of wine tourists in recent years, and Okanagan wineries have garnered recognition from Conde Nast and other authorities as among the best in North America.  A freak mudslide devastated a corner of the Okanagan last week, after a ruptured dam spilled tons of water and debris onto prime farmland.  I reported on the disaster for Wine Spectator.

Mudslide Buries Okanagan Vineyards

Debris buries 40 acres of vines in British Columbia; dam failed

Remy Scalza
Posted: June 18, 2010

A dam failure triggered a massive mudslide in western Canada’s Okanagan wine country this past week, burying approximately 40 acres of vineyards and orchards under soil, rocks and debris, in some spots up to 25 feet deep. The slide destroyed five homes and blocked the region’s main highway. Although no one was injured, property damages are estimated to be in the millions of dollars, and affected vintners and residents are now asking if the disaster could have been averted.

“My Chardonnay is under five feet of mud. You can’t even see the top of the plants,” said Rasoul Salehi, executive director of Enotecca Winery and Resorts, which manages the LaStella and Le Vieux Pin wineries. Enotecca’s vineyard in the Okanagan’s acclaimed Golden Mile grapegrowing zone was among the worst hit. The mud destroyed 3 acres of Moscato Bianco and Chardonnay vines, including some of the oldest vines in the valley, as well as winemaking equipment, vehicles and an outbuilding.

Click here to read the full article on Wine Spectator.

The Greening of the Yucatan

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Cancun has never been high on my list of travel destinations.  The setting for countless Girls Gone Wild videos, the city always seemed to me like a seaside Vegas – tawdry, artificial, dependent for its survival on a steady stream of spring breakers and package holiday buyers wooed by the promise of white sand and an endless supply of $2 margaritas.  But I was surprised to discover that just south of Cancun, along the less developed Riviera Maya, the region’s natural and cultural beauty endures.  I wrote about crumbling pyramids, Mayan rites and oceanfront nature reserves for the Canadian magazine alive.

The Greening of the Yucatan

Remy Scalza; Special to alive

They’re knee-high, bad-tempered, and given to mischief. Aluxes—think leprechauns with a tan—are the jungle spirits of Maya lore. And, for better or worse, I’m poised at their front door, peering into the inky black of a Mexican cave with a local eco-guide and 12 other travellers.

A Maya shaman, dressed in white and carrying a smoking chalice filled with sacred incense, offers up a blessing for the group. We’re about to descend into a cenote, one of the underground caverns that riddle the soft limestone bedrock here in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

Purified, protected from the aluxes—we hope—we file down into the dark, heading for a crystalline pool that beckons from the depths of the cave.

Click here for the full article on alive.

Uncool, Overlooked Montevideo

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A fishing boat sits in the delta waters off of Montevideo.


Most people couldn’t find Uruguay on a map.  The country doesn’t have a Lonely Planet guidebook.  There isn’t a single Hard Rock Cafe in any of its cities.  No American university has opened up a satellite campus there.  And for all of those reasons, Uruguay and its capital Montevideo are precious, rare and beautiful.  I had an opportunity to spend a year living and writing in Montevideo, a city that marches to the beat of its own drummer and really can’t be compared to anywhere else in Latin America.  This story for the Canadian magazine BCBusiness was an effort to sum up my feelings.

Sister Act: Travelling to Montevideo, Uruguay

Remy Scalza; Special to BCBusiness

A little sibling rivalry would seem inevitable in Montevideo. The diminutive Uruguayan capital lies just a hundred or so miles across the muddy shallows of the Rio de la Plata from big sister Buenos Aires. The family resemblance is unmistakable. Both cities tango. Both share the same predilection for big steaks and bold wines. Both feel more southern European than South American. But while Buenos Aires has long basked in the international limelight, Montevideo has quietly carried on in the shadows – the quiet, bespectacled sister who, in her own way, is irresistible.

Vancouver: Playground for tourists and global banks

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It turns out that Vancouver’s gorgeous scenery, vibrant multicultural population and world-class infrastructure make for more than great vacations.  Lured by the city’s many charms, global banking giant HSBC opted to set up the world headquarters for its IT division here.  In a break from my usual travel and food reporting, I explored why HSBC and its well-heeled CEOs have fallen in love with Vancouver.

HSBC Comes to Burnaby: What HSBC’s new nerve centre means to Metro Vancouver’s IT industry

By Remy Scalza; Special for BC Business

There’s a cold drizzle falling in Burnaby, where the sky has been overcast all day. Now, with almost theatrical gloom, crows have started circling, climbing in menacing gyres above HSBC’s brand new global software development centre, the five-storey, 146,000-square-foot building it has dubbed Discovery Green.

But despite the ominous portents outdoors, inside the atmosphere is anything but bleak . . . .

Click here for the full article on the BC Business site.

Olympic Winos: Great grapes at Vancouver 2010

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Vancouver’s Winter Games have an official credit card, cola and cold medicine, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there’s an official wine gracing Olympic tables.  Last week, I had a chance to cover the Olympic wine scene for Wine Spectator.  Among the highlights: discovering North America’s first Aboriginal-owned winery, tasting with Napa Valley wine royalty Margrit Mondavi and sampling the Olympics’ own brand of bubbly.   The reporting was included in a special Olympic Unfiltered column on WineSpectator.com.

Olympic Champion Lindsey Vonn says, ‘Cheese!’

WineSpectator.com

Inside the big Indian longhouse erected in the heart of downtown Vancouver, a bit of Olympic history is taking place. Vancouver 2010 marks the first Olympic Games ever in which an Aboriginal community—Canada’s First Nations peoples—has participated as an official host. Guests at the Chief’s House, as the quirky, postmodern Aboriginal Pavilion is known, enjoy traditional Inuit throat singing, buffalo burgers and wines from North America’s first native-owned winery . . . .

Click here for the full article on the Wine Spectator site.

Olympics for Procrastinators: So you still wanna come to Vancouver

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Like birthdays and anniversaries, Olympics tend to be the kind of thing that sneaks up on you.  Next Friday, the 21st installment of the Olympic Winter Games kicks off in Vancouver.  Now, I live here.  For at least the last five years, it’s been just about all anyone has talked about.  But I know that the rest of the world has had more pressing things to worry about than crowning the next Nancy Kerrigan.  The good news is that if you still want to come, there are plenty of flights, beds and tickets available (For a price, of course).  I broke it all down for The Washington Post.

Vancouver Snapshot: Last-minute travelers’ sprint is a quadrennial Olympic event

By Remy Scalza, Special to The Washington Post

So between slogging your way through the Great Recession and following the inaugural season of “Jersey Shore,” you haven’t had much time to think about the Olympic Winter Games starting in Vancouver, B.C., on Friday. But now, all of a sudden, those Morgan Freeman commercials for Visa — the ones with the slow-mo shots of Olympic glories past — have you in the spirit. You want in, front-row center, as the next generation of Apolo Ohnos is crowned.

Is it too late? Maybe not.

Click here for the full article on The Washington Post site.

Vancouver side trips: Eagle capital of the world

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Maybe Ben Franklin had it right.  Turkey booster until the bitter end, Franklin railed against the choice of bald eagle as America’s symbol.  “He is a bird of bad moral character,” Franklin wrote. “He does not get his living honestly.”  Up close, it definitely looked that way.  I had a chance to visit Brackendale, B.C., the world’s self-proclaimed bald eagle capital, while researching a story for The Washington Post.  A few eagles kind of looked like the majestic bird on the back of the quarter, but most were busy tearing into rotten salmon, which end up floating in the rivers after spawning is over.  One local lady called them nothing but big seagulls.  Still, it was pretty impressive to see dozens all in one place.

Vancouver snapshot: Bald eagles find a home in Canada

By Remy Scalza; Special to The Washington Post

The highway turnoff is easy to miss. On the rugged stretch of mountain road that connects Olympic cities Vancouver and Whistler, B.C., just past the midway point, is a small, handmade sign. Look hard and you’ll see a bald eagle in profile, beak painted a brilliant yellow, beady eye aglow.

Next stop: Brackendale, self-proclaimed World Eagle Capital.

“One year, we counted 3,769 bald eagles in one day,” says 40-year resident and avian enthusiast Thor Froslev. “You practically had to have a hard hat on to go outside.”

Click here for the full article on The Washington Post site.

The Dark Side of Japanese Dining: Izakayas

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There was a time, not too long ago, when the closest thing to Japanese food you could find outside Japan was Benihana.  Then the came the sushi craze, introducing North America to the wonders of the California roll.  Now Vancouver – long a pioneer when it comes to Asian cusine – finds itself in the midst of another culinary wave from Japan: the izakaya invasion.  A sort of Japanese pub, izakayas are rowdier and more debauched than any sushi joint.  I had a chance to check a few out for this article for The Washington Post.  

Vancouver snapshot: Japanese cuisine beyond sushi

Welcome to the dark side of Japanese dining: izakayas. Greasier and louder than a sushi joint, these Japanese pubs have invaded Vancouver, B.C.

Izakayas have reportedly been around for a few hundred years in Japan. Their patrons, mostly men, congregate after work to drink and snack on deep-fried tofu, chicken and savory salads — the buffalo wings and nachos of a parallel universe — before heading home, often roundly soused. But like the hibachi and sushi before it, izakaya cuisine has found a global following, and Vancouver, with its strong ties to Japan, is at the forefront of the izakaya explosion.

Click here for the full article on The Washington Post site.

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