Very Good Day Trip Idea: Wine Touring in Langley

There’s plenty we can learn from Hallmark movies, but no lesson has been more valuable than this: sometimes love is lurking in your own backyard, and you just need to have the courage to find it. I am, of course, talking about wine.

Much like the protagonist in 2012’s Hitched for the Holidays (starring a very grown-up Joey Lawrence), I have some trepidation as I point my car south down Highway 99. Not because I’m desperately looking for a partner to fool my parents before Christmas, but because I’m doing something with much higher stakes. Wine touring. In the winter. In Langley.

READ MORE: Eat the Suburbs: The Best Bites in Langley

For Western Canadians, visiting wineries comes with a pretty specific set of criteria: it takes place in the Okanagan, during the summer, and it’s always crowded. The reward for this is excellent wine served up against a stunning backdrop. But the last few years have made this ritual more fraught—first with the ever-present wildfires, then with the less publicized but far more damaging winter cold snaps, which have ravaged the vines to an unprecedented degree.

Historically, the option at our doorstep—the Fraser Valley—got about as much respect from wine lovers as 2018’s Frozen in Love got from the Oscars. But in the last few years, the wines emerging from these temperate vineyards have been not just surprising, but standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the best in the country. The traditional challenge of getting the grapes here ripe enough has become a positive in the era of climate change and shifting tastes toward fresher wine. My first stop is Township 7, whose insanely good sparkling wine, Sirius, was the first to open my eyes to the region’s potential when it debuted a few years back. The turnoff from Highway 99 takes you through Surrey and past the Pacific Highway border crossing and, within five minutes, you’re metaphorical miles away from any suburban bustle. Farms abut either side of the road, and you’re sharing the right of way with horses here, so the pace just seems to slow with each passing kilometre. By the time you turn into the winery, you’re already at peak mellow.

The modest tasting room—this isn’t Mission Hill, kids—is surrounded by the chardonnay and pinot noir vines that go into Township 7’s amazing bubbles. Most wineries scale back their hours in the winter, but T7, like most of the other spots in the region, keeps it going 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven days a week (later on Friday and Saturday), in part because locals treat these wineries like their neighbourhood liquor stores, frequently stopping by on their way home from work to grab a bottle for dinner. Another lovely throwback to the early days of the Okanagan Valley boom? The tasting fees (that start at $10) are waived with the purchase of wine, a practice that seems to be waning as other wineries maximize all their revenue sources. T7 has the benefit of having a much larger winery and significant landholdings in the Okanagan, so my tasting also includes bold reds, which would be exceptionally tricky to grow here. And while I go for the entry-level tasting, had I wished, I could have dropped a still pretty reasonable $30 to learn the art of sabring a bottle of bubbles and taken a deep dive into the history of sparkling wine.

If T7 has been moving the needle with its pricey bubbles, my next stop, a mere three minutes away, takes a more egalitarian approach to the art. Old timers will remember Domaine de Chaberton as the OG of Fraser Valley wineries, but a new ownership group bought the historic property in 2005, dropped the “Domaine” and did a full-on rebuild of the brand as Chaberton Estate Winery: new labels, new winemaking ethos, an investment in high-end French barrels and a doubling (or, to be honest, probably tripling) down on quality. That sort of glow-up is usually followed by a corresponding rise in price, but as I amble into the tasting room, I’m blown away by the old-school pricing—huge swaths of the varietal-specific bottles are priced at $18.95. And make no mistake, the wine is good (the unoaked chardonnay is one of the better deals I’ve seen) and it’s enabled Chaberton to quietly become the fourth-biggest winery in the province. That might, coupled with its long track record, allows the winery to secure excellent grapes from growers in the Okanagan so that, like T7, it can offer a full range of wine. But, after strolling the 50 acres of vineyards, I’m most intrigued by the local grapes—so I make a beeline for the gamay noir and it’s everything I want in a cool-climate red: juicy, crunchy, light and focused. And $21.95. Dee, the resident master of the tasting room, nods her approval.

My final stop, Backyard Vineyards, is a whopping seven minutes away at a leisurely 40km/hr pace of traffic. I pass several new vineyards that look to have just been planted: just babies compared to the 20-plus-year-old pinot noir grapes at my destination. Like T7, Backyard uses the pinot exclusively for a sparkling blanc de noir, but the winery also buys the hybrid grape Bacchus from some neighbouring vineyards, as well as some Okanagan grapes. It feels very much family-run—there’s a fire in the corner of the tasting room and, if you’re wined out, Backyard sell four-packs of the local Camp Brewing’s beer in the fridge. The vibe is very warm and fuzzy, not unlike the feel-good sentiment of A Cookie Cutter Christmas, filmed not far from here, which seems fitting.

What to Eat at Langley’s Wineries

All three wineries have covered picnic areas and sell charcuterie platters (although, this being friendly Langley, they’re more than happy for you to order a tasting flight of wine and Uber Eats some Thai food should you so desire—try doing that at Burrowing Owl and see how it goes). In addition, Chaberton Estate has its own well-regarded bistro that feels like you’re dining right in the vineyard and is open for European-inspired dining Wednesday through Sunday.