Best Winery/Vineyard Dining 2010

Vineyard dining can be hit and miss, but Gold winner Mission Hill—even with Michael Allemeier no longer overseeing the kitchen—offers the most dependable, fully realized winery table in the Okanagan. Granted, variable weather can diminish enjoyment of the Terrace (why not a seasonless indoor dining room as well, and, while we’re at it, a kitchen on the same level?), but impressive attention to detail and extensive use of local ingredients by chef Matthew Batey make this the spot in wine country. The Old Vines Restaurant at Quails’ Gate (Silver) also caught our judges’ attention, thanks to “a lovely selection of wine-bar snacks and an ambitious—perhaps even overly ambitious—full menu.” The restaurant’s superb setting is “quintessentially Okanagan,” said one judge, and “makes this one of very few solid picks in wine country.” Domaine de Chaberton’s Bacchus (Bronze) brings Okanagan French cooking to the Lower Mainland. Honourable Mentions went to Summerland’s Cellar Door Bistro at Sumac Ridge (“Executive chef Roger Planiden’s seasonal plates are a delight”) and to Vineyard Terrace at CedarCreek in Kelowna with its lovely views over Okanagan Lake.