After a hard morning’s wine tasting on the Naramata Bench, we were starving for a tasty lunch. A number of the wineries had recommended Misconduct Wine Co., so we gave it a try. The Kitchen restaurant also has a great view of the local vineyards.
For lunch we selected:
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- Toasted walnut, chickpea and roasted garlic spread. A fabulous vegan chickpea pâté with walnuts and roasted garlic. It’s thick and rich and is perfect for spreading on fresh bread.
- Grilled sardine, squeeze lemon and rock salt. Not sure where they sourced the sardines but these were awesome…memories of meals in Perth, Western Australia and Barcelona flooded back.
- Chicken & pork liver pate was good.
- Fired grilled prawns piri-piri. Cooking prawns in their shells make all the difference to their flavour, but shelling them is messy – so they provided finger bowls.
The meal brought back fond memories of our trip to Spain (even though these were Portuguese Tapas!) especially some great times in Granada at the restaurants near the Alhambra. The service was first class with each menu item arriving as soon as they were prepared. The tapas were accompanied by a large baguette for dipping in the wonderful sauces. Best tapas this side of the Atlantic!
The Winery
While we were having lunch we could hear Misconduct’s larger than life winemaker and owner Richard da Silva extolling the virtues of his wines in the tasting room. His message to live by is ‘life is too short to drink bad wine’. Richard and his wife, Twylla, started making wine in September 2006. While the name and labels are quirky, Richard is dead serious about making sensational wine. It’s no surprise then that Misconduct’s single vineyard sourced wines are influenced and inspired by the artisan wine producers of the old world wine growing regions of Europe, particularly those in the Burgundy, Bordeaux, Loire and Rhone Valley areas.
Richard believes terroir – the soil, site and climate of a particular region – trumps all. “I’m a terroirist”, he declares. “Place is fundamentally important to wine, and some grape varieties flourish better in other regions. I’m prepared to go anywhere in the Okanagan and Similkameen Valley for the best fruit.” At the heart of it all is transparency. That’s why you’ll find the latitude and longitude of the source vineyard on the front label of each Suspect series wines, and the names and locations of our growers on the back label.
The Wines
Unfortunately, we were out of time and didn’t sample Misconduct’s wines this Naramata trip. Check out the Misconduct Wine website for a full listing of the wine portfolio.
We can definitely recommend The Kitchen the next time you are in Naramata. Make sure you schedule enough time to try Richard’s wines too.