Half-Corked

What could be better than a beautiful sunny morning and an 18.3 km run with 9 wineries along the way?
Hmmmm, I can't think of anything can you?

This past Sunday was the second annual Oliver Half Corked Marathon organized by the Oliver and Osoyoos Winery Association (formerly SOWA south okanagan winery association). Team Greased Lightening consisting of Danny, Kinnecki, Rizzo, Jan, Frenchie, Cookie, Marty and Sandy (bad version) was ready to go and fueled up with some Gerhinger Bros wines at 8:00 am.

Following the costume parade and judging we were off, with a quick stop to drop off the ghetto blaster (don't know why Ken didn't want to carry it the whole 18.3 km). After a short downhill jog and onto the farm roads we were in the midst of Tinhorn Creek vineyards - once again Tinhorn served up some lovely Sangria, white this year, and refreshing watermelon. If you are interested in the sangria recipe Tinhorn has posted it on their website - beware it serves 144, you may want to scale things down a little. Another short trek along the farm roads took us to Iniskillan but wait, there was Dave but what happened to Greased Lightening? Apparently it must have been a Ford for it was "found on roadside dead" - a fautly seatbelt bolt prevented Dave from carrying our transportation for the whole race. Erica did a great job at ensuring our beautiful vehicle made it's way to one of the support shuttles so it we could retrieve it at the end of the run. From there the wineries kept coming fast and furious, Road 13 and Rustico Cellars were up next - at this rate we were going to run out of wineries well before we ran out of distance. From Rustico we went down into the valley, crossed the highway and travelled along the canal, being careful to avoid the "drowning machine" and started our trek up the other side of the Golden Mile with a visit to Silver Sage - a beautiful setting, this is where the race ended last year, with some interesting wines. After Silver Sage there were some hills to climb to reach Church and State, followed by Stoneboat and Oliver Twist. Stoneboat wins for the most refreshing presentation of a wine, they turned their white blend, Chorus, into a delicous granita with grapefruit, lemon, lime and orange juices. Leah assures me we can easily make this treat. Leaving Oliver Twist we left the vineyards and continued our journey on Black Sage Road. If you've been counting you will notice we are already at 9 wineries, and the distance at this point was only around 12 km, the next 6 km were not looking too good. We had been warned so the rather long hill at 13 km was not a surprise but I think all would agree it was very long and some of that Tinhorn sangria would have been very welcome half way up. While there was no sangria to be had, there were apple fritters and fizzy fruit drinks to be had at the top, and then a short jaunt down the hill to La Quinta Ferria for the last winery stop, and then it was all downhill to the Oliver Community Centre.
Most of our group stuck together, finishing in just under 3:00, not the speediest of times but possible one of the funest times.
The finish line provided a lovely lunch, and guess what else? More wine, the association wineries that were not part of the route were present at the finish line to offer their selections.
Finally the morning finished off with presentations of awards, our hard work on costumes paid off and Greased Lightening won the best group costume award - a 3.0 L magnum of limited edition Half Corked Red wine. Every participant received a bottle of this wine in their race packages, a blend of reds from all 23 participating wineries. Team Greased Lightening thouroughly enjoyed their winnings that evening.

Here are a few pics of our day :)

And next up.....the Whistler half in one and a half days - stay tuned.