(l-r) Pat and Brenda Bell, Luke Lapp, Dagmar, Edward and William Norton, Sales & Service Manager Wendy Stevens. Photo courtesy Kim Royle.

Prince George, B.C. – The inaugural Northern Lights Winter Wine Festival is in the books and, by all accounts, it was an overwhelming success.

The festival, at the Northern Lights Estate Winery, was scheduled to run during the Celebrate Prince George Winter Festival, which comes to a conclusion today.  The highlight of the wine festival is the Mulled Wine Contest which, this year, featured five teams:  the City of Prince George, Norton North Ranch, the local MLAs team, Ohh Chocolate and the Pattison Broadcast Group.

Mayor Lyn Hall and his City of Prince George team spice things up. Photo 250 News

Mulled wine is hot, spiced wine and the task for the competitors was to see which team could come up with the most appealing and popular recipe.  Two hundred tickets were available for the event and all two hundred sold well in advance of Saturday.

When the dust had cleared, the winning team was the Norton North Ranch, consisting of Dagmar Norton, Edward Norton, William Norton and Luke Lapp.

Pattison Group’s Kharah Black added her secret spices away from peering eyes.

Pat Bell, who along with wife Brenda are Development Partners in the winery, is extremely pleased, calling the event “an overwhelming success, I think this will become one of the key events in Prince George in the coming years.  The Railway Museum will receive a significant contribution as a result of the event and everyone that came out had a wonderful time.”

Bell now has a bit of a problem on his hands, but one he might not mind too much.  “Our biggest challenge in future years is going to be figuring out a way to allow more people to participate, because the event did sell out and I know there were quite a few people who wanted to come.”

“Next year we’re going to have to figure out is there a way of stretching it out and doing it over a longer period of time, which would allow more people to participate.”  He says there are a few possible scenarios.  “Maybe two days.  This year we had two different tasting sessions and maybe what we could do is break that down in a way where we could expand it to three or maybe even four sessions where people could come by, because the winery itself pretty well limits out at a hundred people.”

Guests enjoyed sampling the Mulled wines inside the winery and outdoors. Photo courtesy Pat Bell

Bell says “it was a lot of fun, everyone thought this is a great winter event for Prince George.”  He also says in future it will continue to run during the city’s winter festival.  “I think the Prince George Winter Festival is a great fit for us and we can really add an interesting event to it so at this time it looks like that’s the best time to hold it.”