I’m on the first leg of what has been a regular summer gig for me. The BC Wine Institute, who market and promote BC VQA wine, contract me each summer to present BC wine education seminars to restaurant and retail trade, both in Vancouver and around British Columbia. All of the regular things you’d imagine are covered; history, geography, climate, wine styles, and such are tackled before we taste through various local wines.
After a sunny ferry ride over to Victoria on Sunday, I checked into the brand new Hotel Zed—a kitschy 62-room motel that’s just a perfect distance away from the harbour’s tourist masses. How nice to nab a sharp lookin’ room at 99 bucks with free Wi-Fi and complimentary city bikes for guests. Really, it’s the little things.
While the sessions I led were enjoyable, one thing about educating folks about BC wine is that any syllabus can quickly become outdated; it’s the crux of our industry being so young. The thing that shifted this week was the fact that the Okanagan Valley, which produces 82 per cent of BC wine, still doesn’t have any officially recognized sub-regions. The little asterisk that now gets tacked on to that fact is that as of this week, wineries in Oliver’s Golden Mile Bench have submitted a proposal to become the first official sub-DVA (Designated Viticultural Area) of the Okanagan Valley. While the Okanagan nabbing its first sub-region designation will probably take years of wading through bureaucracy, once the green light flashes on, many other sub-regions will follow.
So why’s this important? One of the big reasons, besides the importance of transparency in labeling, is while many think of the Okanagan as one big consistent region—that couldn’t be further from the truth. Let’s look at a few of our ‘unofficial’ sub-regions to see how looking at growing degree days (GDD), a unit to measure heat accumulation over a vintage, helps us compare wine regions. You have Kelowna in the northern part of wine country, echoing the GDD of somewhere between Germany’s Mosel and New Zealand’s Marlborough regions. It’s no wonder that the area’s wines by Tantalus, Summerhill, CedarCreek and the like are characterized by bright, aromatic, cool climate white varieties (particularly riesling), with lively acidity.
Popping down to Okanagan Falls, you have GDDs that chime in right around those of Australia’s Yarra Valley and Burgundy in France. Immediately coming to mind in those regions are well-balanced chardonnays and pinot noirs, grapes that have quickly become the hallmark of Okanagan Falls (think Blue Mountain, Meyer Family Vineyards, and Liquidity).
In Osoyoos/Black Sage Bench, we’re literally talking desert, with cactus, rattlesnakes and more. It’s such an intense climate that it’s actually beyond Napa and closer to Australia’s Barossa Valley. Yup, it’s here we’re talking the big, bold reds composed of Cabernets and Merlots from the likes of Black Hills and Osoyoos LaRose.
With the Golden Mile’s rugged terrain similar to Osoyoos except slightly cooler early-evenings, we see wines from a wide variety of grapes everywhere from chenin blanc to zinfandel and everything in between. As area wineries like Road 13 and Tinhorn Creek push for their area’s official designation, here’s hoping various other sub-DVAs will follow quickly. If anything, it’ll mean our little region is finally growing up.
