This is the second in our BC Harvest 2024 series. For the winemaker’s comments in our first article, see Winemaker’s Thoughts on BC 2024 Harvest.
2024 will be an exciting vintage for BC wineries. Expect some excellent BC-grown wine from hardy grapes like Riesling. I’m also looking forward to trying interesting new to BC varietals like Cinsault ( a classic Provencal variety responsible for their beloved Rosé ), sourced from Washington and Oregon.
Buy local and support BC Wine, as the BC wineries need your support more than ever!
Many thanks to all the winemakers who have contributed to this article:
- Blue Grouse Winery
- Singletree Winery
- Sunnybrae Vineyards & Winery
- Mythology Vineyard
- Castoro de Oro Estate Winery
- Blasted Church Vineyards
- SpearHead Winery
Vancouver Island
Blue Grouse Winery / Stacy Hornemann
The 2024 growing season was very short and had a slow start. Budbreak occurred in April, driven by some sunny, warm days. Growth slowed drastically with some cool, wet weather. Flowering at the BG estate was long and drawn out during a cold and wet spell, and we saw the consequences, with fruit set down for some varieties. May and June were wet and cool, putting the brakes on the usual exponential growth of young shoots to reach the catch wires of the trellis.
July finally warmed up, and the vines’ growth exploded. The weather remained sunny for a few weeks into August until we had a summer rainstorm. This was not the best timing for the 25 mm of rain for some of our earlier ripening varieties in the middle of veraison. We observed some grape splitting, but Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, and Chardonnay were spared as they weren’t quite softening yet.
Harvest commenced on September 17th under a full (harvest) moon, a week later than 2023, with the Estate Siegerrebe. The quality of the early varieties (Siegerrebe, Ortega, and Bacchus) was exciting, with lots of nice acid and fresh flavours. With a bit more sunshine and a couple more rainstorms, we started bringing in Pinot Noir for rosé and sparkling wines, which have yielded wines with lots of fresh fruit and crisp acidity.
Leading into October, we hadn’t harvested any Pinot Noir for red wine, as the grapes weren’t quite ready. Additionally, a rollercoaster of warm and cool weather made it challenging to schedule picking. Mother Nature cooperated in the first week of October and allowed us to harvest the balance of the Pinot Noir from the estate and our growers with a break in showers. The 2024 growing season was challenging for grape growers and winemakers alike. Ripening took a back seat to manage high disease pressure with rain events, which seemed to roll in consistently.
All in all, the Blue Grouse vineyard and winery teams knocked it out of the park, staying flexible and diligent in getting grapes harvested and crushed with speed and
precision.
For the latest information on the wines see Blue Grouse Releases Three Premium Wines and here is the link to purchase Blue Grouse wines.
Fraser Valley
Singletree Winery / Debbie Etsell
Cooler-than-average temperatures during Singletree Winery’s 2024 growing season resulted in a harvest that began three weeks later than usual.
The first grapes to be harvested were Siegerrebe and a new clone of Pinot Noir, picked in the third week of September. The winery’s Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc followed, harvested over the Thanksgiving weekend.
Gruner Veltliner, typically the last varietal to be picked, is still ripening and is expected to be harvested by late October, or possibly into November this year. Despite the late start, disease pressure remained low throughout the season, even as alternating rain and sunshine complicated the harvest. While the wetter-than-usual conditions posed a challenge, a few sunny days allowed the grapes to dry before being picked.
Singletree Winery is pleased to report that yields are higher than the previous two years, with an abundance of Rosé and Siegerrebe (“Siggy”) expected from the 2024 vintage.
Here is the link to purchase Singletree wines.
Shuswap
Sunnybrae Vineyards & Winery/ James Clark
As you might expect a different harvest than most but we were thankful for hybrids as well as the industry relationships we’ve built over the past few years.
Harvest began on Sep 7th with a small load of Petit Milo from Ovino Vineyards (formerly Ovino Winery) followed by a couple tons of L’Acadie Blanc on September 13th. The beautifully crisp wines will find their home in our Twisted Path blend: a new release from the 2023 vintage referring to the complex journey we took to make wine following the ’22 freeze! With a waste-not-want-not attitude we also picked our estate Siegerrebe and Ortega alongside Ovino’s fruit… it amounted to 8 and a half, 5 gallon buckets…!
We took the one-time opportunity to source from out of province to supplement our white cwine production. The next few weeks that followed saw us bringing in Gewurtztraminer, Riesling and Pinot Gris juice from WA which we selected as a best match for the wines in our portfolio. This side of “harvest” definitely felt different but we embraced the challenges with positivity and look forward to bringing these new (to us) and exciting wines to our customers next year!
October 15th we finally got to harvest our estate Marechal Foch, which this year was the only fruitful block in our vineyard. It brought a lot of joy to the season being able to welcome back our neighbourhood of annual pickers and celebrate a successful side to the growing season. Although bud break in this block was on par with 2023, late summer and fall were a little cool and steady, leading to ripeness more typical of what we see here in the Shuswap.
Along with some Foch from nearby Ovino Vineyard, Tappen Creek Farm and some Ortega from the Island, we should be going into 2025 with decent enough case production to see us through the year. 2024 has been a whirlwind of uncertainty but we’re finally glad to see all the pieces coming together and are thankful for our extended Community in helping us weather this storm!
Here is the link to purchase Sunnybrae wines and for more information on the winery – Sunnybrae Vineyards & Winery for Redneck Red.
Osoyoos
Mythology Vineyard / Teresa Centanni and Mark Simpson
The last two years have been really challenging for Okanagan vineyards, as we have experienced the ravages of climate change with fires and extreme temperatures making farming more challenging in the Okanagan Valley. Every winemaker in the region has been forced to find new and creative ways to move forward given the small crop this year, and we are no different.
Our strategy at Mythology Vineyard has been to build stronger ecosystem of like-minded growers and winemakers so that we can create a more resilient wine growing and production universe to withstand these challenges.
For this vintage, our winemaker Mark Simpson was able to work with his extensive connections with winemakers across the entire province to source great fruit from the Cowichan Valley and the Fraser Valley to supplement the small amount of Okanagan grapes.
We sourced grapes and from the Cowichan Valley and the Fraser Valley along with Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon juice from Washington State, which will allow our 2024 vintage to include Mythology Aphrodite, Mythology Sauvignon Blanc-Semillon and Mythology Rosé, all made with our signature commitment to creating exceptional, delicious, and memorable wines. We will pay tribute to the grape source with the labelling of every wine, for transparency and to celebrate our great growers.
Our vineyard is still healing from the profound cold event of last January and we will see no crop this year and likely a reduced crop next year. We have started putting into place a strategy to heal our vineyard and we’re going forward with that fairly complicated process of growing up a robust canopy, to encourage sap flow up through the trunk and careful pruning of suckers to establish new trunks. We’re confident our vines will heal, and our crop will return. This summer, our stellar team also invested enormous energy into our tasting room, vineyard, hotel, and farmers market program to diversify our revenue streams and introduce as many wine lovers as possible to our wines and vineyard. Efforts like this will be key to the long-term viability of boutique wineries like ours. From working with our winemaker friends around the province to welcoming like-minded winemakers into our umbrella, we demonstrate how we see the future of the BC wine economy. By banding together as producers to share resources and being willing to source fruit from around the province, we will build a robust wine business based on healthy vineyards, a strong BC brand and a deep connection with consumers from the dirt to the glass.
There are things beyond our control, but we urge all our friends to raise their voices in support of developing a Canada-wide wine industry with a harmonized Canada-wide VQA universe. To be successful as a national industry, we need the ability to move fruit from one terroir to the other with minimal intervention, taxation and regulation.
We sincerely thank you for your support and interest, our friends and community have been vital in helping us get through this challenging period.
Here is the link to purchase Mythology wines.
Oliver
Castoro de Oro Estate Winery / Stella Schmidt
As we complete our 19th harvest at Castoro de Oro Estate Winery, we can only reflect on what a bittersweet couple of grape growing years it has been, the 2023 season was affected by a cold snap in December 2022 and we had a smaller crop than usual that year. Then the cold of January 2024 impacted the BC wine industry beyond anyone’s imagination. Our estate vineyard is thankfully alive, watch the video! In 2024 our vineyard produced an estimated crop of 15% of a typical year, however THE BIRDS… whom normally have acres upon acres of grapes all over the valley to feed on… WERE HUNGRY and they took a much larger share of our small crop of grapes. However, after careful consideration we have made the decision to NOT import any inexpensive grapes/juice or must from outside of BC. This decision was not made lightly and we struggled to figure out how we could still have enough wine to satisfy our loyal customers, both big contracts and our beloved consumers, but we believe we did it!!
We feel extremely fortunate and very grateful that, during our almost 20 years in the business, we have made many good friends in the industry, these vineyard grape growers and other local wineries have enabled us to remain 100% BC. We are therefore PROUDLY announcing that our wines are still and will remain 100% Oliver/Osoyoos – Okanagan Valley – British Columbia.
All of the grapes we grew and purchased were hand harvested and of optimal quality and we are excitedly making incredible wines from our estate grapes and our purchases too. Some of our wines may be in limited supply or not available at all NEXT year, for example our pure Vidal, our Pinot Blanc, and our Unoaked Chardonnay. So order your wines TODAY for direct to consumer shipping.
We look forward to releasing some NEW wine offerings in 2025, a Cab/Merlot Blend and finally, after seven years of unavailability, our Crimson Rhapsody red blend will be releasing to the public too.
Okanagan Falls
Blasted Church Vineyards / Evan Saunders
Blasted Church Vineyards is kicking off September with the 2024 grape harvest, accessing quality grapes from Washington State.
In an inaugural collaboration with Prosser’s Andrews Family Vineyards, located in the Horse Heaven Hills AVA, Blasted Church will be able to produce the quality wines they have been known for since 2002. Blasted Church winemaker, Evan Saunders made the 6.5 hour drive to Prosser, Washington to work with the Andrews family regarding picking and harvest decisions. The varieties will include Sauvignon Blanc, Grenache, Pinot Gris, and then Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon.
The grapes for the white wines and rosé will be mechanically harvested at night, sorted, and pressed. The temperature-controlled grape juice will then be shipped to Okanagan Falls for vinification by the Blasted Church winemaking team. Red wine grapes will be hand-harvested and shipped to BC as whole clusters for the team to process in the Blasted Church cellar.
Blasted Church winery and many neighbouring BC wineries find themselves in the same situation: They need to purchase Washington fruit due to the deep freeze that damaged the 2024 crop. Saunders has visited Prosser six times in planning, and when making his regular visits to Prosser, he has seen several of his industry peers. Saunders notes that it has been excellent working with third-generation farmer Jeff Andrews, and he is happy that the grapes are from certified sustainable vineyards.
“It is a peculiar feeling to look out the window in Okanagan Falls at this time of year and see no grapes,” he notes. “But it will be magical for me and my team to start from juice,” he jokes. Saunders has gone through the stress of the paperwork required to bring the juice and grapes in from the US, so it is appreciated to have one easy step.
Lovers of Blasted Church wines can rest assured that delicious, quality wines will continue to be made. In the meantime, the team has ample inventory of current releases to enjoy.
The tasting room doors are open to welcome visitors for an amazing winery experience, or orders can be made online at blastedchurch.com.
Kelowna
SpearHead Winery / Grant Stanley
A cold snap in the Okanagan in January 2024 damaged the SpearHead Winery vineyards, which have been pulled out and will be replanted in the spring of 2025.
Like many other Okanagan wineries, SpearHead Winery’s Winemaker and General Manager Grant Stanley and his team have sourced grapes from vineyards in Washington State and Oregon to compensate for the lost 2024 harvest.
Washington State
The winery is partnering with several vineyards near Prosser to acquire a variety of grapes, including Syrah, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, Riesling, and Pinot Noir for Rosé and white Pinot Noir. The Syrah will arrive as whole grapes, while the other varietals will be pressed in Washington and transported as juice in refrigerated trucks. Harvest is anticipated to begin in late September to early October, with some varietals expected to be ready sooner. Grant has been visiting the vineyards before harvest to ensure quality.
Oregon
In Oregon, SpearHead Winery will source Pinot Noir from Cherry Hills Vineyard in the Eola-Amity Hills AVA, enough to produce approximately 1,000 cases. The grapes, which include select Dijon clones, may allow for the bottling of multiple expressions of Oregon Pinot Noir. Harvest is expected in early October, and Grant has already visited the vineyard with plans for a second trip. The grapes will be transported in refrigerated trucks, using 40 half-ton bins purchased in Oregon to maintain optimal quality. SpearHead Winery looks forward to crafting this vintage, committed to sourcing the finest grapes to continue producing outstanding wines.
The calm before the storm. Below, the winery is ready to receive Harvest 2024.
Here is the link to purchase SpearHead wines.