John Schreiner - The Okanagan Wine Tour Guide

Osoyoos

Opened 2011

7311 45th Street

Osoyoos, BC V0H 1V6

T 250.495.6243

W adegaon45.com

Ringing the church bells to communicate important village events was an art that Alex Nunes learned one summer in his native Portugal. He was 13 and home from a stint in the seminary. He immigrated to Canada two years later. The lingering memory of the two big bells inspired the addition of a bell tower to the winerys facade when it was built in 2011. Alex still considers adding a bell. It is either buy one or go back to my hometown and steal one at midnight, he jokes.

The winery, whose warm butterscotch tones blend with the desert landscape of Osoyoos, was designed by Alex and his brother-in-law, Fred Farinha, who own the winery with their wives, Maria and Pamela. The winery sits high on the vineyards west-facing slope. The tasting-room windows offer a grand view over the town and the lake. The 6,000-square-foot winery has thick concrete walls and a naturally cooled cellar for 400 barrels buried against the hillside. The interiors public areas acquired the instant patina of age by having walls finished with Italian clay and tiles on the floor.

The winerys European ambience reflects their Portuguese heritage (adega is Portuguese for cellar). Alex was born in Portugal in 1950, while Fred was born in Penticton in 1966. Their families were among the many Portuguese immigrants who came to Osoyoos at that time as tree-fruit growers. Both Alex and Fred operated orchards until about 2005, when vanishing returns from tree fruit left them with a stark choice: sell the land or plant grapes. We decided to keep the land and build a winery, Alex says.

They planted three vineyards totalling 11.5 hectares (28 acres), supporting 5,000 cases a year, with extra grapes for sale to other wineries. Create our own future, you could call it, Alex says. Wine is in their blood. We had wine on our tables and in our homes, always, since we were born, Alex remembers. Your mom would ask you to go to the tavern in the village to get a litre of wine. It did not matter if you were five years old or ten years old. You would just go and get it. While they use a consulting winemaker, Alex and Fred, with years of experience as home winemakers, do almost everything themselves. We are hands-on, Fred says. We are in the field, and we are also in here.

Fred Farinha and Alex Nunes

My Picks

Viognier is the star among the white wines. The solid range of reds includes a peppery Syrah, a brambly Cabernet Franc, an elegant Cabernet Sauvignon, and a fine Meritage blend called Quarteto Tinto.

Kelowna

Opened 2011

4918 Anderson Road

Kelowna, BC V1X 7V7

T 250.491.2766

W ancienthillwinery.com

This winery is the unabashed champion of Baco Noir, the dark hybrid grape created in 1902 by Franois Baco, a plant breeder in southwestern France. Because it is a winter-hardy grape producing full-bodied red wines, it was widely grown in the Okanagan until vineyards began switching to vinifera grapes. But in 2005, when Richard Kamphuys (pronounced compass) replaced fruit trees with vines, he chose Baco Noir for about a third of his 6-hectare (15-acre) vineyard.

Richard, who owns this winery with his wife, Jitske, planted varieties that tolerate the cold winters that can be expected at this site overlooking Kelowna International Airport, where grapes were first planted in the 1930s by the Rittich brothers. Natives of Hungary, Eugene and Virgil Rittich believed that vinifera grapes could succeed and wrote a book (British Columbias first wine book) on how to grow grapes and make wine. Severe winters at the time doomed their pioneering trials, and fruit trees replaced vines.

Richard and Jitske came from the Netherlands in 1992 and bought an apple orchard. Richard, who was born in 1963, completed an advanced economics degree at the historic Erasmus University in Rotterdam before deciding he wanted a rural lifestyle for himself and his family.

He considered growing grapes as soon as he and Jitske, a former doctors assistant, bought the orchard but was put off until 2005 by general pessimism at that time about the future of British Columbias wineries. Since then, he has planted over 27,000 vines, choosing midseason-ripening varieties: Pinot Gris, Gewrztraminer, Lemberger, Zweigelt, Pinot Noir, and Baco Noir.

I should have had more Baco Noir and less Zweigelt, Richard says now. That hybrid seems suited to this area. It comes through in a lesser year as well as in a good year.

To make the point, he pours a glass of Baco Noir from 2010, a cool year. The wine is full bodied with rich flavours of plum and chocolate. Invariably, it is the most popular wine at Ancient Hill, a baronial winery designed by Robert Mackenzie, the Okanagans pre-eminent winery architect.

Richard and Jitske Kamphuys

My Picks

Baco Noir leads a focused portfolio that includes Lazerus, a proprietary red made with Lemberger, a red grape the Rittich brothers once grew. Pinot Gris, Gewrztraminer, and ros also are well made.

Virtual Winery

Opened 2016

T 778.931.2421

W anthonybuchananwines.ca

No tasting room

Anthony Buchanan, who was born in 1970, was just 26 when he got so serious about wine that he joined the Opimian Society, a national wine-buying club. However, he did not set out immediately on a career in wine. I was a hairdresser for 21 years, Anthony says. I got into hairdressing right out of high school. I owned my own business for 11 years in Victoria.

He began considering a different career in 2001. I have always loved food and wine, he says. I like the social aspect of it as well. Initially, he set out to be a sommelier until he became more interested in winemaking. In 2007, he left the hair salon to work the harvest at Blue Mountain Vineyard, a winery specializing in Anthonys biggest passion, Pinot Noir. Then he took a job in the cellar at the Church & State winery at Brentwood Bay on Vancouver Island. There he met Nicole, now his wife and partner in the winery.

On the advice of Matt Mavety, the winemaker at Blue Mountain, Anthony enrolled in the University of Washingtons enology program to qualify as a winemaker. In 2010, as he was finishing the course, he and Nicole moved to the Okanagan, where he made wine with several producers before becoming the senior winemaker at Desert Hills Estate Winery in 2016.

He had begun making wines for his own label in 2014 when he was with Eau Vivre Winery, a Pinot Noir specialist in the Similkameen Valley. Pinot Noir has been a long-term passion of mine, he says. To avoid a conflict with his employers, Anthony focuses on different varieties, including Pinot Blanc. I think it is extremely undervalued, he says. There are not a lot of wineries that produce Pinot Blanc.

By 2019, he was making 1,500 cases for Anthony Buchanan Wines, which is now among the larger of the virtual wineries. The idea is to slowly establish the brand in the marketplace and get a really good following, Anthony says. We will take each year, each vintage, as it comes. But there is the end goal of obtaining a small piece of property.