All One Era
Stephen Cipes, the founder of Summerhill Pyramid Winery in Kelowna, has always marched to the beat of his own drum.
He stores and ages wine in the winery’s eponymous Egyptian-style, on-site, 900-square-foot pyramid.
Cipes claims wine benefits from the monolith’s geometry and alignment to true north by clarifying and smoothing them and boosting aroma.
Rather than call himself owner or proprietor, Cipes refers to himself as the winery’s visionary and spiritual guide.
Summerhill was the first Okanagan winery to go organic and biodynamic.
Along the way, it also became an innovator with its award-winning Cipes sparkling wines and still table wines and is Canada’s mostvisited winery.
With his long, curly hair and rose-tinted (seriously) round glasses, Cipes also gives off a quirky, hippie vibe.
So, it should come as no surprise Cipes’ latest venture is a book called All One Era, which is about attaining harmony and peace on the planet, not wine.
To launch the book, Cipes chose Thursday, Dec. 21, the darkest day of the year, the winter solstice and the pivotal fifth anniversary of the ending of the Mayan lunar calendar, which marks the beginning of the All One Era.
The day and evening included Cipes reading from his book, a candle-lit procession to the pyramid, vegetarian potluck, drumming and dancing.
The era is meant to prompt us to take back our power as grand eternal beings and put our fearbased materialistic pasts behind us.
The $12 book can be purchased at Amazon.com or from the AllOneEraTheBook.com website.
If all this sounds a bit too weird to you, just grab a glass of Summerhill wine and enjoy, no fretting about pyramid power or new eras required.
It’s traditionally shaped, stylishly illuminated, constructed of industry-specific materials and topped with twinkling star.
It’s the Christmas tree at Okanagan Spirits in Vernon, made of gin, vodka, burbon and whisky bottles.
The distillery, which has locations in both Vernon and Kelowna, is using the tree to
Fruitcake
If you want a pre-Christmas chuckle, check out Moni Schiller’s Nuttier than a Fruitcake newsletter and blog at Fruitcake.ca.
Schiller closed down her Kelowna-based fruitcake-making business after 12 years, but continues to write and share recipes and her humourous life observations.
In the Christmas newsletter, she mused how one of her two adopted male tuxedo kittens has turned out to be a girl and Ira had to be re-named Iris.
There’s a recipe for rum balls, a rant about buying thrift-store Christmas ornaments rather than new and a suggestion to buy a bigger pair of pants to feel svelte during the holiday eating season.
Steve MacNaull is The Okanagan Saturday’s business and wine reporter and columnist. Reach him at steve.macnaull@ok.bc.ca.