No retirement in sight for an Okanagan wine pioneer

On a sunny afternoon last week, Harry McWatters welcomed the first grapes to the new Time Winery in downtown Penticton. Standing three kilometres and 50 years away from where his career started at Casabello Wines, he christened the golden yellow bunches of fruit with a splash of Chardonnay from a bottle of his McWatters Collection wine.

Fittingly, the grapes’ destiny is to become part of the blend of a new traditional method sparkling wine for the McWatters Collection portfolio.

One of the architects of the modern Canadian wine industry, McWatters’ career evolved from working as Casabello’s sales manager to launching British Columbia’s first boutique winery, Sumac Ridge Estate Winery, with Lloyd Schmidt in 1979.

Over the years, he racked up numerous firsts for British Columbia’s wine industry, including releases of the first Chardonnay as well as the debut traditional method sparkling wine (made in the bottle-fermented practice popularized by Champagne) and Meritage red, a term denoting a red or white wine blended from the grape varieties common to the Bor- deaux region of France.

When asked what was different about his fiftieth vintage compared to his first, McWatters doesn’t miss a beat. “The biggest difference is the consumer,” he says. “If we’re not consumer-driven today, we’re in trouble.”

The wines he sold under the Casabello label were made from native grapes, not the European varieties exclusively planted in the Okanagan Valley today. “The people that were drinking wine with any regularity typically wanted wines that were red, higher in alcohol and sweeter,” he explains.

The average wine lover in the 1970s didn’t know Chardonnay was a grape, he adds.

“It’s the consumer that’s changed,” he continues. “It’s a lot easier today because people are more willing to try new things and be taken into different areas. That wasn’t the case in the 1960s.”

McWatters is often hailed as the godfather of wine in British Columbia due to his behind the scenes efforts to establish industry standards and focus efforts on quality production. He is the founding chair of the British Columbia Wine Institute, VQA Canada and the British Columbia Hospitality Foundation among others, which helped to shape and support the fledgling industry.

It’s clear that McWatters’ longevity can be attributed to his passion for the industry. He has no plans on retiring, especially when there’s so much potential at the heart of Time’s newly renovated facility that turned an old movie theatre into a fully functioning winery and hospitality centre.

“If you think of the history of wine, 50 years is just the blink of an eye,” he says. “In British Columbia, I’m just the first to get 50 years under my belt. I’m pretty confident that there’s going to be a lot more people that make that milestone too.”