TIME TO TAKE NOTE OF BLACK HILLS NOTA BENE

A decade ago, Oliver’s Black Hills Estate Winery hosted a vertical tasting spanning the years 1999 to 2007 of its flagship red Nota Bene at the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival.

I missed that one, but caught up with version 2.0 last month in the Okanagan Valley. This time, the tasting covered 18 years between 1999 and 2015, plus a 2016 barrel sample.

In 2007, winery president Glenn Fawcett was reported as saying it was unlikely that Black Hills would hold another vertical tasting any time soon because demand from local wine drinkers was quickly draining the stocks of older Nota Bene vintages, making them rare and expensive.

He said more or less the same thing to this year’s participants, although the winery has recently been purchased by Andrew Peller for a mind-boggling $33 million. Funding may be less of an issue now, but like any collectible wine, finding older bottles remains a challenge.

Black Hills was born on an abandoned vineyard site on the lower side of Black Sage Road in 1996. It was a joint venture between Peter and Susan McCarrell and Bob and Senka Tennant, who planted 36,000 vines on the 13.7 hectares.

Three years later, the couples opened Black Hills Estate, selling off half the grapes for muchneeded cash and creating the inaugural vintage of Nota Bene. There was no winery facility back then. The first “heated” space at Black Hills was a used Quonset hut erected in 2001, when growing grapes from young vines in the south Okanagan was still an adventure.

The McCarells and the Tennants are long gone (the latter now own Terravista Vineyards on Naramata Bench), as are the hundreds of investors who recently sold to Peller. Fawcett remains as winery director along with winemaker Graham Pierce and viticulturist Steve Carberry, who, together with celebrated Andrew Peller chief winemaker Craig McDonald, plan to take Nota Bene to another level.

Nota Bene already has a huge following, and while lots has been done there is still plenty of work underway to push the label into the upper echelon of the Okanagan’s very best red blends. It was interesting to see some of the changes in the wine as we tasted through the vintages, and by the end of the tasting it was easy to break the wines into three distinct eras along the 18-year timeline: 1999 to 2005, 2006 to 2011, and — easily the best — 2012 to 2015.

If you own any wines from 1999 to 2005, you best drink them or sell them, because they are not going to get any better. To be fair, they were never made to be 10-year-old wines. You could save them for 20th anniversaries,

where the age of the wine will wow your guests and trump the state of the wine. So consider opening that 1999 or the 2000 in 2019 or 2020.

A proper winery was built in 2006, and Black Hills began to shift from a rustic red to a wine made in French oak barrels. It was less over-extracted, but the tannins remained hard, suggesting it needed aging. The wines didn’t necessarily sing Okanagan, but from 2006 through 2011 they feel more complete with fresher, longer staying power.

Along with a new winery facility, important improvements to the watering regime, like going to drip-irrigation, began to soften the texture of Nota Bene. Both the 2007 and 2009 stand out, and seven years down the road the 2010 is beginning to emerge from its cool, herbal beginnings.

The modern era is stoked by climate change and longer, warmer growing seasons began in 2011. The wines are more compelling, telling a riper, softer story with brighter fruit with more savoury, south Okanagan terroir. The 2012 is simply excellent, 2013 a personal favourite, and the richer 2014 will appeal to the California red crowd.

On this day, the star was the 2015. It was a warm year, perfect for Cabernet Sauvignon-dominated reds.

But the combination of older vines, better viticulture, stronger winemaking and good oldfashioned confidence points to a bright future for the Black Hills wines and, in particular, their flagship red Nota Bene — finally it is a wine to take note of.