SPARKLING SUCCESS: THE EVOLUTION OF B.C. BUBBLY
When I think about the history of B.C. sparkling wine, four people come easily to mind: Harry McWatters, the original force behind Sumac Ridge Steller’s Jay Brut in Summerland; Stephen Cipes, founder of Summerhill Pyramid Winery and producer of Cipes Brut in Kelowna; and Ian and Jane Mavety, the Okanagan Falls couple behind Blue Mountain Brut, the longtime darling of the B.C. fizz market.
Each took a different path to sparkling wine but some three decades down the road they remain central to the sparkling wine story that is now experiencing unprecedented interest across the province.
Blue Mountain, longtime grape growers, hired a wine consultant early on and did what many new wineries didn’t — they avoided selling any faulty wines and that led to an early reputation for dependability. The restaurant community became early adopters, and with little or no competition and an adequate supply of well-made fizz, sales surged ahead. Avoiding government liquor stores, and not seeking VQA approval, only made them more mysterious and attractive to the trade.
The current Gold Label Brut is the compilation of decades of growing knowledge and winemaking now under the control of the second-generation, Matt and Christie Mavety. It’s all Okanagan Falls estate fruit, namely a 50/45.5/4.5 mix of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Gris.
After a two-year rest on its lees inside the bottle, it’s disgorged, topped up and aged a further six to nine months before release. As reliable as the Gold Label is, the new-ish Blanc de Blanc vintage releases may be the ultimate Blue Mountain sparkling story, but we will need another decade or two know for sure.
A lot of people walked through the tiny sparkling wine cellar at Sumac Ridge back in the day. Aging sparkling wine was a foreign concept in B.C. in the 1990s, but it didn’t stop McWatters from giving his all to a project that really shone the light on our natural advantage to grow grapes with the same high acid content we see in the great Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier grapes of Champagne.
McWatters was hand-riddling Steller’s Jay at a time when few people hadn’t even heard of méthode champenoise, the exacting process used to make Champagne.
Further north, Cipes was busy building his pyramid and aging his Cipes Brut inside an eight per cent scaled-down replica of Egypt’s Great Pyramid. The Cipes mantra has been all about going organic from the start, no easy achievement with sparkling wine. Over the years many sparkling wines have come out of Summerhill, but it was the 1998 Cipes Ariel Brut that really made a statement. At more than 15 years of age it began to appear younger than ever in tastings, revealing a rich, powerful, yet delicate nose of complex aromas and equally impressive creamy textures. Again fuelled by the perfect level of acidity required to age sparkling wine.
In recent years the next generation has picked up the baton exploring about every style of sparkling wine made on earth. At Okanagan Crush Pad, the Haywire, Narrative and Free Form labels are exploring multiple production methods including the tank method (à la Prosecco) and the Ancestrale Method, where the wine is bottled before the end of its alcoholic fermentation.
At Bella Wines only sparkling wine is made, and single vineyard sites are a focus. At Fitzpatrick Family Vineyards, extended aging and precision winemaking of vintage fizz is yielding terrific results.
On Vancouver Island, wineries like Averill Creek, Unsworth and Enrico are using the Charme de L’ile moniker to signify the Charmat (tank) method fizz using Island grapes. They join pioneers like Zanatta and Venturi Schulze, who were early Island bubbly champions.
Sparkling wine is on the edge of becoming something special in B.C., although ironically that will not happen until we embrace it as a wine for general consumption not just something we open to celebrate special moments.