New Westbank winery takes shape as 400-year-old ruin
A new West Kelowna winery designed to look like an ancient ruin.
The Crown and Thieves, now under construction on a ridge overlooking Okanagan Lake, has a purposefully absurd character.
“It’s going to be a really weird winery that looks really old,” owner Jason Parkes says in a Facebook video promoting the offbeat project.
Features include what appears to be a 35-foot-tall remains of a wall built in the 1600s, a 1,200-square-foot tasting room, rooftop deck, and a basement to be used as a future speakeasy.
In the video, Parkes shows off an eclectic collection of fixtures and finishings to be used at the winery, at 3390 Harding Rd. between downtown Westbank and Gellatly Bay.
There are faux-old mirrors, pillars, doors, and lights, some of which Parkes says come from France by way of Iceland and Egypt.
“It’s all kind of fake, to be honest,” Parkes says with a laugh. “I picture everything dark with no lighting. But I know that’s illegal.”
West Kelowna city council was expected to approve a lounge and special event area liquor licence for the project. It will allow for up to 146 people, including staff, to be on-site, with the hours of operation between 10 a.m.-11 p.m. daily.
Capacity for the Crown and Thieves will be similar to other venues along the Wine Trail, the marketing name for Boucherie Road, city staff say. But two letters of objection were received by the city from nearby homeowners.
“This seems like a very dangerous idea that will negatively affect the whole
is
area,” Harding Road resident William Talalyevsky says. “Harding Road and Angus Drive currently have very little traffic and certainly no drunk driving at 11 p.m.”
Parkes is the owner of Truck 59, a
cidery located nearby at the current endpoint of Brown Road in Westbank. In the Facebook video, he suggests he is still working on finishing details for the Crown and Thieves winery.
He says: “I’d like to get a cannon.”