Checkmate looks like a winner
Von Mandl’s new winery will make an unconventional debut
Vancouver businessman Anthony von Mandl’s new Checkmate Artisanal Winery, a Von Mandl Family Estates project, is about to come to fruition in the south Okanagan. The winery project, like most VMF initiatives, has been quietly progressing under the radar for more than three years now and will make its most unconventional debut — online — in November.
In a world where wineries often say it’s all about the wine and then build a huge winery and visitor centre and restaurant (Von Mandl has been there and done that at Mission Hill), it won’t be the case at Checkmate.
There is a physical building, the old Domaine Combret winery that had morphed into Antelope Ridge over the years, but it won’t be open to visitors. The building has had a light retro-fit and is merely a facility to make and raise the wine, if you will. If you want to interact with Checkmate, you will have to do it online or in a restaurant. As they say, membership has its advantages — and in this case membership will give you access to a limited number of bottles of wine made available to the public. There won’t be an endless supply.
To add to the winery’s mystique, there will be only one grape at Checkmate, at least for now, and that is Chardonnay. There will be five labels in all to start, three from separate south Okanagan sites, one a blend of all sites and a final selection fermented and aged in a single large oval vat or foudre.
You can expect the Checkmate wines will spawn their own volume of minutiae, from clones to rootstocks, to barrel makers, fermentation techniques and blending and aging strategies. I’m not going to sugarcoat it for the keep-wine-simple crowd. This is a complex Chardonnay project. Nor am I going to use the Burgundy word, but there is a resemblance to the Old World style. That said, why not think of Checkmate as part of the Next World style and the next Okanagan?
Von Mandl admits at this stage “it is less about selling wine and more about making a statement and selling the valley” — and sell it he will, from $80 to $125 a bottle. The mantra at Checkmate is to only release wines that are worth it and that can stand the price, and I must say after tasting through the lineup the squat, ancient-looking artisanal-shaped bottles look the part and taste it too.
The man responsible for quality is Phil McGahan, chief winemaker and general manager at Checkmate. The transplanted Australian grew up on a grain farm in the Darling Downs region of Queensland before obtaining a degree in law. After a short stint in the legal profession he caught the wine bug and returned to Charles Stuart University, where he earned a bachelor of applied science winemaking degree.
From school he ended up in the Hunter Valley, but soon landed an important post as assistant winemaker at Sonoma-based Williams Selyem Winery, famous for its Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Most of their wines sell for the equivalent of $80 to $125 a bottle. There is nothing brash about McGahan — in fact his quiet studious demeanour seems perfectly suited to the demanding, frenetic pace von Mandl works at.
At Checkmate the chess theme runs through the lineup, which includes Capture Chardonnay (Osoyoos), Queen Taken Chardonnay (Golden Mile Bench), Little Pawn Chardonnay (Black Sage Bench) the blend Fool’s Mate Chardonnay and Attack Chardonnay (Black Sage Bench) fermented in a large wooden vat. I haven’t the space to get to the notes this week, but suffice to say they are off to an excellent start, something McGahan knows is important.
“It’s not that we are setting benchmarks worldwide, but more about what we can do with the natural resources,” McGahan says.
There will be a few more vintages before these wines find their ultimate mojo, but you can get in on the ground floor now. Sign up at checkmatewinery.com for the first release, scheduled to be out sometime in November. It’s your move.