The Hillside Blog

Through the summer of 2010, Hillside hosted a number of “terroir tastings” from barrels, illustrating the similarities and differences between four blocks of 2009 Merlot from the Naramata bench and one Oliver block.  The difference was obvious—almost a Sesame Street segment of “one of these things is not like the other” –the wine from Oliver…

The term intervention in winemaking spans a spectrum of practices. In theory, zero intervention would indicate that fruit is left on the vine and no wine is made. Maximum intervention would be…well let’s come back to that. The grapevine’s primary job, in fact its only desire, is to propagate. It wants to create the condition…

Oh my goodness, where do I start? Well, let’s start at the end. How do we know when it is time to stop aging a wine?  It’s a simple answer: when it is no longer improving or evolving in a positive way—ie it is “over the hill”.  The problem is our severe lack of time…

We faced harvest this year with no idea of what we might find. The “heat dome” in mid-June brought record temperatures at a highly unusual time for wine-growing regions. As this period is typically when we see “bloom” – flowering of these self-pollinating vines – I expected to see anomalies in both time of ripening…

Be kind, be calm, be safe, make wine… As we try to be patient, waiting for the grapes to ripen to perfection, we have been racking some of the 2019 red wines from barrels and blending. Pinot Noir, Gamay, Syrah and some of the Merlot need to be out of barrel and bottled to make…

Smoke and heat. Everyone wants to know how/if/how badly/how long they may affect the grapes and wine. The answer? So do we! Heat domes and wildfires in grape growing areas are new enough phenomena that we are learning so much year by year. The good news for us on the Naramata Bench is that we…

Part 3 of 3: How the Naramata Bench officially became a Sub-Appellation. So here we are. You have the background on the Naramata Bench and the BC system of sub-Geographic-Indicators, now it’s time to explore how they came together. The Naramata Bench wineries were the first in BC to join and pool their marketing efforts…

Now what is happening in the vineyard?(are we there yet???!!!) The vines right now are in a lag phase when they soak up sunlight and slowly create the precursor substances that will contribute to ripening.  Not much change is evident until veraison occurs.  This is when the berry starts to change colour, soften and sweeten,…

Hot time summer in the cellar… …haha not at Hillside!  Our 60-foot tower acts as a ventilation shaft, channeling warm air out of the cellar, while the rock walls built into the Hillside (see what we did there?!) insulate the room.  Along with our super-efficient tank cooling jackets this keeps the cellar air temperature generally…