The Hillside Blog

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…

What is happening in the vineyard? Well…so much has happened since we last talked!  The vines have gone from bare trunks with 2 or 3 shoots to a lush jungle of green.  Bud Break occurred in the first week of May (about a week later than “normal”) pushing tiny leaves up out of the shoot…

Part 3 of 3: Why do we use oak in winemaking? The red edition… The use of oak in winemaking is so much more about structure than flavour: Red wines are aged (not “fermented”) in oak. The barrels are filled after fermentation and extended skin contact are completed—this is 20-30 days post-harvest. We try to…