A year and a half ago I stood in our Hidden Valley Vineyard with Marcus Keller, Distinguished Professor in Viticulture, WSU Prosser. “I predict 100% recovery next year—but don’t quote me on that.” Of course I did, every chance I got, quote him, but I didn’t quite believe him. The red varieties in this vineyard—syrah and merlot—had 100% top loss. There was no growth above the crown (top of the trunk). In addition, about 25% of the syrah vines were dead, and 5% of the merlot. On his advice we “kept everything”, that is all the suckers that came up from our 20-year old roots, and predicted 35 to 50% crop in 2025.
Marcus had been invited to speak in the Okanagan last summer as part of the Triggs Tour, a bi-annual speaking engagement in both Ontario and BC, funded by the family of Don Triggs, one of the founders of Jackson Triggs Winery—now Arterra. Ironically, the event had been organised several years earlier—not in response to the catastrophic cold event of January 2024. Dr. Keller couldn’t have come at a better time, every viticulturist and vineyard manager in the valley sought his advice and council. In addition to giving a talk, he guided a vineyard tour—visiting three damaged vineyards including our Hidden Valley.
So we “kept everything”. This presented a huge challenge this spring as the vines in the fall had shown robust growth from every sucker we kept. Hedging our bets, we decided to keep 2 shoots per vine as potential new trunks until bud-break gave us the assurance that at least one was strong. This increased the required pruning time 5-fold, as every cut was a major decision, and every vine looked like a bush.
Through the summer we kept all our fingers crossed, knocked all the wood, and made sacrifices to all the gods of nature. We were rewarded by one of our best growing seasons ever. The GDD (Growing Degree Days) for 2025 are the highest recorded at 1655 for Summerland and 1826 for Naramata—these are Napa/Sonoma numbers! (for more on GDD: www.hillsidewinery.ca/seeing-red-at-hillside/ ) We were basically smoke-free—only some distance smoke from across the border (tariff-free).
Harvest came on early, hard and strong. While I had expected the grape acidity to be low, due to the fact that warm nights cause acid to be lost through respiration, and we had warm nights, this was not the case. The balance in most varieties was very good and additionally, the flavour to sugar balance was perfect. In most years, sugar ripeness precedes flavour ripeness and it is tricky to achieve the best flavour and aroma without the sugar (and thus the alcohol) going too high. In 2025 I found that for every variety, the flavour was fully developed as the grapes reached optimum sugar levels.
