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…
Continue reading All about the Naramata Bench Terroir: Part 3 of 3
I recently travelled to Napa to attend the BC Wine Leader’s Forum. This is an event conceived ten years ago by UBC Okanagan, first through their School of Business and now through the Wine Research Center, as a means of connecting with the wine industry to assess how these groups can best work together. This…
Continue reading Giving Back ♥
As we prepare for our favourite time of year—grape harvest, affectionately referred to as “crush” not for what it does to the crew and winemaker, but what we do to the grapes—we plan and strategize our use of fermentation vessels for each block of grapes. Because red and white wines are made very differently, we…
Continue reading Fermentation Vessels
As we celebrate budbreak, that magical period when the grapevine buds come out of dormancy, reconnect with the vine’s vascular system to draw up the nutrients stored in the root system through the winter, and unfurl two tiny leaves and a teeny pre-grape cluster, we wonder what the season will bring us. Each growing season…
Continue reading Sustainability and Resilience
To be truthful, it doesn’t always. Some wines are made specifically to be the same year on year as variation is not considered desirable. What I call “factory wines” are vinted and then blended with a view to give the consumer the same experience year on year. Hence, warmer vintages may be blended with cooler,…
Continue reading Why Does Vintage Matter?
snpinktn a place to stay forever… Hillside winery is located on the Naramata Bench, in Penticton. Our fruit is all grown on the Naramata Bench, vines planted on the traditional lands of the Syilx people, who named this area snpinktn which means “a place to stay forever” or “the place where people live year-round”. This…
Continue reading Harvest Recap – December 2023
Part 1 of 3: My Love of the Naramata Bench Terroir When I was considering the move to Hillside from Mission Hill, I thought these people were insane, planting Malbec this far north in the valley. I knew how hard it was to ripen Bordeaux varieties, even as far south as Osoyoos. But I tasted…
Continue reading All about the Naramata Bench Terroir: Part 1 of 3