Over the next few blogs, I am going to take you on a journey to one of my favourite wine producing regions: British Columbia, Canada. I will kick off my tribute to BC wines by discussing its history.
British Columbia was producing wine as early as the late 1850’s, when a monk named father Pandosy set up the first white settlement in the Mission area of Kelowna. He saw the potential for producing wine for the holy sacrament and send word to Vatican to have vines sent to him. For the next 70 plus years, BC would experiment with different styles of wine, mostly made from fruits such as blueberries and apples. Many of these attempts made it to liquor stores, but because of the poor wine making processes, would become faulted on the shelves and end up being thrown away.
In 1931, the first official commercial winery, Calona Wineries, began operations in Kelowna. More than 82 years later, Calona is still producing wine. Calona, and other wine producers, started adding grapes to their wine recipes which caused a shift in the BC wine industry. The first grape to be used at this time was Labrusca, an American variety of wine grape that is usually found on the East Coast. By the late 1960’s, new producers started to arrive in the Okanagan to compete with the popular Calona Wines. Newproducers included Mission Hill, Sumac Ridge, Grey Monk, and Cedar Creek.
BC wine did not become recognized in Canada until 1988 when Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA) and the BC Wine Institute were established. BC was recognized on a world stage in 1994 as a quality wine producing region when winemaker John Simes, from Mission Hill Family Estates, won the award for Best Chardonnay at the 1994 International Wine and Spirit Competition for his 1992 Chardonnay vintage.
Since 1994, BC wineries have received many awards for their table wines and ice wines, both nationally and internationally.
