A view of Okanagan Lake and a vineyard at Quails' Gate Estate Winery in West Kelowna, B.C., on May 16.Aaron Hemens/The Globe and Mail
A line of farmhands worked their way up a section of land above Okanagan Lake this spring, replacing Cabernet Sauvignon grapevines. The soil here on the slopes of an extinct volcano has nurtured grape crops since the 1960s, but climate change demanded adaptation, and this block will now be filled with a hardier variety, Pinot Noir.
Across British Columbia, vineyards are undergoing a transformation because of weather extremes, including a brutal cold snap in January that wiped out almost all of this year’s grapes.
There is still wine for sale, and tourists flock to shop and sip and admire the bucolic landscape. But the winemakers here know the fields should be greener than they are, and they are anxious after five hard years of heat waves and deep freezes, wildfires and atmospheric rivers. They note that one out of every three vineyards in the Okanagan is for sale.
The industry is in the process of a major shift. It’s not the first time.
In the late 1980s, the government paid B.C.’s vineyard owners to rip out inferior wine grapes, which was most of them. A smaller number of better-quality varieties were planted.
The intervention was meant to help farmers absorb the shock of the Canada-U. S. free-trade agreement that came into force in 1989. It cost B.C. and the federal government a total of $28-million to save an industry that produced $150-million in annual retail sales. The province’s agriculture minister of the day, John Savage, boldly predicted it would lead to “one of the major success stories of the 1990s.”
He couldn’t have known then just how right he was.
The Vintners Quality Alliance was created, overseeing the transition from a wine sector known for “cheap and cheerful” plonk to globally competitive premium wines. Today, the industry’s economic impact is $3.8-billion annually.
At Quails’ Gate Winery, the Stewart family has farmed here for four generations. Ben Stewart was part of the development of the VQA program, and recalls a challenging transition. The free-trade pact sent vineyard land values plummeting and he couldn’t get a loan to expand his business.
“Our bank thought it was a sunset industry,” he said.
Many farmers just took the government buyout and moved on. What remained was “a handful of wineries and people who were really tenacious risk-takers,” he said. “But this reset was key to the success that has parlayed into 461 wineries today.”
Rowan Stewart, a winemaker at Quails' Gate Estate Winery, examines a grape vine at one of the winery's vineyards in West Kelowna, B.C., on May 16.Aaron Hemens/The Globe and Mail
Mr. Stewart is part-owner of Quails’ Gate, but he is also the MLA for Kelowna-West, which kept him in the provincial capital for much of the spring legislative session. His nephew, winemaker Rowan Stewart, was overseeing the replanting of vines in mid-May that had been wiped out in an earlier cold snap, in December, 2022. That event was severe, but the freeze in January was worse:
“Everything went catastrophically bad,” Rowan said as he took visitors through an established block of the sprawling vineyard.
“I think what cold events like this will do, is force everyone that wants to be in business to be very serious about what they’re planting, and it’s going to really coalesce around a few varietals that are going to survive – or at least survive more often,” he said.
Miles Prodan is head of industry alliance Wine Growers B.C. The circumstances forced by climate change are no less challenging than those created by the free-trade agreement, he said, and this is an opportunity for another reset on par with the one 35 years ago.
“We are farmers. We’re at the mercy of Mother Nature,” Mr. Prodan said.
The industry will survive, but not all wineries will. “There may be a reckoning and some of these small producers just might not have the wherewithal to withstand this.”
The provincial government estimates that it will pay out $55-million this year to help the industry replant crops destroyed in the January cold snap, and it is considering a bit of leeway to allow winemakers to import grapes from another region or province under a temporary VQA label for 2024. And, it is sponsoring a task force to help determine which varieties are most likely to survive weather extremes.
“The bottom line, we want them to succeed. We need this industry. We need the economic boon that it provides,” said Agriculture Minister Pam Alexis.
While the province works out what is needed, growers are already rethinking the future.
Tantalus Vineyards boasts some of the country’s oldest grapevine plantings. Over the years, it has specialized in three varieties. “The decision was made to pull out everything that we didn’t think was making world-class wine,” said winemaker and general manager David Paterson.
But when the temperature dropped to -28 in January, their Chardonnay suffered the most, while the Riesling vines planted in 1978 proved most resilient. These observations will shape what comes next.
David Paterson stands in the vineyards of Tantalus on May 17 as the first signs of life appear on the grapevines, following a devastating cold snap in January. He’s the winery’s general manager and winemaker. Tantalus is one of B.C.’s oldest wineries located on the eastern slopes of the Okanagan Valley near Kelowna, B.C.Justine Hunter/The Globe and Mail
Mr. Paterson stopped to inspect some vines in a block that was planted in 2006. He’s glad he hadn’t ripped anything out yet, but it may yet come to that. “You look at that shoot, and it’s already got six leaves and two little bunches of grapes. So that’s easily going to make it this year. But then next to it, this one’s only got a tiny little bit of life.”
It takes three years for new vines to mature. If he can nurture these back to health, there will be something of a harvest next year. This year, though, is a writeoff. “There will be a few bunches around but, are you going to spend the labour and the diesel just for that? Probably not. So birds will get most of it, because it won’t be worth trying to protect.”
Stephen Cipes and his family arrived in Kelowna in 1986, where he bought Summerhill Vineyard. He tore out most of the existing crop and invested in pricey vines from France. He built a four-storey-tall pyramid for a wine cellar, and began the long process of getting his wine certified as organic.
Sitting in his boardroom in May with a cup of herbal tea, Mr. Cipes was also celebrating the bits of green now emerging in the fields. “I just learned yesterday myself that, thank goodness, most of our plants are alive, which means we don’t have to replant. Hallelujah. But the bad news is, we don’t have any crop this year.”
Summerhill Pyramid Winery’s cellar is stocked with about $55-million in wine, so he still has plenty to sell now, and he is eyeing new markets outside of B.C. The winery will ship its flagship sparkling wines into the U.S. for the first time this year. The future for B.C.’s wine industry, Mr. Cipes believes, will be “ultra-quality” wines.
It’s been five tough years, but Michael Alexander, Summerhill’s winemaker, is sanguine. “It’s farming. There’s always next year.”