Natural Organic Amber Pinot Gris, 2021

The music can be heard down the block, drawing the neighbours in to investigate. It’s an old fashioned barbecue, one of those spontaneous summer events with family and friends. Crowded on the table, tropical fruit trays crowd jars of mustard and a big bowl of cranberry punch. I’m dancing with the old folks, swinging around to the blasting radio. You’re at the grill, taking orders, taking swigs and flipping dogs.

We’ve always had a holistic approach to our winemaking using native and organic yeasts but each time we make this wine, we dig deeper into a grape that everyone making wine or drinking it in the Okanagan thinks they know. We asked, what happens when you take not only 65% of the Pinot Gris grape and ferment it, but 95-100%. So we included whole clusters, and stemmed grapes in a ferment of wild yeast and wild malolactic, taking sugars and malic acid to complete dryness. And then what if you press and settle rather than fine or filter – and leave the natural structural elements of the grape intact and not ameliorate with additives, such as sulphites. The result is a whole expression of Pinot Gris vines that have adapted themselves over 20 years to our site. It is not an expression of vessel, but a savory expression of the complete grape. It may be an umami expression through the grape, but there’s no denying that this wine loves food.