Food and wine

Down Bottleneck Drive and into the Summer side of the lake

It’s rare that you don’t need to enhance your photos by upping the colour saturation…this photo of the view from Summerland’s Thornhaven Estate Winery is untouched but you won’t be if you visit.

Being spoiled for choice of wineries to visit in my own Naramata Bench neighbourhood, we rarely venture down the road to OK Falls or Oliver or across the lake to Summerland which we view from our deck, but we really should get out more. A trip to Thornhaven Estate Winery and some time spent in those red chairs is time perfectly spent. I have a soft spot for anything do with Summerland because any town with “Summer” in it seems like a warm and happy place…add a glass of their Infusion frizzante and the happy metre goes into the red chair zone.

Jan Fraser, who with her husband Jack, started the winery as a “retirement” project says, “There is something special about the wineries in Summerland. I think it has to do with how many of them are family-owned. They are all pretty special out here and their is a lot of pride.” In addition to Jan and Jack, who also run Jackson Height’s vineyard, their son Jason is winemaker and cellarmaster for the estate and oversees three of Thornhaven’s Summerland vineyards. Daughter Cortney heads sales and marketing for the winery and with husband Nick oversees the Elmo’s Vineyard, where the winery grows its unique Orange Muscat.

The family is celebrating the 15 anniversary of Thornhaven in the best way possible with the release of their XV, which is the Syrah-Cabernet Sauvignon blend available just at the winery. If you like pink and bubbles (yup), their Infusion is made from classic Champagne vareitals Pinot Meunier, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. I loved it.

The two special 15th anniversary releases.

The family has a lot to celebrate. Jan says she is most proud of being around 15 years. Thornhaven was only the third winery in Summerland when they opened. “It’s great to be part of a community of wineries now which makes such as a nice destination for wine touring.” The Bottleneck Drive Winery Association, of which Thornhaven is an active participant and booster, now has 19 members including a fruit winery and cidery. Among the members are Dirty Laundry Vineyard, Silkscarf Family Boutique Winery, and 8th Generation Vineyard.

Daughter Cortney says she is most proud of her brother Jason. “We never set out to make award-winning wines. Our goal was to make really good wines but it’s a happy surprise to be recognized and it’s all down to Jason. He has control of the vineyards to the cellar to bottling, until the wine hits the shelves. Have to give it to him. We are already having an award-winning season taking two golds at Spring Wine Festival, for the XV and our 2015 Gewürztraminer. With so many wineries now its such a great surprise that we make really great wines too.”

Known for it’s killer views of the valley and Okanagan Lake, Thornhaven ratchets it up a notch with free entertainment on the patio on summer weekend afternoons.

Thornhaven has grown from producing 2,800 cases to about 5,600 and the hard work is still engaging, Jan says. “The wine changes every year and we add new things like the frizzante.” Cortney chimes in saying, “It’s dangerously easy drinking.” I can testify to that. It was a good thing the Handyman was driving.

The family is expanding with the addition of Cortney’s three children and it’s looking like the family business may remain so for years to come. “Cortney, our first to reach Kindergarten age, was in class and the kids were working on learning how to set the table. After everything was placed, Cortney says, ‘This is where the wine glasses go.’ I explained to the teacher that we are in the wine business so she didn’t get the wrong idea.” Cortney added that local teachers get a lot of bottles of wine at the end of the year versus I Heart Teachers mugs. I bet they are OK with that.

You are welcome to bring your own picnic to enjoy on the patio. Light snacks like bruschetta, cheese, charcuterie and crackers are available to buy along with Thornhaven wine by the glass.

If all the other Bottleneck Drive wineries are as warm and welcoming as Thornhaven and their wine as good, I can understand what Jan means about Summerland having a unique vibe. “It’s a pretty great community of like-minded people who know what it takes to get great wine into the bottle,” she says.

Like the movie “Sideways” here is a bit of digression. This little bear cub is peeping in the window of our deck doors as I write this. You know the feeling when you’re back is turned and someone is watching…

Cheers to the Okanagan.

May 28, 2016 2

Apple cake on wheels

FullSizeRender — The apples are local, from BC Tree Fruits, a farmer’s cooperative and my eggs are from neighbour Lucy’s happy chickens

This cake is on wheels for four reasons:

It’s the creation of Klemens Koester of Bread on Wheels in Kelowna
It’s so straightforward to make that you can invite your friends over for coffee and have it coming out of the oven in about an hour…so fast — like a cake on wheels.
The apple slice decorations make the cake resemble a wheel.
It’s wheely, wheely, wheely good.

The recipe from The Butcher, the Baker, the Wine & Cheese Maker In the Okanagan, makes two 10-inch (25-cm) cakes. It’s handy to have two cakes as you can send one home with your coffee date guest or pop it in the freezer for a future date.

Ingredients

1 cup (250 mL) room-temperature butter
1 cup (250mL) granulated sugar
5 eggs
1 ½ cups (375 mL) all-purpose flour
2 tsp (10mL) baking powder
2 tsp (10 mL) vanilla
zest of ½ lemon
3 apples, peeled, cored and sliced into 1/8-inch (3-mm) wedges
apricot jam, for glazing
icing sugar, for dusting

Preheat oven to 375F (190C). Grease and flour two 10-inch (25-cm) baking pans. In a mixer bowl, whisk room-temperature butter and sugar together until nice and fluffy, then add eggs slowly and mix well. Add flour, baking powder, vanilla and lemon zest. Mix until batter is even.

Spoon batter into cake pans evenly. Spread out until top is nice and smooth. Lay apple slices gently onto batter. Do not push into the batter.

Bake in the middle of the oven until golden brown, for about 30-40 minutes. Test for doneness with a toothpick which should come out without crumbs. Remove from oven and cool in the pan on a rack.

The nicest way to finish up: Dust icing sugar over cake and glaze apples with hot apricot jam or jelly.

The new amazing recipe book’s Bean Scene’s best-ever ginger cookie recipe is equally on wheels and will be my new go-to Christmas cookie. The spice mix is spot on.

May 27, 2016 4

The Butcher, the Baker, the Wine & Cheese Maker in the Okanagan

Jenn portrait with book take 2 — Award-winning cookbook author Jennifer Schell at the launch of her new book, The Butcher, the Baker, the Wine & Cheese Maker in the Okanagan, at Bench 1775 Winery on the Naramata Bench overlooking Okanagan Lake. Photo: David McIlvride, Spatula Media

Within five minutes of dipping into Jennifer Schell’s new collection of recipes, the stories of the chefs who crafted them and the artisans who provided the amazing local ingredients and the libations to accompany them, I knew she was preaching to the choir. And I say hallelujah. To anyone who delves into this beautifully written and designed cookbook who isn’t yet in the I-love-the-Okanagan-choir, your robes await.

Jennifer has the enviable good fortune of being raised on an orchard in Kelowna and has marinated herself in the area’s rich and growing artisanal food culture. She describes the book perfectly as, “A love letter to the Okanagan and to all those who have created, grown, and nurtured our special valley on this earth. They are a delightful confluence of old and new world, blending their international influence and flavours with our local bounty, establishing a cuisine that is distinctly Okanagan. Through their recipes and stories, I am pleased to introduce you to these gifted people who bring this local food to your table every day.” I love her love letter. Here’s why…

I whipped up a batch of Bean Scene’s best-ever ginger cookies from the Brunchie Lunchie section to fuel a cover-to-cover read. They were the best-ever.

During my first flip through The Butcher, the Baker, the Wine & Cheese Maker in the Okanagan, I was captivated by the photos, most taken by Jennifer herself. The photos are professional in quality but somehow capture the warmth of her subjects and the beauty of the dishes without that slick over-styled look so common in magazines and cookbooks today. I’m not sure what secret sauce went into the picture-taking, editing, lay-out process in this TouchWood Editions book but it worked.

On a second pass through I began virtually cooking and baking, selecting recipes that caught my eye and looked easy or doable and even ones that I could see taking on as a challenge like Chef Bernard’s “twisted” carrot cake and Cheffrey’s wild boar ragu. How cool would it be to serve up Wild Moon Organics Berkshire pork meatballs in tomato sauce or, cedar-roasted chicken with spruce and sumac or, pan-roasted arctic char with braised beluga lentils and smoked heirloom tomato-peach gastrique and blow the socks off my guests on our deck?

Summer dining Okanagan style at my nieces’ wedding at Gods Mountain catered by one of the chef’s featured in the cookbook, Dana Ewart of Joy Road Catering, Penticton. Photo: Jarusha Brown

I then began spotting familiar faces of many chefs, farmers and others from my Naramata hood, the Penticton Farmer’s Market or restaurants we frequent and I had to check out their recipes and stories…Chefs like Dana Ewart, one half of the Joy Road Catering team (Cameron Smith is the other half). We look forward to her cinnamon buns every Saturday at the farmer’s market and have been guests at the best wedding feast I’ve ever attended that they catered. This is a bit of a digression…but here are a few photos of that wedding banquet all taken by Jarusha Brown and catered by Joy Road…

On my list of for-sure-recipes to make very soon with the first of our Carpe Diem raspberry crop is The Bench raspberry almond tarts. I plan on taking my cookbook over when we stop for lunch at The Bench and go over the recipe with Chef Stewart Glynes. He has been my go-to guy for pastry and baking questions for sometime now. To say we are Bench regulars is a bit of an understatement…The Handyman has a custom sandwich called The Fussy Chicken there. It was fun to see Stewart sourcing his berries from my neighbour James Young who has crammed acres of production into his 0.39-acre property. James was a great help when I first got my greenhouse. I’m hoping Stewart will be a key customer for our raspberries.

I was also delighted to see my pal Karolina Born-Tschümperlin of Forest Green Man Lavender Farm (previous blog post) in a magical pairing with Legend Distilling, just a stumble from my house (previous blog post), to create the Legendary Green Man Lavender Martini recipe. Yes please.

No self-respecting cookbook reviewer can do a proper job without actually getting some flour on that book and cracking the spine a bit. (Although I must say that I would buy this book even if I didn’t intend to bake or cook a single thing from it. The photos and the stories of the valley artisans are fun just to browse through and I plan to leave a copy in my guest room.)

Jennifer has kindly agreed to let me share a few recipes I’ve made in upcoming blog posts. The instructions were clear, the recipes produced delicious results and I’m in the enviable place to source the actual ingredients used. I’m sure you can seek out the artisans in your hood to provide you with top-quality, lovingly produced, sustainable ingredients that will at least come close.

The view from Bench 1775 Winery, labelled The Best Patio in the Word, the venue for the book launch. Its winemaker Val Tait is featured in the cookbook with a Bench 1775 Blissful Mojito recipe.

Here is a brief Q & A session with Jennifer:

How long does it take to put together a book like this, what were the biggest challenges and the most enjoyable part of the project for you?

I set a rather ambitious schedule for myself. The current cookbook took five months. The biggest challenge is the cookbook creation process, but also the most enjoyable part for me, is the photography. There is a lot of scheduling and driving around, but I truly love visiting with the people, old friends and new, and being able to visit their farms or restaurants, see what they are working on and catch up with their news. These people never fail to inspire me. Each has such passion for their craft and community, and after each and every meeting, I am super charged and can’t wait to share their faces and their stories with my readers.

What recipe should I make first and why?

It is hard for me to pick a favourite recipe so maybe if we go with what is in season. If there is still rhubarb out there (yup…some left in my garden), I would suggest my mom’s rhubarb pie. I also love the simplicity of the Apple Cake on Wheels and local apples are always available in the cold storage of BC Tree Fruits. Potatoes should be ready soon and the Sunshine Farm Heritage Potato Flan is a winner. OK, that was three instead of one. Sorry, every recipe is wonderful!

(Throw down accepted…I’ve already made the Apple Cake on Wheels…excellent…)

What’s next in the works for you?

I swore I would take a break after this last book — but, I can’t stop now! Too many stories to share and new farmers and drink makers and butchers and bakers to meet! I am working on the outline of the next book now.

(Hallelujah)

May 26, 2016 0

Five best words in the English language: Pie is in the oven…strawberry rhubarb crumble…three other great words

Now I know it’s spring. Time to whip up a pie for The Handyman to celebrate.

I’m not the type to read the last chapter of a book first but it’s good to make an informed decision about recipes. This amazingly tart, sweet and beautifully spiced pie recipe comes from Edmonton’s the **Duchess Bake Shop** cookbook (with some minor modifications).

My rhubarb plant, like most of the rhubarb in Naramata, is an unknown heritage variety. Almost every garden has a plant that’s likely been there for years and years. I imagine mine has supplied a lot of rhubarb pies in its lifetime. I hope it’s honoured to be blogged about.

Blind-baked pie shell

For pies that have juicy fillings like rhubarb strawberry, you will need to fully bake the shell before filling it.

In my opinion the best pie crust has half butter and half shortening.

4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup cubed cold unsalted butter
1 cup cubed cold vegetable shortening
1 tsp. salt
1 cup ice water

Either using a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment or a food processor mix or pulse the flour, butter, shortening and salt for 10 or 15 seconds. Add the ice water and mix on medium or pulse until the dough just comes together.

Don’t overmix. You want some small lumps of fat to remain to make the dough flaky.

Shape the dough into three balls. You will only need one ball for this pie so freeze the other two for future pie baking. Wrap the dough in plastic and place in the refrigerator (and the other two in the freezer) for at least a half hour.

Roll the dough out and place in the pie shell.

Freeze the shell for at least 15 minutes at this point.

Brush the pie shell with an egg wash (1 egg white whisked with 1 tbsp cream (or milk).

Cut a circle out of parchment and fill the lined shell with dried beans, rice or pie weights.

Save the rice for your next blind baking session.

Bake the shell at 375F for 30 to 35 minutes until the edges are light golden brown. Take it out of the oven, remove the parchment and rice and poke the shell a few times with a fork. Put it back in the oven for an additional 5 minutes.

Crumble

1/2 cup rolled oats
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 cup unsalted butter at room temperature

Combine all the above in a bowl and using your hands work it all together until clumps form. Set it aside.

Filling

Cut the rhubarb into 1/2 inch pieces. De-stem and quarter the strawberries.

3 cups rhubarb
3 cups strawberries
1 cup sugar
3 Tbsp cornstarch
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cardamom
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/4 tsp orange blossom water

Use fresh nutmeg if you have it…grating it.

To make the filling, in a saucepan, place the rhubarb, sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom and lemon juice. Cook over medium heat for about 15 minutes stirring often so it doesn’t burn. Remove from the heat and stir in the strawberries and orange blossom water.

Fill the shell to the rim and top with the crumb topping. Bake the pie at 375F for 40 to 45 minutes, until the crumb is golden brown and filling is bubbling. I like this pie warm out of the oven but it’s good cold too.

The six best words in the English language: Pie is out of the oven. The Duchess Bake Shop cookbook is the bomb. Everything I’ve tried from it has turned out beautifully and it’s fun just to browse and drool over the photos.

April 26, 2016 0

To market, to market, to be a fat pig

It’s summer. The Penticton Farmer’s Market opened two weeks early this year and I hope it closes two weeks later. It was named “2015 Market of the Year” by the British Columbia Association of Farmers’ Markets for a reason, lots of reasons really. Here is a look at opening day of its 26th season.

Hundreds of peeps shopped for kale, tomato plants, asparagus and pickles

The market is up and running from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays

April 24, 2016 0

If we build it I hope they don’t come or I had a raspberry farm above the Naramata Bench

Undaunted by our farmer’s market plant sale fail, the Handyman and I pulled out the 75 pinot gris grape vine fail and planted 100 raspberry canes in their place last spring. A second 100 will be joining them in a few weeks to add to an existing 25 raspberry bush patch, 50 blueberry bushes and a smattering of blackberry bushes and voila, Carpe Diem Berry Farm is in business with about 300 bushes. Success guaranteed as I’ve got them pretty much pre-sold to a local coffee and lunch spot, a distillery and a baker. Any left over will be sold at the farmer’s market, a u-pick day or two or frozen for winter sales.

What could go wrong?

My confidence was momentarily shaken when a flyer arrived in the mail from the Raspberry Industry Development Council. Actually I was pretty horrified.

The included 2016 raspberry calendar seemed at first glance to be a handy planting, care and maintenance guide. It in fact detailed what pesticide or herbicide to apply when for what. Malathion, Capture 240EC, Black Label Zn, Ignite OR, Dipel WP… were to help me with hard to control weeds, crown borer, bacterial blight, weevils, caterpillars, leaf rollers, two-spotted mites, botrytis, rust, root rot, fruit worm, spur blight and the new scourge of spotted wing Drosophilia. The chart includes this warning (among others): “Some chemicals are toxic to bees.” Nope. My plan is grow my berries organically and herein lies the challenge.

Another, “If we build it I hope they don’t come,” aspect are the bears that frequent our property. This may require some electrification.

Here is part of the plot prepared for the new canes. You can see some of the blueberry patch at the top of the photo.

After careful research, we decided on a symphony of berry varieties. The first to go in last spring, ironically, were the 100 Encore raspberry canes. Developed by Cornell University, Encore is the one of the latest summer fruiting varieties available. It produces large, firm, slightly conical berries with very good, sweet flavour. This spring we are adding 100 Prelude, also patented by Cornell. These are the earliest summer fruiting variety available. The fruit is medium-sized, round and firm with good flavour. The plan is to offer local raspberries when no others are available.

Seems crazy to order canes from Strawberry Thyme in Ontario when we live in prime berry growing country but they had the varieties we were looking for.

After carefully preparing the rows by digging in lots of compost, we planted these “dead sticks”, watered them in well, turned on the irrigation, mulched the rows and waited. In about two weeks we were rewarded with new growth and happily counted the live ones every day until all 100 showed leaves.

We’ve been careful with site maintenance keeping the grass mowed and raked between rows and surrounding the patch and keeping our tools clean in an effort to reduce pest problems. Our well draining sight in the dry Okanagan should help with any root rot issues.

Taken this morning, this photo shows nice proof of life after the winter

The blueberries are looking very healthy also

Hope springs eternal. If you don’t succeed…try, try again. Never give up. Never surrender….Here’s proof…

FullSizeRender In a ballsy move, I’ve bought a case of berry trays.

I welcome any comments from organic farmers about how to keep all those nasty pests away from my raspberries. There doesn’t seem to be much online about how to avoid the scariest new threat to local raspberries of the spotted wing Drosphila with organic measures other than monitoring for their presence with traps and sticky tape. Stay tuned. I hope not to be writing another “One Broke Girl” post about our latest venture.

March 9, 2016 1

National Margarita Day can’t go by un-toasted

The half-full glass might have something to do with missing the boat on National Margarita Day by a few days. There is something to be said for testing and re-testing your recipes.

My infamous margarita recipe is one of a series of drinks recipes I “researched” during my days as a contributor to eHow. In addition to my fancy drink series, I also wrote an article about Making Life Changing Coffee in a French Press and one on the Differences between a Prairie Dog and a Groundhog and about 300 others all archived forever for the erudition of mankind.

Almost always served by the pitcher…here are some key factors to make your margarita as life-changing as my coffee in a French press is:

The main ingredients in a pitcher of margaritas is tequila, and like all cooking, baking and drinks making, the better ingredients you use, the better your margaritas will tastes. My recommendation is a 100 per cent un-aged silver agave tequila. The same goes for the other ingredients that go into the pitcher for this refreshing summer cocktail. Buy quality triple sec to give it that nice orange sweetness and use only freshly squeezed lime juice. Use lots of ice to make it frosty cold. Warning: Once you have tasted a real pitcher of margaritas with top ingredients you will forever shun the artificially-flavoured, pre-made margarita mixes.

Here is what you will need:

Large pitcher
3 cups tequila
1 cup triple sec
2 cups fresh squeezed-lime juice (about 10 limes)
1/3 cup sugar
Lime wedges for garnish
4 to 6 tbsp. additional lime juice for rimming the glass
4 to 6 tbsp. coarse salt
Martini or other fancy cocktail glass

Chill the tequila, triple sec and empty pitcher for a few hours in the fridge.
Squeeze about 10 limes to make 2 cups of lime juice and reserve an additional 4 to 6 tbsp for glass rimming, chill in the fridge for a few hours.
Mix 3 cups of chilled tequila, one cup of triple sec, 1/3 cup sugar and 2 cups of chilled, fresh-squeezed lime juice into the pitcher just before serving.
Rim the glasses by dipping them in a saucer of lime juice and then in a saucer of coarse salt.
Pour into prepared cocktail glasses, add ice and garnish with a slice of lime.

March 3, 2016 2

A Julia Child Throw Down or 10 reasons to tackle a 21-page recipe with four ingredients

Julia Child was the rocket scientist equivalent in the cuisine world. Every ingredient, every step of every recipe was researched, tested, re-tested for, “those who like to cook and/or want to learn, as well as those who are experienced cooks, including professionals,” Julia said as she slaved for years on her cookbooks. “So we have to keep the dumb debutantes in mind, as all as those who know a lot…” (I land somewhere in the middle).

As you can see, I’m a bit of a Julia Child freak

Her biggest challenge was the French bread recipe that takes up 21 entire pages in Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume Two. My throw down to you is to give it a whirl. Here’s why:

1.You need Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume Two if you don’t already have it in your cookbook collection. You can’t claim to be into cooking without it.

2. You need a peel. It’s handy for pizza too.

3. Bricks are cheap.

4. Julia and her husband Paul spent more than a year to perfect a French bread recipe that could be duplicated at home with American ingredients. The couple used 284 pounds of flour to develop the master bread recipe in countless experimental batches.

5. French bread has these four ingredients: Flour, salt, yeast and water. Julia and Paul experimented with fresh and dried yeasts, various flour mixtures, rising times and trickiest of all, how to get moisture into the oven to simulate a French baker’s oven and to give it the right golden colour and crispness of French bread.

6. With the help of Professor Raymond Calvel, the head of the state run École Professionnelle de Meunerie in Paris, the world’s leading authority on French bread, they cracked the code. A brick in a pan filled with steaming water coupled with a pre-heated clay (or pizza) stone to cook the bread on were the winning techniques. Lucky me, with my new wood-fired oven, I just steam it up with a spray bottle and pop my loaves onto the hearth and no longer need the brick trick.

7. The directions in Mastering Vol. II are unbelievably detailed and include little sketches of exactly how to shape the loaves.

8. Julia and Paul did all the hard work and loaf burning for us. See my post…Things I lost in the fire…so we don’t have to. If you follow the supremely clear and detailed directions your loaves will turn out…perfectly.

9. You will get so cocky you might even make brioche.

10. What better way to honour Julia’s legacy than bringing out three, golden, fragrant, perfectly crusty loaves that are even better than boulangerie bread. You can do this even if you are a dumb debutant. Pretty good bragging rights re the 21-page recipe as well.

February 25, 2016 3

Crushed in Naramata

With bud break just around the corner in the Valley, here is a fast forward to the grape harvest on the Naramata Bench to remind us of the fruits of all the work beginning to happen in the vineyards.

(Reprinted with permission of The Calgary Herald, here is a story I wrote of my first harvest in the Okanagan.)

The Okanagan’s annual wine grape harvest requires spirit and stamina

By Elaine Davidson

Crush. It’s not just what they do to the grapes. Think about it: ideally, fresh fruit on the vine should be on its way to being a delightful alcoholic beverage all in the same day. This means working literally day and night, under lights, clad in rubber boots, wet, cold and stained purple.

At Township 7 Vineyards and Winery on B. C.’s Naramata Bench, assistant winemaker Stephanie Norton Minnick told me she only had about two days off last year between Oct. 4 and Nov. 7.

“Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I worked 42 hours, catching a few hours of sleep in my car,” she recalls.

She told me this after winemaker Bradley Cooper had hired me on as a part-time worker, but it might explain why he chose me just a few months before the grape harvest. He was clearly looking for help of any kind, and unfortunately the sort of burly guy with winery skills he was really looking for was making himself scarce.

Which is how, newly moved to Naramata from Calgary and surrounded by vineyards, I found myself marinating in my new carpe diem life in wine country.

Like many in the Okanagan, Township 7 is a relatively small winery (set up to produce about 7,000 cases a year) that uses every centimetre of space to make more wine (12,000 cases in 2008).

Crush is often a family affair…Winemaker Bradley Cooper calls in some extra hands

So how does crush work? First, tend the vineyard–seven acres of Merlot, Chardonnay, Gewurztraminer and Pinot Gris vines –for a year.

When grapes are ready, meaning they have achieved the perfect level of Brix (sugars, acids and pH), it’s time to handpick them.

De-stemmers, crushers and presses are set up in the morning, put through their paces for hours and cleaned every night.

Whites are then pressed and cold-settled overnight and racked to take the clear juice off the top and the solids filtered out, while reds head into the fermenters, where they have to be punched down three times a day, using a long stainless steel tool capped with a round plate. (The grape skins are punched into the liquid below to give the wine more flavour, colour and astringency.)

Either way, carefully selected yeasts are added (thrown) into the juice (called must).

So many fermenters are stuffed into the winery that some could only be reached for the punch-downs by walking a plank placed on the top. I declined this experience, although I am a good swimmer. When the reds reach the right Brix, they’re pressed.

Finally, reds and some whites are pumped into barrels; other whites are left to mature in steel tanks.

“Despite all of the stress and hugely long hours, you do think that each load of grapes that show up may be the champion ones that win you awards,” Cooper says. “It’s the time you find out if all the measuring, testing and the numbers mean anything.”

I learned a lot of things, like the winemaker’s mantra, “It takes a lot of beer to make good wine,” that working well together in a crew can be hugely rewarding, the crush smells good–and the purple stains eventually come off.

February 24, 2016 2

naramata-blend

Life in a slow place that quickly steals your heart.

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