Our winemaking techniques are designed to enhance, not interfere with, the naturally occurring fruit flavors in our wines. Great fruit, helped along only when necessary using a soft touch, will result in great wine from BC that showcases what our vineyards can really do.
Our Winemaker, Sydney, applies gentle techniques to extract colour, aroma, and flavour compounds from the grapes. In order to achieve the highest quality, the juice must have intimate contact with all parts of the ripe grapes. Only the high-quality, gravity drained pressings are gathered into oak barrels for ageing. To ensure only the best fruit goes into our wines, Sydney keeps all lots separate, from the vineyard block through to the barrel ageing. With this dedication and attention to detail, only the top lots will be developed and then selected for the final bottling.
The exception is our co-fermented Harvest Series Red. For this wine, we select different blocks of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot to hand pick and crush together, giving the fruit ample time to get to know each other and the flavours to meld together before barreling down for extended aging. All of the reds will undergo malolactic fermentation, which is co-innoculated with primary fermentation. Sydney find this leads to the cleanest and quickest fermentation, which helps develop very soft tannins and a silky mouthfeel.
Some of our whites undergo whole bunch pressing, and some are destemmed and crushed into the press. Sydney makes this decision at peak ripening of the grapes, when the picking decision is made. Whole bunch pressing helps to preseve the characteristics of the grape by removing the juice quickly, while avoiding the extraction of phenolics (astringency) from the skins. However, some varietals gain some benefit from a short period of skin contact (such as pinot gris), as well as being removed from their stems to avoid any overly green flavours (such as with Riesling). Sydney carefully selects yeast for each varietal, which then undergoes a slow, cool fermentation in stainless steel tanks. Malolactic fermentation is never used and ageing in oak is kept to a minimum. Finally, as with reds, Sydney uses careful lot selection to ensure each bottle is a true expression of the single vineyard.
SANDHILL ROSÉ WINES
One of our most popular wines uses a method, that at the time of creation wasn't common practice for rosé making in BC. Instead of crushing red grapes and bleeding off the juice after a short period of time on skins, Sydney follows in the footsteps of her mentor and pioneer master winemaker Howard Soon, by destemming and crushing the red grapes directly into the press. From there, the juice is treated like a white wine, selecting a yeast that encourages formation of floral and tropical fruit notes. The fermentation is cool and slow, as with our white wines, which preserves the natural freshness.
