Sparring between two B.C. sparkling wine pioneers bubbled to the surface earlier this month in the wake of a British Columbia Liquor Distribution Branch report that revealed domestic sparkling wine is the fastest growing wine style in B.C.
Canadian sparkling wine sales grew 15.3% to $2.6 million in B.C. in the quarter that ended December 31. That’s compared with the same quarter a year ago.
In contrast, domestic:
- red table wine sales grew 8.8% to $53 million;
- rosé table wine sales grew 7.5% to $2.1 million;
- white table wine sales grew 4.1% to $47.2 million.
Sales for domestic dessert and fortified wine sales fell 4.3% to $3.4 million.
Vintage Consulting Group owner Harry McWatters, who founded Sumac Ridge and made the first premium sparkling wine in Canada, called Summerhill Pyramid Winery’s process of adding an ice wine dosage to its sparkling wine “gimmicky.”
“It’s certainly not the highest and best use of ice wine,” McWatters told Business in Vancouver.
Sparkling wine makers usually add a sweet liquid to their product (called a dosage) after yeast eats natural sugars during the product’s first fermentation. The product then undergoes a second fermentation in the bottle.
“It’s not a gimmick at all. It’s being true to the word organic,” retorted Summerhill founder and owner Stephen Cipes.
“[McWatters] would say what he did because he is not certified organic as we are.”
Cipes owns the first winery in B.C. to be certified organic both in its vineyard and in its wine-making processes.
He spends more than $40,000 annually to comply with government regulations to legally state on his bottles that his wines are 100% organic.
“The ideal way to sweeten sparkling wine is with real organic ice wine,” Cipes said.
Not all of Cipes’ wine uses the ice wine dosage, however. His Cipes Gabriel NV wine, which has a traditional dosage, won the trophy for being the best sparkling wine in the world (outside Champagne) at the International Wine and Spirit Competition in London in November.
Cipes grew annual Cipes Ice sales 84.5% to $55,510 in 2010. Annual sales for his other sparkling wines in 2010 grew 16.7% to $720,300.
McWatters’ jab that using ice wine as a dosage is not the best use for the sweet elixir fell flat with Cipes, who enjoys ice wine in imaginative ways.
“I like to put it over ice cream and over cakes. Merlot ice wine on chocolate cake is to die for. I’ll mix ice wine with soda and ice or in sparkling wine,” he said.
“Ice wine is something that should be put to as many uses as possible so people appreciate what it is.”