Former longtime owners of CedarCreek Estate Winery plan to build a new destination winery that will focus on sparkling wine.
The Fitzpatrick family, which owned CedarCreek Estate Winery for decades before selling it to VMF Estates owner Anthony von Mandl in January, kept a parcel of land known as Greata Ranch, Gordon Fitzpatrick explained to Business in Vancouver.
“We’ve always wanted to give Greata more attention,” he said. “We’re going to make a winery that will produce between 6,000 and 7,000 cases and it will focus on sparkling wine.”
Fitzpatrick previously oversaw CedarCreek’s annual production of about 45,000 cases of table wine so the new winery will be a lot smaller.
“I think there’s a good niche for a sparkling wine house here in the Okanagan,” he said, adding that the Greata Ranch winery will also produce some table wine so it will not be exclusively a bubbly house.
Fitzpatrick is in discussions with architects and said that his early vision is to build a winery with lots of glass and glazing.
“The winery will be sparkling itself,” he said with a laugh.
British Columbia Liquor Distribution Branch statistics show that slightly more than $4 million was spent on B.C.-made sparkling wine in B.C. in 2013. That’s an 11.3% increase compared with 2012.
Other B.C. winemakers capitalizing on this trend are the husband-and-wife team of Jay Drysdale and Wendy Rose, who launched their bubbly-only wine brand Bella in 2011.
“I believe we are the only pure sparkling wine house in the Okanagan,” Drysdale told BIV.
In its first year, Bella produced a meagre 250 cases with the help of experts at the custom crush facility Okanagan Crush Pad, who provided advice and equipment.
Bella’s production jumped to 550 cases in 2012 and 800 cases in 2013, when it started to be sold in BCVQA specialty stores.
Drysdale said he has bought a property and is planting vines this year. He is now using a different custom crush facility but plans to convert a building on his property into a winery with construction starting later this year.
Summerhill Pyramid Winery CEO Ezra Cipes disputes Bella’s claim that they are B.C.’s only bubbly-only house because their winery is not built yet.
“They are a brand,” he said. “The Cipes brand of bubbly has been around since the early ‘90s.”
In the few years since Cipes has assumed the role of CEO from father and founder Stephen Cipes, he has given the Cipes brand more prominence on Summerhill’s sparkling wines by removing the Summerhill logo from the labels.
Cipes is keeping a pyramid symbol on the labels as a way to remind drinkers that the winery has its own pyramid, in which it ages its wines.
Going forward the only brand on the sparkling wines will be Cipes, he said. The Summerhill brand will remain on the winery's table wines.
Plenty of other B.C. wineries produce bubbly but are primarily known for table wine.
