The New Fruits of Small-Batch Wine

I’m a sommelier by trade. I’m a guy who produces wine events and enjoys the stuff on my personal time. Lately I’ve been taking stock of my past year’s worth of tasting notes and photos. Usually the wines that rise to the top of my year-end list are those that have constantly buoyed at the top of my mind, notes aside.

This year, it’s a slam dunk. There is a single wine that I have considered and reflected on more than any other.

Scout Vineyard’s 2022 Gew Cab is an unorthodox wine. In name alone, it’s a wine that would give pause to many. Is it really a combination of Gewürztraminer, the famously aromatic, tropical-tasting white grape, and Cabernet Sauvignon, the sturdy red variety that some of our biggest reds are composed of? Yes, those are the ones.

Scout Vineyard is in Cawston, B.C., nestled in the mighty Similkameen Valley. The rugged, windswept agricultural region is immediately west of the South Okanagan. Grape growing and winemaking are taken care of by two families: Scout’s proprietors, Maggie and Murray Fonteyne, and another couple, Carly and Aaron Godard.

The team at Scout makes small-batch, charismatic wines through honest farming and minimal intervention. It’s natural wine, if you will — there are virtually no additions or ingredients taken away through processes like filtration.

For the most part, Scout’s grapes are pressed and occasionally macerated with their skins. Then the juice is pressed off, naturally fermented through the indigenous yeast that the grapes harbour.

After that, the wine is aged, most often in old barrels, or large terracotta vessels called qvevri.

The Scout Vineyard Gew Cab began its life with the harvest and pressing of the two red and white grapes. The initial thinking for the unlikely combo was that they would work together as the base of some sort of eventual rosé, with plans for a few more white varieties added into the blend later.

As the team got to know the wine along its fermentation journey, they recognized they had something special. Sure, they were a bit uncertain of how the unconventional meeting of red and white grapes would be received, but they embraced a “so crazy it just might work” scenario. It wasn’t quite a dark rosé, nor a light red; it occupied a space between the two.

Serve it with a chill, and you’ll initially get a good dose of Gewürztraminer’s tropical fruit; think pineapple and lychee. Cabernet Sauvignon then comes surging through, awash with red berry fruit. Then, rather than the eucalyptus note Cabernet commonly offers, the herbal component is more akin to spearmint: just a wink of sweetness with minty flavour.

On its own, the wine is fresh, lively, juicy and delicious — but its food-pairing potential is where it shines beyond expectation.

One of my current gigs is running the wine program at Maenam, chef Angus An’s Michelin-recommended Thai restaurant in Kitsilano. Thai cuisine can be tricky for wine pairing due to its nature of carrying sweet, sour, salty and spicy components. It’s a cuisine that isn’t shy — it’s rather loud, in a joyous, chorus-singing-from-the-rooftops kind of way.

Like the winemakers who took a risk on the unlikely combination of white and red grapes, I rolled the dice and put the Gew Cab on the wine list at Maenam. Dish after dish, it has gone well, and I’ve been so charmed by the diversity of pairing potential it carries. Most restaurant guests are initially skeptical, but end up unanimous in their adoration of it.

Who knew this unique wine, pretty much the result of a happy accident, would be such a hit in my world?

It’s a wine that carries notes of inspiration for us all as we move into the new year.

It lends credence to taking chances, being nimble with choices and opportunities, and trusting a process.

Lessons from the deep-freeze, one year out

Reflecting on the past year in wine can’t happen without also considering how the climatic conditions of the growing season that determine much of that year’s wine quality took place across the Okanagan and Similkameen valleys in 2024.

Exactly a year ago from the publication of this story, a January deep-freeze occurred in local wine country.

It damaged vines so much that it is estimated wine production for the year 2024 will be down over 90 per cent from a typical vintage.

A massive drop in wine production could likely lead to a massive drop in wine tourism, which affects hotels, attractions and restaurants; the potential for loss cannot be overstated.

However, in the spirit of being supportive, innovative and nimble, our provincial government (which isn’t exactly renowned for being innovative or nimble) opted to hear the plight of local producers and ease regulations.

The government allowed grapes from outside of British Columbia to be brought into the province so wine could still be made locally.

Aside from the provenance of what’s in the bottle, the day-to-day tasks of operating a winery and tasting room in B.C. can pretty much operate as normal this year.

We can expect to see many more local wineries taking chances on new releases. Using grapes from down the coast and across the country, they’ll offer British Columbian takes on Oregon Chardonnay, Washington state Cabernet, Ontario Riesling and so on.

Talk about unorthodox. This is the nature of farming in a time of climate emergency, and having to roll with whatever Mother Nature offers up.

Due to last year’s freeze, many local vines were damaged to the point that they will never produce again, so we are also seeing a lot of replanting being taken on broadly across the Okanagan and Similkameen.

With erratic weather increasingly becoming the norm, there’s nothing to say this won’t happen all over again in coming years.

In darkness, innovation

There are local winemakers and other industry stakeholders who say that perhaps we shouldn’t be having so much focus on Vitis vinifera, the famous European grape varieties most of our local wines are made from: Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot, Pinot Noir and so on. After all, they can be a finicky bunch that aren’t always able to weather dramatic climate shifts that we are increasingly experiencing.

We do have options. There are other, lesser-known varieties — durable hybrids in particular — that are better suited for climates like ours.

I checked in with Rhys Pender, a local wine writer and educator, who is also the co-proprietor of Little Farm Winery in the Similkameen Valley.

I asked him if he is seeing growers replant the same varieties they lost, or if some are starting to rethink things in the context of our changing climate. I wondered if they were starting to consider moving towards heartier, more climate-resilient hybrids such as Marechal Foch, Léon Millot and Blattner varieties.

“There really isn’t a pattern,” Pender told me. “Everyone is doing what they feel they need to do, so there are just as many who are replanting, say, Syrah — a grape that is notorious for being killed off in the winter — as others giving hybrids a try.”

Making decisions on what to plant in a vineyard is difficult; it’s a high amount of cost and a few years before an assessment of quality or success can be made.

Sure, much of this sounds like doom and gloom, but when I recently chatted with Aaron Godard from Scout, he spoke to the opportunity in this moment.

To make up for 2024’s loss, Scout has purchased some fruit, mostly hybrids, from vineyards on Vancouver Island and in the Fraser Valley. He is excited to experiment with these varieties and see if their potential is worth pursuing beyond this vintage, when winemakers like him were coming up with Band-Aid solutions in response to the unexpected freeze.

“I think this is a good opportunity to revisit what we grow, and how we grow,” he says. “You see people literally mounding up earth and burying their vines in the winter to protect against the freeze. That’s not necessarily the answer for everyone, but it does show that there are options on the table.”

It seems this last year has found us at a crossroads. It’s been a time when local wine growers have had to deal with the unexpected, get creative and rethink the future.

I find the Scout Vineyard 2022 Gew Cab to be an inspiring example of the innovation that can spring from necessity: it’s something unexpected, and the result of taking a chance and rethinking one’s potential.

If anything, it is a good example that there can be so many stories in each bottle of wine we open.

I look forward to the continuation of this story to see how it all unfolds.