When I first tasted the St. Katharina Vineyard sparkling wine at Burdock & Co. in Vancouver, I immediately needed to know more.

A terrific Summerland Sparkling wine.

A friend had ordered the bottle, and after one sip, I was hooked. Not only because it was terrific, but because it came from British Columbia and I had somehow never heard of it.

A few weeks later, I found myself walking through the 2.5-acre vineyard in Summerland with winemaker Jordan Kubek, trying to understand how a neglected patch of old Pinot Noir had become one of the Okanagan’s more compelling sparkling wines.

Pinot, Jordan’s nine-year-old cat, joined us for part of the tour. So did a large rock sitting in the middle of the vineyard.

Pinot the cat and the prominent rock in the vineyard.

Rabbit brush, sage, alfalfa and balsam root grow among the vines, giving the site a decidedly different appearance from the carefully manicured rows found throughout the Okanagan.

St. Katharina Vineyard was established in 1968, originally planted to Sylvaner before being converted to Pinot Noir sometime in the 1970s. When Jordan and her husband, Tyler Knight, bought the property in 2017, the vineyard had been largely abandoned for about 7 years.

“We kept driving past it and thought, this site is amazing,” Jordan recalls.

In a region where old vines are increasingly prized, St. Katharina is genuinely historic. More intriguing still, Jordan discovered that the Pinot Noir planted here appears to have mutated into its own distinct clone.

Winemaker Jordan Kubek.

Rather than immediately imposing a new vision on the vineyard, Jordan and Tyler spent years observing what was already there. They wanted to see what the vines could do with minimal intervention, allowing the vineyard’s natural vegetation to remain part of the landscape rather than creating a perfectly ordered agricultural grid.

The vineyard sits on a south- to southeast-facing slope in the Summerland Valley, where glacial deposits have left a mix of alluvial sand, larger granite rocks and pockets of schist. Its orientation also makes it appealing for sparkling wine: morning sun arrives early, while the vines avoid some of the intensity of the afternoon heat.

For Jordan, sparkling has been a long-standing fascination.

She grew up on a farm in Victoria, BC, and has spent the past 16 years in the Okanagan. She got her start in the wine industry picking fruit at Stoneboat in 2010, before working 7 years at Okanagan Crush Pad and using the spring months to gain harvest experience in Australia, New Zealand and Chile.

St. Katharina’s Vineyard in Summerland, BC.

It was at Okanagan Crush Pad that sparkling became a particular focus. Michael Bartier, the winemaker at the time, put Jordan in charge of the sparkling program and she quickly discovered she loved the precision and patience it demanded.

“It’s a craft,” she says. “It takes a lot of time to learn how to do it.”

St. Katharina is the culmination of that experience, but Jordan approaches it with a deliberately light touch. The traditional-method Pinot Noir spends 4 years on its lees before disgorgement. Fermentations are wild, the vineyard is farmed organically, and rather than relying on conventional sugar for dosage, Jordan freezes a portion of the vineyard’s own juice to use later.

It takes years to make a bottle. The annual production is only about 1,200 bottles. Economically, Jordan admits, the vineyard makes little sense but that’s not why she keeps it.

The very popular Pamplemousse Jus Leon Millot Pet Nat.

The St. Katharina’s project is separate from Pamplemousse Jus, the broader wine project Jordan runs with Tyler and James Langford-Smith, although it operates under Pamplemousse’s licence. Pamplemousse began during COVID as a 1-year experiment and evolved into a permanent project built around the same curiosity that drives St. Katharina.

The portfolio includes familiar Okanagan varieties such as Pinot Noir and Chardonnay alongside Gewürztraminer, Pinot Gris and lesser-known grapes such as Leon Millot. Jordan is equally comfortable working within convention and stepping outside it. In fact, Leon Millot, is the first wine to sell out each year.

“I always make wine I want to drink,” she says. “Wine is all about sharing.”

The vineyard posts are re-purposed railroad ties.

It’s a philosophy that feels particularly fitting for a winemaker who has chosen to devote so much time to a vineyard that resists efficiency. Jordan doesn’t seem interested in making wine for a hypothetical consumer or reproducing a formula from another region. She is curious about what grows well here, what the vines can reveal and what happens when she gets out of their way.

Even “natural” is a term she approaches cautiously. For Jordan, it’s less an aesthetic than a return to older methods: wild fermentation, organic farming and fewer interventions.

The approach doesn’t make farming any easier. Bears have eaten the grapes, frost has wiped out vintages, and wildfire and smoke remain constant threats. Jordan has watched the Okanagan change dramatically during her 16 years here, including the devastating 2024 vintage.

St. Katharina Vineyard Pinot Noir.

Pinot Noir, the grape she loves to work with, can be particularly unforgiving. “It’s a heartbreaking grape,” she says. Yet she keeps planting and farming it.

Jordan is in her 30s and thinks about the next 30 years of growing grapes in BC. That long view makes her question the assumptions that have shaped the region so far. If Pinot Noir is increasingly vulnerable to frost, heat and smoke, what else might thrive here? Which varieties have been overlooked? And what might BC wine look like if it stopped measuring itself against somewhere else?

She believes the province is still finding its identity, and that it has plenty to learn without simply imitating established wine regions.

The future of BC wine looks bright.

St. Katharina is a small expression of that idea. An old vineyard with an unusual history. A distinctive patch of Pinot Noir. A winemaker willing to give it time, work with what she finds and resist the temptation to make it conform.

Perhaps that’s why the wine stopped me at dinner. It was simply that good. And the fact that it came from BC made the discovery all the more surprising. By the time I learned the story behind it, the bottle had become more than an unexpected discovery; it was a reminder that some of the most interesting things happening in BC wine are still hiding in plain sight.

Pamplemousse Jus

9819 Lumsden Ave

Summerland, BC V0H 1Z8

(250) 534-9233

Tasting Room: Open Thursday to Monday 12pm-5pm (Closed Tuesday/Wednesday)