Fitzpatrick Family Vineyards recently celebrated 40 years.
For years, British Columbia’s sparkling-wine conversation was a fairly short one. If you wanted traditional-method bubbles, the list of established names was limited: Blue Mountain Vineyard and Cellars, Fitzpatrick Family Vineyards, Summerhill Pyramid winery and, increasingly, Township 7.
That list is getting longer. Sparkling wine is appearing in cellars better known for Chardonnay, Pinot Noir or Bordeaux varieties, while some of the province’s most distinctive examples are being made in quantities so small that finding a bottle can require a winery visit or the right wine-club membership.
The category has been developing for years as growers and winemakers have learned which sites can provide the raw material sparkling wine demands: naturally high acidity, moderate sugar levels, flavour without excessive ripeness and fruit capable of retaining freshness through secondary fermentation and extended lees ageing.
St. Katharina’s Vineyard in Summerland, BC.
The early producers established the template. Blue Mountain demonstrated what traditional-method sparkling could achieve in Okanagan Falls, Fitzpatrick has made sparkling central to its identity for four decades, while Township 7 committed to the category well before bubbles became a fashionable addition to a winery portfolio. And then there’s Blasted Church, whose OMG Sparkling has helped make BC bubbles feel less like a specialist’s secret and more like something meant to be opened, shared and enjoyed.
The bigger shift now is the number of producers exploring what sparkling can do in different hands and from different sites.
Garnet Valley Sparkling at Garnet Valley Ranch.
Haywire offers one example. Its “Bub” has become a familiar name among BC sparkling drinkers, while its wines from Garnet Valley Ranch examine the potential of fruit grown at higher elevation in Summerland. Solvero recently produced its first traditional-method sparkling from Happy Valley Vineyard in Summerland, drawing on winemaker Alison Moyes’ experience with sparkling production.
Then there are the small producers that can easily escape notice. Henricsson Vineyard is one of those deliciously under-the-radar gems—a tiny Naramata estate whose Sofia sparkling is made in such minuscule quantities that getting your hands on a bottle is almost a matter of luck.
A visit to St. Katharina Vineyard in Summerland illustrates how much of BC’s wine landscape remains outside the mainstream. The tiny historic vineyard produces sparkling on a scale that makes widespread distribution unlikely. That limitation is also part of its appeal: wines made at this scale can offer a close look at what a particular site contributes before production volumes begin to dictate broader stylistic decisions.
The estate vineyard at Solvero in Summerland’s Garnet Valley.
Evolve has taken the opposite approach, making sparkling the foundation of its identity rather than an extension of a still-wine portfolio. The winery sources fruit from several parts of the Okanagan, including Summerland, and its investment represents a more deliberate bet on the category’s future.
Summerland may be the most revealing place to watch this development. The concentration of producers working with sparkling there raises a larger question: what is it about the area that makes it so useful for this style?
The geography gives winemakers several variables to work with. Vineyards around Summerland range from lakeside and bench sites to significantly higher elevations.
St. Katharina Vineyard Pinot Noir.
Altitude, cool nights and abundant Okanagan sunshine can help grapes develop flavour while preserving acidity. For sparkling wine, that balance is fundamental. The fruit needs enough flavour and concentration to avoid seeming austere, but it doesn’t require the high sugar levels and full physiological ripeness often pursued for still wines.
Whether Summerland ultimately proves to have a particular advantage for sparkling will require more vintages, and more wines, to determine. For now, the concentration of producers working there makes the question difficult to ignore.
And Summerland is only one part of the picture.
Unsworth Charme de L’ile Rosé.
The sparkling map extends across the province. On Vancouver Island, Unsworth Vineyards makes Charme de l’Île, a markedly different expression shaped by a maritime growing season. Its existence is a useful counterpoint to the assumption that BC sparkling must have a single regional identity.
That range may prove to be one of the province’s greatest strengths.
Chardonnay and Pinot Noir remain important, but producers are experimenting with other varieties, vineyard sites and production methods. Some wines are spending longer on their lees; others are being made in minute quantities from individual vineyards. Increasingly, winemakers seem comfortable letting acidity, fruit and texture define the wines rather than attempting to reproduce a Champagne template.
Haywire Winery co-owner Christine Coletta & winemaker Matt Dumayne.
The most significant change, then, isn’t simply that more wineries are making sparkling wine. It’s that producers are becoming more deliberate about where they source fruit, how they handle it and what they want the finished wine to express.
The question of whether BC can make serious sparkling wine has largely been settled. The more useful question now is which vineyards, varieties and growing conditions will give the wines a character that could belong nowhere else. That’s a much more revealing measure of the category’s progress and one that will take years of vineyards, vintages and bottles to answer.
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