Why pop a cork when you can sabre?
At Evolve Sparkling House on British Columbia’s Naramata Bench, the wine is only part of the proposition. The rest is about place, ritual and giving bubbles a room of their own.
There is something slightly theatrical about opening a bottle of sparkling wine with a sabre. At Evolve Sparkling House, it feels entirely appropriate. The blade flashes, the cork flies, and suddenly the polished new tasting room overlooking Okanagan Lake feels less like a winery than a stage set for the ritual of celebration. It’s playful, a little extravagant and undeniably fun; which, as it turns out, isn’t a bad way to understand Evolve.
Because Evolve isn’t simply another Okanagan winery making sparkling wine. It’s an attempt to build an entire experience around it.
The spectacular setting on the Naramata Bench [Photo Source: Evolve]
Opened in 2025, the dedicated sparkling house is the newest expression of TIME Family of Wines, the Okanagan group behind Chronos Winery and OROLO Restaurant + Cocktail Bar. When Ron and Shelley Mayert acquired the existing wine business following the death of Okanagan wine pioneer Harry McWatters, there was already a substantial inventory of sparkling wine. Rather than folding it into a broader portfolio, they saw an opportunity to give bubbles their own identity, and their own address.
The new property, set just off the Kettle Valley Rail Trail, is the result and it’s difficult to ignore the setting.
Inside the tasting lounge at Evolve.
The tasting room is deliberately polished: contemporary furnishings, expansive windows, multiple indoor and outdoor lounge spaces and decks that seem designed for lingering. There’s a private room for more intimate tastings and pairings, while the food menu leans into the natural companions of sparkling wine: oysters, charcuterie and popcorn.
You can arrive through the main entrance, dressed for a leisurely wine-country afternoon, or walk in along the KVR trail. Either way, the lake view does much of the heavy lifting. It isn’t rustic and it isn’t pretending to be.
Winemaker Lynzee Schatz.
Behind the polished surroundings is a winemaker whose approach is considerably less flashy. Lynzee Schatz grew up in the Okanagan but left to pursue winemaking, eventually earning a Bachelor of Wine Science from Charles Sturt University in Australia.
After an internship that turned into an opportunity to stay on, she spent five years at Domain Chandon Australia in the Yarra Valley, gaining experience in one of the world’s great sparkling-wine cultures before returning home.
She has now been with TIME for seven years, overseeing both Chronos and Evolve. When Schatz talks about sparkling wine, the conversation quickly moves away from the romance of bubbles and toward decisions: fruit, timing, method, lees ageing, blending and the years of planning required before a bottle is ready.
The estate vineyard.
There’s no sense that she finds the complexity burdensome. Quite the opposite. “I love the entire process,” she says. “All the decisions. It actually calms me.”
She talks about imagining wines well before they exist, making choices now that may not reveal their consequences for years. It’s perhaps the clearest window into her winemaking philosophy: sparkling wine rewards the long view.
That philosophy is becoming increasingly visible in the vineyards, too. Evolve is developing sites specifically for sparkling production, including an estate vineyard on the Lower Bench planted to Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, while a newer Summerland vineyard adds more Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.
Estate pinot noir.
The goal isn’t simply to find grapes that can make sparkling wine. It’s to build vineyards around the requirements of it.
Evolve’s lineup currently moves between traditional-method wines, Charmat-produced sparklers and lower- and no-alcohol offerings. It’s an intentionally broad interpretation of the category.
For Schatz, there is no contradiction in that. Traditional method can deliver the structure and complexity associated with serious sparkling wine, while Charmat offers something fresher and more immediate. Not every bottle needs to be bought with the intention of ageing it and sometimes you simply want a glass of bubbles on a deck.
Evolve offers a de-alcohol and a 7% sparkling [source: Evolve]
The de-alcoholized Sparkles are perhaps the most intriguing example of that willingness to experiment. Rather than defaulting to Chardonnay or Pinot Noir, Schatz chose Gewürztraminer, reasoning that the variety’s naturally intense aromatics would give the wine more character after the alcohol-removal process.
The winery’s most decorated wine is the 2018 Brut Nature, which won Best Sparkling Wine of the Year at the 2025 All Canadian Wine Championships. Brut Nature, with no dosage, leaves little room for imbalance to hide.
But it isn’t the award that stays with me most from Evolve. It’s the experience of sitting outside with a glass in hand, the lake spread below and realizing that the winery has carefully engineered the entire afternoon around that moment.
2017 Evolve Brut Libre [source: Evolve]
The bubbles are important. They are, after all, the reason Evolve exists. But the Mayerts and Schatz seem to understand something that is easily lost in the technical language of wine: sparkling wine is rarely consumed in isolation. It arrives with an occasion and at Evolve, they’ve simply built the occasion first.
Whether that means oysters and a serious traditional-method bottle, popcorn and a fresh Charmat sparkler, or standing on a deck watching a bottle lose its head to a sabre, it all feels very much at home at Evolve.
Not every wine will be everyone’s favourite, nor does it need to be. What Evolve offers is something slightly different from the standard Okanagan tasting-room formula: a place where sparkling wine isn’t an afterthought, a celebratory add-on or the final pour of the flight. Here, it gets the room.
The house that sparkling built.
245 Lower Bench Road
Penticton, BC V2A 1B2
T: (236) 422-2556
E: info@evolvesparkling.ca
H: Daily 12pm – 6pm
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