April 21st, 2018- Top Drop Vancouver !
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Full Natural Wines with Lock & Worth & Bella, Top Drop 2018 and The Okanagan Wine Initiative
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THE SHOW
Matthew SherLOCK and Ross HackWORTH. Lock and Worth.
Jay Drysdale and Bella…
Want to get a sense of BC’s wine future? Matt and Jay will be a the very front, leading the movement.
Honest, single vineyard wines of time and place – priced for everyday consumption.
Mathew Sherlock
“We strongly believe that one should be able to drink high quality, single vineyard (non-commodity), small production wines that are priced reasonably from British Columbia. We plan to be around 20 years from now, not by becoming a large company but by creating a sustainable business within our community. For us part of that means making wines that always over deliver”
Sherlock and Hayworth farm organically and work the vineyards by hand whenever possible. They use native yeasts for fermentations, limited sulfur, and a gentle touch that avoids punch downs or pumping over or racking during élevage. The wines are bottled without fining or filtration.
Up the road at Bella, is a winery owned by Jay Drysdale and his wife, Wendy Rose. Bella only makes sparkling wines and only works with Chardonnay and Gamay Noir.
Bella ’s annual production is 2000 cases, split between a vineyard series and a natural series. Each wine in the vineyard series highlights a single grape, from a single vineyard, and single vintage. Dry-farmed and organic vineyards from Kelowna to Kamloops supply the fruit. The natural series uses the same vineyards, plus Bella’s four-acre estate vineyard.
The vineyard series wines are made using the traditional Champagne method, with commercial yeasts and sugar added to the wine to trigger a second fermentation. Jay and Wendy make the natural series wines by pressing whole cluster grapes and allowing wild yeast fermentation to begin in neutral barrels.
No additives, allowing fermentation to finish in the bottle. This process is called méthode ancestral and Bella is the first winery in western Canada to use it.
Jay and Wendy
The natural process causes some of the bottles to be cloudy. As Jay has said “Yes, they’re cloudy. Get over it”
Here’s a quote from a go-to wine human Kurtis Kolt in the Georgia Straight
Natural wine. It’s wine made with minimal intervention. This means organic (and sometimes biodynamic) farming (without the use of pesticides and such), naturally occurring ferments with wild yeasts in the cellar, and winemaking without fining, filtration, or manipulation.
Kurtis Kolt – Top Drop 2018
Kurtis Kolt
Wonderful and Unique two-day festival brings together international wineries, craft breweries, cideries, gastronomy & more. At Roundhouse Mews in Yaletown.
On May 17th and 18th 2018, Top Drop Vancouver returns, with a continued focus on sustainably-farmed, handcrafted wines offering a distinct sense of place, without heavy-handed winemaking trickery to get in the way.
Roundhouse
They believe in the importance in farming one’s own fruit and/or being constantly engaged with grape-growers to ensure sustainability and a high standard of viticultural practices. They believe in wines that reflect their vintage, and wines that aren’t suffocated by vinicultural trickery. They believe in winemaking decisions that are made by a winemaker, and not by a board of directors or marketing team. They believe in those who take chances. They believe these kinds of wines, honest wines of integrity, need a time and place to have their story told.
They also believe craft beer, cider, along with authentic and sustainable produce, dairy, meat, and seafood are part of the same conversation, which is why they ’re proud to showcase some of the very best in those areas.
An Astonishing gathering of wine professionals. Check out all the guests and details at
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/top-drop-vancouver-2018-main-event-tickets-44277154160
Christine Coletta Member of Okanagan Wine Initiative (Haywire)
Tdm & Christine Coletta
Even after doing the interview I’m still not quite sure what the role of this 7 member group will be. The thing is, they’re capable of doing just about anything they set their minds to.
The story broke just before we went to air and I made a cold call to Christine Coletta from Okanagan Crush Pad to try and get the essence of the story.
Here’s the press release:
Seven leading BC wineries: 50th Parallel Estate Winery, Culmina Family Estate Winery, Haywire Wines, Liquidity Wines, Painted Rock Estate Winery, Poplar Grove Winery, and Summerhill Pyramid Winery, have formed a partnership, The Okanagan Wine Initiative.
The association groups together seven Okanagan wineries to share resources and collaborate on varying projects internationally, across Canada, and in their home market, British Columbia. The members share a common passion to drive one-another to excel and adopt best business practices and to help elevate the identity of the Okanagan as a premium wine producing region and superb wine tourism destination.
I do know one thing..this group..these thinkers and doers..will make things happen and this week may be the start of BC taking its expanded place in the World of Wine.
STORIES WE’RE WORKING ON:
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The Naramata Bench Wineries pour new releases in Victoria.
The Okanagan Falls Wineries pour new releases in Vancouver.
