Sustainable Winegrowing

Like most wine-growers (people who make wine from fruit they grow), we are passionate about the care of our vineyard.

We live in its heart, and the exceptional quality of wine that we are striving to produce depends on clean, ripe fruit. One advantage of being a small estate winery is that the vineyard is worked by hand and we can give the necessary attention to each step in the process.

Our Winegrowing Philosophy

The essence of our winegrowing philosophy is balance and harmony--also the hallmark of a fine wine. We practice a total ecological approach, managing all of the elements in the vineyard, including the soil, water and vine canopy to ensure that they work together to optimize the ripeness of the fruit, minimize pests and disease, and enhance the beauty of the site.

We have completed and registered a comprehensive plan under the BC Environmental Farm Plan Program and employ many organic practices. For example, we have a large scale mulching and composting program that converts over 20 tons of mowings, prunings, pomace into nutrient rich material that we use to build up the organic structure of our soil. The compost pile also has fostered a vigourous community of Red Wigglers which are part of the breeding program at Global Worming. We only replace in the soil what the vines have extracted and for this we use fertilizers made from mined minerals and peat.

Happily, grape growing in our environment doesn't require drastic intervention. The main pests are deer, birds and racoons and we control them with fences, nets and dogs. And if there are any problematic bugs, they appear to be dealt with by the many and varied birds and beneficial insects that we encourage to populate our farm.

Wine Packaging

In keeping with our sustainable philosophy, we use light-weight eco-bottles made from recycled glass and closures made of natural cork from which the compound which causes cork taint has been removed.