Keeping it Real in the Okanagan

The wines of the Okanagan are becoming truly world class, but with that, has come a sort of world class feel. Our wineries are becoming fancier and more elaborate, our wines becoming more scientific and more structured.

Wine consultants from France and California now make their way to many wineries in the Okanagan on a regular basis to help us create great wines, and our winemakers in turn have learned many lessons of the land over the past couple of decades. All of this has put the Okanagan on the map as a wine region, but I can’t help but feel that the current measure of good wines is creating a bit of uniformity in the wine world. In essence, wines are all starting to taste the same.

Of course this is a bit of an overstatement and there are still many subtleties in taste, but what is considered good now is largely based on a scientifically influenced palate. I guess you could call it “The Robert Parker Effect” as many other people have also done.

That’s why over the course of the recent Okanagan Spring Wine Festival I was so happy to visit a couple of wineries that stayed the course and kept their wines true to the history of farming and agriculture here in the Okanagan.

After experiencing what I would call tasting room burnout ending up at the winery equivalent of Possum Lodge nearly made me jump up and down like a grade-schooler. Fairview Cellars is a small winery producing some great wines on a relatively small property in an off-the-beaten-wine-path part of Oliver, British Columbia. It is technically located on the Golden Mile, but the extra five minute drive into the hills to the tiny log cabin tasting room made it feel like an epic journey into a different part of Okanagan wine country.

Bill Eggert is the winemaker and proprietor at Fairview, and rumour has it he rules his vineyard with an “uncompromising zeal for grape” attitude. This is well reflected in his red wines, which are nice too drink, but have bold characteristics that are slightly uncommon and refreshing — a punch to the jawline of what I would call the “new world taste.”

A friend in our group this day grew up an orchard kid in Oliver and knew Bill from his childhood, so I feel like we were lucky to get a bit of an inside scoop and chat with Bill about wine making.

It was great to hear the stories behind the wines, and from the get-go Bill was very unassuming, and an absolute farmer in every way. Everything was about the history of the area and the grapes from so-and-so down on Road 16. That connection with the local farming community was nice to hear. It means that this area hasn’t necessarily changed as much as I had thought, despite the increased land prices and big city investment in grapes.

This wine thing is clearly something that he enjoys as we continue to talk, but I can’t see Fairview ever building some crazy tasting room with granite counters and dangling halogen lights. There is a lot of humility here and I think it might stem from years of working the land more-or-less solo.

The sense I got from Bill was that wine is a labour of love for him, and the recent increase in “cool factor” for the Okanagan hasn’t changed too much for him, despite being well regarded in the wine community both here and in Vancouver. In fact, Bill still wears suspenders and plaid, and his hands are weathered from endless days in the vineyard. These are both things I admire.

As far as wines go, the Fairview Cellars 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon was my favourite from this winery, and at $40 per bottle it is not particularly cheap, but is on par with other top-tier wines from the area. What is different though is that this wine is produced in extra small quantities (roughly 400 cases) and has a “real” personality. There is something genuinely interesting about the flavour profile of this wine. It’s big, it’s red, it’s jammy, and it’s smooth on the palate, but it’s lacking that scientifically refined characteristic that would make this a textbook perfect Cabernet Sauvignon. I can’t quite put my taste buds on it, but I love that this wine just tastes  a bit “wild.” Like a dog to its owner, a wine should be reflective of its maker, and the wines at Fairview Cellars really are a spitting image.

After another round of manicured tasting rooms we end up the following day at Van Westen Vineyards, a place that I have begun to hold in great reverence. The tasting room at Van Westen is actually the anti-tasting room. There is absolutely nothing fancy about this place. Tastings are held a little haphazardly in a cold storage facility (read warehouse) sandwiched between Elephant Island Winery and Joie Farm off of Aikins Loop in Naramata.

That may sound a bit unappealing, but what makes this place great is Rob Van Westen — a man of massive proportion and personality. He’s a big guy with a big heart and a big laugh, and you can’t help but love his wines as a complete mirror of himself. The tasting room is open on a kind of random as necessary basis, and if you’re lucky you will get to sample some vertical vintages from both bottle and barrel. This is where the real action happens, not in the tasting room, but in the barrel room/everything else facility.

Tasting here gives you a real sense of where this wine comes from. You meet the man, you see the land, and you see where it all happens, and it is humble.

The wines of Van Westen Vineyards possess loads of character. They are big, bold and unapologetic. There is nothing about these wines that says “love me Robert Parker,” and like them or not for their taste, you almost have to like them for their individuality.

They are so different and I can’t help but think that this might be what is meant by “terroir.” The whites are probably more palatable for most, but I can’t help but love the Van Westen Voluptuous, a blend of Merlot and Cab Franc, for its raging individuality.

Amongst the many other reds in the Okanagan that are approaching technical perfection the Voluptuous is a stand-out.

To liken it to something else I would say the Voluptuous is more Kerouac than Wordsworth, more Tom Waits than Eddie Vedder, and more Marilyn Monroe than Pamela Anderson. It is a big bold red, daring, unabashed, and ready to give your palate a hard knock.

It has what I would call “über-tannins,” and despite being a little rough around the edges, it tells a story and is a pleasure to drink with the right food. That is how the winemaker intended it, and in the spirit of anthropomorphism, this is a wine that clearly doesn’t care what you think. The name really says it all — “I’m Voluptuous.”

For whatever reason I am starting to see that this is the real deal. I look over and see a plaid jacket hung on a doornail next to a stack of red and green label Pilsner. Something seems familiar about this. We start talking the history of Van Westen Vineyards and the name Bill Eggert comes up as one of the initial inspirations to start making wine.

I crack a joke about Possum Lodge — probably my fortieth of this weekend. This time, rather than it falling on def ears, Rob retorts with a remark about duct tape and wine. Finally somebody gets what I’m talking about. A Red Green fan in the vineyard. This is where it’s at.

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably wondering when I’m going to get to the point of this article, but to disappoint you, I will tell you there is no real finite point other than to tell the story until I don’t have anything more to say about it, and that in itself, might just be the point.

In this world of totally refined everything, it is nice to know that there are still some people out there who are doing it by feel, or in this case, taste.

The wines of Fairview and Van Westen are not going to be favourites for everyone, but what they are is reflective of their respective wine makers and of the region from which they come. In a completely unbridled and unpretentious way they are what you could call genuine Okanagan wines. Something created of what may now be a bygone era of farming and individuality.

The Okanagan as I knew it as a child was about going cherry picking, and playing in the lake, and chasing geese, and farming the crops. It was about real people doing real things with the land, and it is something that seems to be getting lost in a sea of outside investment and wine tourists.

It is my hope that there are parts of this area that don’t change, and that do stay the same. Thank you Rob and Bill for keeping it real.

Duct tape forever.

Fairview Cellars
13147 334 Avenue
Oliver, BC V0H 1T0
(250) 498-2211
fairviewcellars.ca

Van Westen Vineyards
250- 496- 0067
vanwestenvineyards.com