Whenever one says that this not the place for Syrah (as an example), you can point to a vineyard block where the variety succeeds. What are the best varieties? That may never be a settled question. If there is ever going to be a sub-appellation declared for the Bench, a lot of details will need to be nailed down to make the case that the wines are distinctive. Even after 30 years of viticulture on the Bench, growers are still discovering details about the terroir. It turns out that those rows get just a little extra exposure to sunlight and the reflected light as the sun sets into a gap in the mountains across the lake.Ī small thing, perhaps, but terroir is an accumulation of small things. Then she noticed this was true of entire rows.
In a block of Gamay near the winery, she spotted that bunches on some vines had begun to turn red before fruit on nearby vines. That can have a pronounced effect, as Kathy noted last fall. The benefit of the sun is magnified when the rays of late afternoon sun bounce from the lake onto the vines. The aspect of most of the bench is a gentle slope facing the west, meaning the vineyards benefit from long days of sunlight, with the lake effect moderating summer heat spikes as well as unseasonable winter cold. It is a strip of vineyard land, with fairly complex soil, about 25 km long on the east side of Okanagan Lake. What makes the Naramata Bench unique in the Okanagan is its geography.
Winemaker Kathy Malone, who moved to Hillside in 2008 after a long career at Mission Hill, sang the praises of the Naramata Bench at a tasting this week for the British Columbia Wine Appreciation Society.
HILLSIDE WINERY SERIES
As the winery grew under a series of owners, it began purchasing grapes from the south Okanagan as well.īut once again, the winery increasingly is embracing the Naramata terroir in its winemaking, notably for its flagship wines: Mosaic, its Bordeaux red icon, and Muscat Ottonel, its cult white wine. The winery’s early vintages – the first was about 25 cases – were all made with Naramata grapes. In 1990, Hillside Winery was one of the first two wineries to open on the Naramata Bench.
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