Description

James Cluer, Master of Wine and owner of Fine Vintage Ltd www.finevintageltd.com takes us on a tour of Poplar Gover Winery in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. This is part of a Ten Part Series on Okanagan Wineries. In this video we meet Ian Sutherland and Tony Holler at Poplar Grove Winery, Naramata Bench to talk about their plans for a new winery and to take a tour of the factility. To find a wine course and wine tasting club visit finevintageltd.com

Transcript

James Cluer at Poplar Grove Winery, Okanagan, BC James Cluer: We’re here at Jackson Triggs in Southern Okanagan, the largest wine producer in British Columbia and perhaps, a bit of a surprise that they’re in my personal top 10. In fact, it’s one wine that they produce, the grandest state Shiraz that actually makes it into the top 10. It is truly something worth checking out. So we went to meet up with Derek Kontkanen Chief Red Winemaker for Jackson Triggs to find out about this award winning Sunrock Vineyard. Derek Kontkanen: The Sunrock Vineyard to me is probably one of the best sites in Okanagan Valley. It is very hot, lots of hundred feet of sand, so it’s basically a hydroponic growing with a giant heat sink behind us. James Cluer: You don’t have any other plans growing underneath the vineyard here. Derek Kontkanen: Nothing. James Cluer: Why is it so hot then? Derek Kontkanen: It’s just a very hot site and also the giant rock that you see behind us which we’ve dubbed Sunrock. It takes in the heat and radiates it at night that keeps this a couple of degrees warmer at night than the rest of the vineyard. James Cluer: Okay, so this first a couple of hundred meters is actually hotter than further down. Derek Kontkanen: Further down. If we go down at the Sunrock block into the Sunrock cabs and Chardonnay, it’s usually a couple of degrees cooler than right here. James Cluer: And for Syrah or Shiraz, you really want that high heat or what’s the ideal? Derek Kontkanen For our Shiraz, we want the heat. Shiraz is very vigorous and we want to—basically, we can stress it almost to the brink of collapse where it won’t produce anything that would kill it. So that’s where we can really control the irrigation and basically, we get it so that the canes and the shoots, they come and they fall over. We hit it with a bit of water, they pop back. And so we’re just toying with it the whole time and it helps get those great flavors. James Cluer: And now, I see that we’re starting to go through the race on. What does that signify when you see the berries turning like that. Derek Kontkanen I’m going to be busy in a few months. James Cluer: Risk is coming. Derek Kontkanen My risk is coming. It’s a good sign. For this year, we’re probably about a week ahead of normal. It’s a good sign to see good color turning in. We’re going to get the sugars and flavors and everything we need. James Cluer: It was already 37 degrees Celsius by 10 AM, so I asked Derek if we’d go and stand in the shade and crack open a bottle of JT’s finest. Derek, tell me about this amazing award that you won with the Grand Reserve Shiraz. Derek Kontkanen We won it in 2006. It was the 2004 Brothers Grand Reserve Shiraz that won the Rosemont Trophy over at the international and spirits competition in London, England. So our wine was going up against some of the top wines around the world. James Cluer: And what was the reaction here at Jackson Triggs when you found out that you have won this award? Derek Kontkanen We were very happy, very excited. It was a big accomplishment. It was the first one to be won in North America, that trophy. So it was a good thing to happen for us and also for the industry as a whole in British Columbia because it helps just bring attention to the area. James Cluer: And Canada is not ideally suited to a variety like Shiraz. Any thoughts on that? Derek Kontkanen I think we are here, you just have to have the right site. It’s just being your goal to get up into the 41, 42, 43 degrees Celsius in the summer time. We are Canada’s only desert so we do have the heat. But you know, we do in the fog, it cools so that’s why. Make sure you get the right site. James Cluer: What can people expect to find in terms of flavor and structure of this wine when they buy a bottle? Derek Kontkanen The Grand Reserve Shiraz, if they can see by the color, it’s very inky, dark. When we pick our Shiraz, we wait until we get a fair amount of scribble and then when you go through, when you pick by flavor, you just get pepper. Okay, it’s time to pick. James Cluer: Not many people get to see inside the Jackson Triggs Winery so I was very grateful to Derek for taking me inside to show me how this award winning Shiraz is actually made. So Derek, in terms of wine making philosophy, what do you do with the Shiraz? Derek Kontkanen Basically, what we try to do is, as you would, hands off approach which I try to explain to people where the guard rails on the side of the road. The fruit all starts in the vineyard as you probably heard many times before. James Cluer: So is Derek, the shepherd? Derek Kontkanen Pretty much, yeah. You make sure you pick the fruit at an optimal time. You bring it in and then you ferment it out and you just watch it and make sure that nothing goes wrong in the ferment and that you get the best possible quality of wine. James Cluer: And then after that, into barrel? Derek Kontkanen Into barrel for a secondary fermentation. They will sit there for about 18 months in our barrels. James Cluer: Lots of new or combination? Derek Kontkanen 40% new, 60% older oak. James Cluer: Okay. French, American? Derek Kontkanen 50/50. James Cluer: 50/50 okay. And how long could someone sell a bottle of your Shiraz? Derek Kontkanen I would say five to seven years. We’re fairly new. Our first vintage came out in around 2000 or 2001 of our Shiraz and I had a bottle of that the other day and it’s still holding up well. James Cluer: It’s still pretty good. Derek Kontkanen Yeah, it still got the tannins, still got the flavor. James Cluer: Derek, a lot of people think that big wineries only produce fairly ordinary wines and they can’t produce top quality. Thoughts on that? Derek Kontkanen I would say, well, big winers, they do produce top quality wines as shown by our grand reserve Shiraz that won the Rosemont Trophy. We have the bigger, more resources that would say we have some great technology. We have our rotary fermenters that you see right which the Shiraz came out of. We do have the ability to make larger lots plus also smaller lots that will produce a hundred cases of one product at a time also. James Cluer: In the wine business, there’s a saying that big isn’t beautiful. Wine drinkers often love to support the smaller family owned wineries as if they were the underdog. But actually, it’s important to have the big wineries too. They are the pioneers in research and development and have the financial muscle to advertise and promote. And as we’ve seen, they can certainly produce first class wines too.