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Late but bountiful harvest for vineyards in Okanagan and Similkameen

A late start but high quality has winemakers excited about 2022 vintage
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Grapes ready for harvest at Corcelettes Estate Winery in the Similkameen. (Similkameen Independent Winegrowers - Facebook)

The fall grape harvest is in full swing for vineyards across the Okanagan and Similkameen after record-breaking warm temperatures in September has yielded both red and whites ripening at the same time.

According to the annual harvest release from the Wine Growers of BC, the grape harvest has seen a high quality and quantity of fruit for 2022.

That high growth level has also combined with an unusual season of weather to compress down the harvest, which started three weeks later than 2021.

“What we’re seeing now is that typically what we refer to as our early varietals, which is white wines, are late but the later ripening varietals are coming along well and maturing at the same time,” said Charlie Baessler, the owner of Corcelettes Estate Winery in Cawston.

The harvest this year has been plentiful, if compressed into a shorter window, including at Corcelettes Estate Winery. (Similkameen Independent Winegrowers - Facebook)
The harvest this year has been plentiful, if compressed into a shorter window, including at Corcelettes Estate Winery. (Similkameen Independent Winegrowers - Facebook)

The Wine Growers of BC noted that the month of September had reached a record number of growing days of grape-ripening warmer temperatures.

It was a stark turnaround from the start of the season, which saw cool and wet temperatures that more than halved the growing days in east Kelowna over March, April and May, and a drop to 132 days from a 15-year average of 233 in the Similkameen Valley.

Although there were some days of mid-40 temperatures in 2022, unlike 2021 the heat stress didn’t hit during the bloom. The extra instead hit during the heart of the growing season and helped set the plants along after the cooler and wetter spring.

READ MORE: August was the Okanagan’s warmest month ever, September to be a ‘mixed bag’

Now part way through the harvest, vineyards are now running into a different challenge; finding room for all of the high-quality grapes that are coming ripe at the same time.

“You know, cellar space is another challenge as well,” said Baessler. “A lot of wineries will try to flip the fermenters, meaning a taking is occupied by the early varietals and then it becomes available again for the later varietals, but because it is an all-at-once approach this year we’re having to adjust.”

Other wineries across the Okanagan and Similkameen have also seen great harvests in 2022, and for some, it’s been more of a return to form instead of a surprising new challenge.

“While our harvest will be somewhat later than the average vintage over the past five or six years, this is more akin to when we first started growing grapes and making wine 20 years ago,” said John Weber, the proprietor of Orofino Vineyards. “While this week’s start is considered very late by recent standards, we have seen this before.”

The Wine Growers of BC are expecting the high quality of the harvest to lead to a unique vintage of wine for the year.

To report a typo, email: editor@pentictonwesternnews.com.

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Brennan Phillips

About the Author: Brennan Phillips

Brennan was raised in the Okanagan and is thankful every day that he gets to live and work in one of the most beautiful places in Canada.
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