Attention Pinot Lovers!
We'd like to introduce you to the Haywire Pinot Noir 2010.
This is extreme mountain viticulture at its best; made from 100% Pinot Noir from the Wise brothers’ Secrest Mountain Vineyard that sits above the town of Oliver.
For those that remember last fall in the Okanagan, it was a bit of a nail biter of a grape growing season. The Wise brothers worked hard, and as luck would have it, the late ripening and warm fall of 2010 allowed excellent flavour development.
The grapes received gentle treatment upon harvest, with most going into the fermenter as whole berries, and then fermentation was conducted at a ridiculous, almost fatally-hot temperature for this yeast.
This allowed winemaker Michael Bartier and his team to extract very fine tannins without extending our maceration at the risk of the fruit character.
The resulting wine exudes very pure strawberry and cherry characters with a lively acidic and berry finish.
Like a good Okanagan Pinot Noir should, our Okanagan Pinot Noir has the fruit, acid, and structure for fall-friendly foods heavy in tomatoes and olive oil.
The wine is receiving much critical acclaim, with a whopping 91-Point-Score from national wine columnist Natalie MacLean.
It is a beautiful, silky wine, and is in stock now. Try it for yourself, and let us know what you think...
Thank You To Our Winery Crew!
This Wine Wednesday finds the skies clear, even though lately the weather has been giving us some serious rain!
Luckily, our harvest team in the Okanagan got a break this week with lots of sun and warm weather… would you believe they were harvesting in t-shirts in November?!
Harvest in 2012 sees the crush pad humming. Our roster has now expanded to 12 clients – including our in-house Haywire and Bartier Scholefield labels, and winemaker Michael Bartier's family label: Bartier Bros.
After our incredibly successful first year in 2011, this year we doubled our production of premium wines from 17,000 cases, to almost 34,000 cases.
Equipment in the winery is state-of-the-art, and includes a wide range of presses, a new punch-down arm, and perhaps what are the most unique looking wine tanks in BC - you've seen them on our blog before: six eight-foot-tall black egg-shaped concrete fermentation eggs.
Clients introduced through OCP also include Rafter F, founded by Bill and Darlene Freding, who have been growing grapes for 15 years on Black Sage Road in Oliver; Bella, a brand of sparkling wines owned by Jay Drysdale and Wendy Rose, and OCP has even helped to establish a new BC wine growing region, with the creation of wines from Harper’s Trail, featuring grapes sourced exclusively from Ed and Vicki Collett’s vineyards in Kamloops.
New to 2012 are additional unnamed clients, as well as Tom Di Bello, one of the Okanagan’s most respected winemakers, who, with his wife Tari, has moved into Okanagan Crush Pad to create the small quantity selections that bear the Di Bello Wines name.
Speaking of our team, our extraordinary winery crew has put in more than 3500 hours since the middle of September and has seen 212 tons (424,000 lbs) of white and 236 tons (472,000 lbs) of red come through the doors of the winery – that's heavier than a space shuttle orbiter and a blue whale!
Buy Direct and Save
And we are giving you another tease - launching soon is a wine club you will want to be a part of!
THE Club @ Crush Pad is THE place for you!
As a club member you will receive exclusive benefits including advance notice on events, 20% discounts on case orders, member-only preferential shipping rates, news updates, tasting notes, food pairing suggestions, and more!
If you want more information or to be informed when THE Club @ Crush Pad is launched, please email whitney@okanagancrushpad.com.
