In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity—or so said Sun Tzu. And if there was ever one word that could be used to describe the weather patterns we have experienced over the past few years in British Columbia, “chaos” would be as good as any.
We have all experienced the extreme heat in summer and extreme cold in winter, but for most of us it’s little more than an annoyance to be solved by a trip to buy an AC unit, or a novel week of skating on a previously never-frozen pond in your neighbourhood. But for British Columbians who depend on favourable weather for their livelihoods, such as those employed in agriculture, these chaotic and extreme weather conditions threaten their jobs, their produce and even our province’s food supply chain.
In our 2023 Fall Issue of British Columbia Magazine, Jane Mundy explores this challenge from the perspective of the Okanagan’s wine industry. Not only are the Okanagan’s vineyard operators and winemakers impacted by heatwaves and cold snaps, but they are also threatened by the smoke and flames of wildfire and our province’s ever-climbing yearly average temperatures. As you’ll see in this article, wineries up and down the Okanagan—even if their vines survived the heat dome from a few years back—many of have had recent crops decimated by sub -20º C temperatures. And with increasing yearly averages, grape varietals that have been the backbone of the Okanagan industry for decades, may no longer be viable in the near future. As a result, every vineyard in the Okanagan is now trying to find grapes that will survive in extreme heat and cold, thrive in an overall warmer climate and still provide great-tasting wine. This feels like a tall order.
So that’s the chaos part, what about the opportunity? Necessity is the mother of all invention, and this search for new grape varietals opens as many doors as it closes. Most of the grape varietals that we know and love come from cultivars of Vitis vinifera, which originates in the Mediterranean and Central Asia. Clearly the climate in these traditional wine-making areas is warmer and drier than ours in British Columbia, and while we are certainly able to create very nice wines in both the Okanagan and Vancouver Island, our climate is at the extreme range (cold, wet and dark) of what would be considered “ideal” climate conditions for wine.
Finding wines that suit our climate is a challenge that winemakers in BC, and Vancouver Island especially, have been facing for decades. Not to try and put a positive spin on climate change and the steady rising temperature of the Earth’s surface year over year, but hotter, drier and sunnier summers will give winemakers the opportunity to try out new grape varietals that produce bigger, juicier wines like cabernet sauvignon, and also improve the complexity of wines we already grow well like pinot noir.
It’s not just local BC winemakers that are seeing this opportunity. In the past few years, big American winemakers have been looking at purchasing property in Canada. Most recently, industry giant Jackson Family Wines purchased both Blue Grouse Estate Winery & Vineyard and Unsworth Vineyard on Vancouver Island. While they say the purchases are to diversify their portfolios, it’s not much of a stretch to say that they too see opportunity in the cold-weather region of the Cowichan Valley, especially when coming a part of the world that is experiencing even hotter temperatures and more wildfires than here.
Of course, this is all guesswork and nobody knows for sure what surprises the next few years hold, but I do feel some optimism for the future of the wine industry in BC. It only takes a few years to grow new vines from scratch, and even less time to graft new varietals onto old rootstock, and no doubt there are several BC winemakers who have already started this process.
As someone who enjoys trying new things, especially wine, I’m trying to see this as a silver lining and looking forward to trying new and exciting wines from wineries close to home.