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Photo by Gary Symons
Fitz Winery
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Photo by Gary Symons
Fitz Patio
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Photo by Gary Symons
Tasting Bar and Bistro
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Photo by Gary Symons
Champagne Buckets
The wine industry is like any other; it goes through cycles, and certain wine products trend upwards or downwards over time.
Right now what’s hot is the growth of sparkling wines, not just here in Canada but around the world. Sparkling wines like Prosecco or Spanish Cavas are taking over a larger and larger share of the market, so it’s not surprising the production of sparkling wines is starting to bubble over here in BC.
The latest entrant into the sparkling race is a serious contender.
Fitzpatrick Family Vineyards Winery is located overlooking Okanagan Lake just north of Summerland, and is focused on production of sparkling wines made in the traditional Champagne style. The winery was founded by the Fitzpatrick family, who are among the early winemaking pioneers in Canada.
Senator Ross Fitzpatrick bought the Cedar Creek vineyards way back in 1986, and he ran the winery with wife Linda and son Gordon for three decades, before selling to Mission Hill owner Anthony von Mandl.
That put the focus on the Fitzpatrick’s new winery effort, and Fitz opened its doors this spring.
President Gordon Fitzpatrick says the focus on making sparkling wines was partly a business decision, but partly dictated by the land itself.
The Fitz vineyards were planted more than 20 years ago, mainly with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, which are the primary grapes used in Champagne. The family later planted Meunier, the third grape used in more sparing amounts when making classic French Champagne.
With that mix of fruit, and a location that preserves the acidity needed for a superior sparkling wine, Fitzpatrick says it just made sense to go for the bubbles.
“The reason we decided to do sparkling wine is because we think the site is ideally suited to it,” Fitzpatrick says. “We planted Greata Ranch 20 years ago, and you know, the land kind of tells you what wines you should be making.
“We have Mount Aeneas behind us here which causes the sun to disappear on us about two and a half hours earlier, giving us what we call ‘the gift of shade’. That allows us to grow grapes with high natural acidity that are ideally suited to doing both the bubbly and the site specific still wines we make here.”
The winery will have the capacity to produce 8,000 cases per year, of which 3,000 to 3,500 will be sparkling. The choice of focusing heavily on sparkling was also a business decision based on clear market trends.
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Photo by Gary Symons
Fitz Rose
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Photo by Gary Symons
Champagne Caves
“Sparkling wines have been trending upward for several years,” Fitzpatrick says. “The lower price points of wines like Prosecco have helped, because people try that and then they want to explore the higher end sparkling wines as well.”
The trend worldwide has been double digit increases in sparkling wine consumption for the past five to seven years, and that is echoed here in BC.
Over the last year, for example, the dollar value of sparkling wine sold in BC increased by 19 per cent, and the volumes sold increased by 16 per cent.
In other words, buyers are purchasing more sparkling wines, and they are starting to gravitate toward the more expensive, higher-end products.
The Fitzpatricks decided to go all out in producing a superior sparkling wine in the Champagne style. They had the right grapes. The next step was to hire the right winemaker. That turned out to be Sarah Bain, a New Zealand winemaker who began her career working in the celebrated Central Otago wine region in 2004.
Photo by Gary Symons
Winemaker Sarah Bain
Sarah Bain, Fitzpatrick Family Vineyards Winemaker
Bain started out at Burn Cottage making premium Pinot Noir, and then at Quartz Reef, one of New Zealand’s leading producers of Traditional Method sparkling wines. She also worked in California and Germany before settling in at Fitz.
Downstairs, below the bistro and tasting rooms, a massive excavation opened up a wine cave where the still and sparkling wines are produced. There are old fashioned wooden ‘riddling racks’ used in traditional Champagne making to continuously tilt the bottles so the sediment can be consolidated in the bottle, and then easily removed before corking.
In the old days winemakers would have to continuously move thousands of bottles of wine by hand, but further into the cave are new automated riddling machines that put 504 bottles through their series of gyrations over a period of five days.
Fitzpatrick says the winery is sparing no expense to produce a quality product, but at an affordable price.
“We’re making our sparkling wines in exactly the same way they do it in Champagne,” he says. “The difference is that we are firmly rooted in British Columbia, and we are also about one-half the price of French Champagne.
“We wanted to price ours so it could be an every week occurrence, not just something you have at weddings or celebrations. Our slogan is, ‘why wait to celebrate?’.”
