Living Sky Awards
Sue Echlin and Vance Lester are on a mission to put Saskatchewan on the map as a Canadian winemaking region. While the Prairie province may not hold great promise for grapes, the founders of Living Sky Winery are crafting table and dessert/port-style wines from locally grown fruits, including cherries, rhubarb, raspberries and currants.
“We have a really cool thing going on in Saskatchewan that I like to call Seed to Sip producers, which means we can control everything in the process from planting to packaging all on the same farm,” Echlin told the Canadian Farm Writers’ Federation at their annual conference in September. “The craft alcohol industry is really starting to come alive here.”
Living Sky Winery was the second craft alcohol company in Saskatchewan, leading the way for a surging number of craft brewers, wineries and distillers in the province. The idea took root when the couple was looking for a way to make a living on the farm outside of commodity-based agriculture.
“We went on a wine tour in B.C. and thought, ‘hey, why don’t we do that in Saskatchewan?’ By the time we figured out why you shouldn’t do that in Saskatchewan it was too late,” says Echlin with a laugh. “We turned our triticale field into an orchard, and we now have 22 acres of fruit.”
In 2005, they planted 45,000 trees and shrubs with an old 1920’s tree-planting machine, including apples, cherries, raspberries, black currants, and 10 acres of Bavarian wine rhubarb. Since then, they have modernized equipment and mechanized as much of the harvest as possible.
“The only thing we haven’t been able to mechanize is rhubarb, which you have to pull by hand. We harvested 35,000 pounds of rhubarb this year,” she says. “It’s really hard to find people who are willing to do the hard manual labour of picking, washing and peeling 35,000 pounds of rhubarb, so we work very closely with our local Hutterite colony.”
In 2012, Sue Echlin and Vance Lester were named Canada’s Outstanding Young Farmers, and used the exposure to continue to build buzz around their product, and bring the needs of the craft wine and spirits industry to the attention of the provincial ministry of agriculture.
As for the wines, their success speaks for itself. Living Sky fruit wines have won 28 national and international medals over the past five years, including double gold at the 2016 New York Wine Festival for their Juliett cherry port.
“The throwback from that award has been huge. We have gotten orders for Juliett from as far away as Denmark,” says Echlin. “International awards are a great way to help get the word out there, but it’s also a way of legitimizing what we’re doing, especially as a fruit winery. Being able to say that we went to New York City and stood toe to toe with these grape wines adds legitimacy to what we are trying to do and is very important.”
Their success is by design, not luck. With the understanding that they had to win over curious consumers on the first sip, they hired renowned wine maker, Dominic Rivard, to help develop their line of wines.
“We knew that people would try us the first time because we were local, and if we didn’t make an exceptional product, they wouldn’t try us a second time,” says Echlin.
Today their core products include rhubarb and black currant table wines, as well the cherry port-style wine, Juliett. Within their commitment to quality, Living Sky Winery still adheres to the experimental ethos of a craft winery with a strong sense of passion and play.
“Three years ago we found a grower that had 3,000 extra pounds of cantelope that had frozen on him, so we made a nice cantelope ice wine,” Echlin recounts. “We think it’s the world’s first cantelope ice wine, and it’s definitely the first wine made from Saskatchewan cantelopes.”
Building a Saskatchewan wine & spirits industry
Beyond the success of Living Sky Winery, Sue Echlin is also committed to raising the bar for the entire craft alcohol industry in Saskatchewan.
Over the past five years, the Saskatchewan industry has grown from only two wineries to 32 craft alcohol producers, including 16 breweries, eight distilleries, six wineries, one meadery and one cidery. To give this growing industry a voice, Echlin started the Saskatchewan Artisan Wine and Spirits Association.
“About two years ago we decided that having an organization that could have formal discussions with government was important,” says Echlin. “Originally we were going to start one big group including the craft brewers, but beer has it’s own distinct issues, whereas distilleries and wineries are fairly similar.”
While the association was not fully incorporated until September this year, they have been working closely with the Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority to ease restrictions on liquor sales and level the playing field for local wineries and distillers.
The new regulation came into effect at the beginning of October, allowing consumers to purchase Saskatchewan wines and craft spirits directly from producers, and have them delivered to their doorstep. Previously, consumers were restricted to wines or spirits that were available for sale through Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming Authority stores.
“As of October 9, we will have probably have the best jurisdiction in the entire country to make craft alcohol in. The government is incredibly supportive,” says Echlin, explaining that craft wine and spirits offer a diversified market for Saskatchewan-grown products including fruit, grains and honey.
“Even though we are craft, quality, small and independent, we have a huge impact on the provincial economy. Last year alone, our membership represented $1.9M in community spending, and $2.1M in salaries,” she says. “This is going to continue to grow, and I think this is why the government of Saskatchewan has been so positive and embraced us so greatly is they recognize that those of us doing craft alcohol can make a huge impact on this province. As long as we remain committed to who we are and committed to quality, the future is wide open.”
