South Okanagan winery not bottling 2021 vintage due to wildfire smoke contamination
An Okanagan Falls winery has decided to forgo bottling its 2021 vintage this year after its vineyards were contaminated by wildfire smoke.
Last year, the Thomas Creek wildfire reached 10,500 hectares in size and was located roughly three kilometres northeast of Okanagan Falls. It impacted Blue Mountain Vineyard and Cellars vineyards.
The owners of winery announced on their blog April 4, that the winery’s estate vineyards were also impacted by the smoke.
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“While attempts to mitigate the impact of the contamination were tried the results did not meet the winery’s quality standards,” wrote Christie, Matt, Jane and Ian Mavety in the blog.
“We made the very difficult decision not to bottle the 2021 vintage simply because we were not willing to compromise the reputation, that we have worked tirelessly to establish over the past three decades.”
They family wrote while disappointed, they are confident they will resume making premium wines with their 2022 vintage as the vines themselves were not affected.
The winery still has previous Blue Mountain vintages to last for the next few months, and the decision to have the winery open to the public for purchases will be decided late spring 2022, they said.
Blue Mountain could not be immediately reached for comment.
— This story was corrected at 1:16 p.m. Friday, April 8, 2022, to clarify the vineyards were not burnt by last summer's wildfire, which was originally erroneously reported.
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