Adega on 45th wines are worth searching out

Photo: Karen Yeung

Adega on 45th Estate Winery: the name needs a little explanation. Adega is Portuguese for cellar: the winery, which opened in 2011, was established by individuals of Portuguese stock – Alex Nunes, his brother-in-law, Fred Farinha, and their spouses. The winery is on 45th Street which runs along the east side of Osoyoos Lake. Designed by Alex and Fred, the building is an attractive winery with a butterscotch-toned exterior, a bell tower, and a tasting room with a great view over the lake and the town. It is supported by an expansive vineyard planted in 2005 when Alex and Fred decided to convert the orchards where they had been growing fruit since the 1960s.

The original owners decided to retire and sold the winery in 2025 to the owners of Surrey’s Gate 22 Winery, who installed Christa-Lee McWatters as vice-president. She is the daughter of the late Harry McWatters, one of the pioneers of Okanagan winemaking. Her partner in running the winery is Karen Yeung, a veteran Okanagan winemaker with years of experience in the Andrew Peller group of wineries.

Born in Vancouver, Karen grew up in a family of chefs. She initially had that in mind as a career when she completed a diploma in food technology at the British Columbia Institute of Technology in 1996. But after three years developing food products, she zeroed in on wine and joined Andrés (as Andrew Peller Ltd. was then called) as an assistant winemaker. She took over the Red Rooster cellar in 2007 and, among other achievements, crafted an iconic red blend called The Golden Egg. When Peller closed Red Rooster for a few years, she became a freelance winemaker. The 2025 wines from Adega show that she has not lost her touch. Here are my notes.

Adega on 45th Chardonnay 2025 ($24.99). The fruit for this wine is from the Hollenbach Family Vineyards at Penticton. Fermentation was mainly in stainless steel, with 20% in oak. The wine has aromas and flavours of apple and pineapple, with a hint of stone fruits. The wine is crisp and fresh on the finish. 90.

Adega on 45th Rosé 2025 ($24.99). This is a Pinot Noir rosé, with fruit from a vineyard near Kaleden. The grapes were allowed enough skin contact that the wine developed an appealing salmon pink hue. The wine has aromas of strawberry and raspberry, with flavours of cherry and cranberry. 90.

Adega on 45th Riesling 2025 ($26.99). This wine was fermented in stainless steel. The wine has aromas and flavours of lemon, apple and pear. The bright but well-balanced acidity give the wine a crisp and somewhat austere finish. 88.

Adega on 45th Espumante 2025 ($24.99). This is a complex blend of Sauvignon Blanc, Gewürztraminer, Viognier, Merlot and Pinot Noir. The juice was fermented in stainless steel and carbonated to preserve a delicate mousse. (Two traditional method sparkling wines from Adega’s 2025 vintage are not yet released because they are en tirage. This wine is delicious, with a good mousse and with aromas and flavours of pear and apple. 92.

Adega on 45th Cabernet Franc 2023 ($32.99). The fruit is from the estate vineyard on the east side of Osoyoos Lake. This is a bold wine bursting with aromas of cassis, blackberry and cherry, all of which is echoed on the palate. The wine was aged 12 months in oak and there is a touch of oak on the finish. This wine deserves to be decanted. 91.

Adega on 45th Malbec Merlot 2022 ($34.99). This is a wine from one of the Okanagan’s best vintages. The blend is 54% Malbec and 46% Merlot from the estate vineyard on the east side of Osoyoos Lake. The wine was fermented in stainless steel and aged in oak for 14 months. It has a rich and firm texture with aromas of dark fruits mingled with oak. On the palate, the dark fruit flavours are dominated by blackberry and plum. Decanting is also recommended for this wine. 91.

Monte Creek champions the Thompson Valley

Photo: Frontenac Gris grapes at Monte Creek

The Thompson Valley’s Monte Creek Winery, majestically sited on a hilltop east of Kamloops, announced the start of its 2026 vintage on September 2 this year. The winery’s vineyards include Minnesota hybrid grapes – so called because they were developed in Minnesota and Wisconsin for cold climate viticulture. These hardy, early-ripening varietals have proven themselves well-suited to the Thompson Valley, where summer is hot but winter is cold.

“We’re anticipating picking the first of our Marquette grapes later this week, which will be destined for our Living Land Sparkling Rosé,” the winery announced recently, referring to one of the Minnesota hybrids. Perhaps this harvest will be a match for 2025. The notes accompanying sample wines from the 2025 vintage describe that harvest.

“Harvest 2025 was one of the fastest-evolving seasons experienced at Monte Creek. September in particular was exceptionally busy. Once harvest began on August 29th, the vineyard and cellar teams had to set aside all other tasks to focus entirely on the grapes. The rapid onset of harvest was unexpected, driven by warm late-summer temperatures that accelerated ripening across our vineyards.

“One of the most striking lessons of this vintage is how differently the Thompson Valley performs compared to the Similkameen [where Monte Creek has a vineyard]. While grapes in our Keremeos vineyard progressed at remarkable speed, Kamloops’s more northerly location—with cooler nights and shorter days—allowed our fruit here to remain on the vine longer. This extended hang time enhanced physical ripeness, preserved crisp acidity, and delivered a freshness that is rare in a warm, fast-paced vintage like this one. Though the wines are still in development and won’t fully reveal their character for some time, the grapes already point to two distinct styles. The Keremeos fruit shows strength and intensity, while Kamloops fruit is producing wines of elegance and balance, particularly evident in the Riesling from our Lion’s Head vineyard.

“For us, this is the defining takeaway of the 2025 vintage: our northern latitude, which was once considered a disadvantage, has become one of our greatest strengths. By adapting vineyard practices to our unique climate, we’ve not only managed the challenges of recent years but are now seeing our vines and wines thrive in a terroir that once raised eyebrows. This vintage is a clear demonstration that Monte Creek’s location, combined with attentive vineyard management, produces wines of exceptional quality, expression, and balance.”

The only thing I would add is that the Minnesota hybrids have proved themselves as excellent wine grapes in the Thompson Valley. Many of the hybrids were given their names in Quebec, where most vineyards grow them because the varietals are so cold tolerant. That is the reason why the names are French: Marquette, Frontenac, and Le Crescent, for example. Here are some notes on the wines.

Monte Creek Living Land Riesling 2025 ($23.99 for 570 cases). Made from Thompson Valley grapes, this wine, which was aged four months in stainless steel, begins with aromas of citrus mingled with a hint of petrol. The wine has intense flavours of lemon and grapefruit with a long finish. Bright acidity gives it a crisp finish. 91.

Monte Creek Living Land Rosé 2025 ($22.99 for 1,702 cases). This wine, which was aged four months in stainless steel, is a full-bodied, dark-hued rosé with aromas and flavours of cherry and plum. It is a blend of 80.5% Marquette, 12.5% Frontenac Blanc, 4.4 Pinot Noir, 1.8% Gamay and 1.5% Frontenac Gris. 90.

Monte Creek Living Land Sparkling 2025 ($24.99 for 1,110 cases). This wine is made with La Crescent grapes. Primary ferment and four months aging is in stainless steel. The wine does its secondary ferment in Charmat tanks. The result is a crisp and refreshing wine, with aromas and flavours of pineapple and citrus fruits, and a good mousse. 90.

Monte Creek Living Land Sparkling Rosé 2025 ($22.99 for 1,000 cases). This wine is a blend of 85% Marquette and 15% La Crescent. The initial fermentation is in stainless steel, followed by a secondary ferment in Charmat tanks. The result is a crisp and refreshing sparkling wine. The deep rose petal hue is appealing in the glass. The wine has aromas and flavours of raspberry, strawberry and cherry, with a big, frothy mousse. 90.

Monte Creek Living Land Cabernet Franc 2023 ($28.99 for 1,300 cases). This is a bold, ripe red (14.4% alcohol) made from grapes from Oliver and Osoyoos growers. The ripeness of the wine reflects the 2023 vintage: “The generous heat made for concentrated and flavourful wines,” the winery says. This wine is dark in colour, it has aromas of plum, blackberry and spice, with dark fruit on the palate. With breathing, the wine also reveals an appealing hint of sweetness to the fruit. 90.

Gehringer Brothers celebrate 40th anniversary

Photo: Brendon Gehringer: third generation in the winery

Gehringer Brothers Winery is marking its 40th anniversary with the release of wines from the 2025 vintage, one of the finest in the Okanagan. Even rarer than the winery’s longevity is that it is still operated by the founding Gehringer family.

That was not a sure thing when I wrote the second edition of The Wineries of British Columbia in 2009. Walter Gehringer, one of the second generation team of brothers, told me that if his son, Brendon, did not want to continue in the business, the brothers would sell the winery and retire. I continued:

“Surely, he’s not really serious, since he and Gordon run a business started for them by their own parents. The Gehringer family bought this vineyard property in 1981 specifically to create the winery for the brothers. Walter, born in Oliver in 1955, had graduated in 1978 from the wine school at Geisenheim in Germany (the first Canadian graduate) and was honing his craft at the Andrés in Port Moody. Gordon, four years younger, was just completing studies at Weinsberg, another German wine school. Their father, Helmut, said he would run the vineyard for a couple of years until the boys took over. “He never left,” Walter says. “Helmut came to the Okanagan from Germany in 1952, becoming a car dealer. His brother, Karl, soon followed him and ran the resort at Cathedral Lakes. When Gordon and Walter went to Germany to become winemakers, Helmut and Karl undertook a seven-year study of the climate in the south Okanagan before the 1981 purchase of the south half of what is now the 26-hectare (65-acre) Gehringer property. The north half, now called the Dry Rock Vineyard, was acquired in 1995. The property is on a plateau on the Golden Mile side of the Okanagan Valley, south of Oliver. “On the original parcel, hybrid grapes were replaced with premium German whites, including Riesling, Auxerrois, Ehrenfelser, Gewürztraminer and Schönburger, in part because they believed these to be winter-hardy. Winters were colder in the 1980s. They routinely covered young vines with sawdust as protection against the winter cold - and even that was not enough to safeguard their first planting of Pinot Gris. “Nobody has to bury a vineyard in its first year anymore,” Walter says now. “The winters are warmer.” “When the winery first opened, the brothers followed an unabashedly German winemaking style, complete with baroquely scripted labels. Off-dry whites suited the tastes of British Columbia consumers. As tastes changed in the 1990s, the winery responded with drier wines, including dry reds when Dry Rock’s vines began producing. Because they perceived that the climate was warming, the Gehringers planted entirely different grape varieties in Dry Rock, including Chardonnay, which they had spurned initially because it is not a German wine grape. They also planted Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon - all mainstays of French winemaking. It was “a definite change in direction from where we initially were, allowing us to round out our winemaking style, rather than just making Germanic whites,” Walter says. “We’ve evolved to make wines for certain wine styles, so that I can pretty well boast a wine for anybody’s palate.”

In that book, I speculated correctly that Brendon would stay in the family business. While his father and his uncle Gordon had both received their winemaker training in Germany, Brendon elected to go to Australia for his schooling. That led to a lengthy stay there before he returned to the family business in the summer of 2023.

“I was prepared to go to Germany,” he says. “My German is good enough for me to get by. But there were a number of newer winemakers coming to the valley that are of Australian background or Australian-trained. The discussion was that if I went to Germany, I would learn something similar to what we already know. Going to Australia would give us a different perspective.” And that is what is turning out. Brendon aims to get the winery’s first barrel program started by the 2028 vintage. Brendon enrolled in Adelaide University’s wine program in 2008. After university, he worked for a year or so at a small sparkling wine producer. Then he did a vintage with a large export-oriented winery in McLaren Vale. “It was not a place where I would have enjoyed working for a long term but it was a neat experience to see how larger wineries operate,” Brendon says.

From there he moved to Kellermeister Wines in the Barossa Valley late in 2014, working with owner Mark Pearse. The winery is smaller than Gehringer Brothers, producing about 8,000 cases a year. “It was a good job there, working for a smaller producer that was making some really good wine,” Brendon says. “Because it was a small facility, it was between me as the assistant winemaker, and the owner, Mark Pearse, who was senior winemaker. We essentially ran most of the show. It was good experience to see the full process from grapes to bottle and be personally involved in the whole aspect. I had grown up in a small winery where we had that same hands-on approach from grapes to bottle. I fitted in there quite well.”

However, there always was the pull of the family winery in the Okanagan even though Brendon had married an Australian woman and they had started a family. “It had gotten to the point where Claire and I were figuring out what our next plan should be,” Brendon recalls. “I enjoyed my job at Kellermeister but we had this opportunity to move back to Canada and the family business.” He worked for the winery online for several years until they moved to the Okanagan in 2003. As these 2025 whites show, Brendon is as good a winemaker as his award-winning father. “Here’s to 40 more of continuing craft, making wines grounded in place and guided by legacy,” the winery proclaims.

Gehringer Bros. Classic Riesling 2025 ($17.99). The fruit was fermented with selected yeast to develop the easy-going, aromatic style favoured by the winery. The wine has aromas and flavours of citrus and ripe pear. The finish is off-dry but very well balanced. 90.

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Red Rooster Winery is back

The architecturally-striking Red Rooster Winery, after taking a year off last year to replant its vineyard, is back with several well made wines. The winery has been a fixture on the Naramata Bench for more than a quarter of a century. It was opened in 1997 by Swiss immigrants Beat and Prudence Mahrer and operated from a modest set of buildings just off Naramata Road. The name was inspired by their pet rooster, sometimes kept in a coop beside the driveway to the winery.

Ambitious to have higher visibility, the Mahrers had architect Robert Mackenzie design a palatial set of buildings on a site right on Naramata Road. Then in 2005, they sold the winery to Andrew Peller Ltd. Four years later, when they found they missed the wine business, they opened Ruby Blues Winery just north of Red Rooster. Most summers, both parking lots have been jammed with tourists – at least until Red Rooster took a year off. It is good news that this attractive location has its tasting room open again. A quick look at the winery’s website discloses a variety of tasting experiences, sometimes as simple sitting in a chair with a glass of wine and enjoying the views.

Cameron Laverock, the Okanagan-born winemaker now in the cellar, graduated from the University of British Columbia in 2015 with a degree in microbiology. After a year with a craft brewery, he moved to winemaking for a year at Summerhill Estate Winery. In 2017, he moved into the Peller group, making wine at Gray Monk Estate Winery and now also at Red Rooster. He is making some excellent wines. Here are notes on three.

Red Rooster Pinot Gris 2025 ($24). This is a delicious wine beginning with aromas of apples and stone fruits. The luscious flavours deliver peaches and ripe pears with a finish that is crisp, clean and persistent. 90.

Red Rooster Pinot 3 2025 ($22). This is a blend of Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir. This is as crisp and refreshing white wine, with aromas and flavours of apple, citrus and stone fruits. 90.

Red Rooster Pinot Noir 2025 ($26). This young red recalls exuberant Beaujolais. Dark in colour, it has spicy cherry aromas. The palate is full, delivering flavours of cherry and red plum. 91.