Class of 2019: Four Shadows Vineyard

Photo:  Four Shadows owners Wilbert and Joka Borrens 

Four Shadows Vineyards

250 Upper Bench Road South

Penticton BC V2A 8T1

T: 250-462-7725/250-462-7735

Wilbert Borren dreamed of owning a dairy farm when he came to Canada in 1988 to work at an Alberta dairy. The escalating cost of the required production quota put the dream out of reach.

Arguably, that is fortunate for the Okanagan wine industry. Wilbert and his wife, Joka (also from Holland), are opening Four Shadows Vineyard on May 1 on Upper Bench Road, the street in suburban Penticton already home to three other excellent wineries, and with a fifth winery under development.

Theirs has been a long journey to wine. What they once knew about wine can be summed up by the fact that they met in 1990 in an Irish pub in Red Deer. They have long since developed their palates. Last fall, they took, and passed, the level tw0 Wines and Spirits Education Trust course.

Wilbert worked on the Alberta dairy farm for five years until he decided in 1993 he had not emigrated to be someone’s employee. He and Joka bought a hog farm near Lacombe, Alberta, moving into an industry without quotas. They ran this business for 18 years while raising four sons.

“With a pig farm, every day of the week is the same,” Wilbert discovered. “This Monday is the same as next Monday.”

Tired of hog farming’s monotony and Alberta’s hard winters, the Borrens sold the farm in 2010 and moved to the Okanagan. They called on MOCOJO Winery owner Ken Oh, an acquaintance who had moved to a Naramata vineyard two years earlier from Lacombe, to begin researching opportunities in grape growing.

“I did agriculture college in Holland,” Wilbert says. “I am a farmer. Stepping into the wine business is a new game.”

They bid on several of the properties of the bankrupt Holman-Lang group of wineries and, in 2011, acquired the former Mistral Estate Winery, a 17-acre property with 12 acres of vineyard. Part of it had been planted in 1999. The upper part of the vineyard, on a slope almost too steep for tractors, was planted in 2009, the year before Mistral went into bankruptcy.

The Borrens set about restoring production on the vineyard (the upper part lacked trellises), helped by their four sons, who inspired the Four Shadows name. When Wilbert realized he might be over his head, he sought the guidance of vineyard consultant Graham O’Rourke until he mastered viticulture. Wilbert was soon selling grapes to such leading wineries as Foxtrot Vineyards, Ruby Blues Winery and Lake Breeze Vineyards. Synchromesh Wines has released a Four Shadows Riesling for several vintages.

When Synchromesh owner Alan Dickinson suggested a winery would be their next logical step, Wilbert and Joka began thinking about it seriously in 2016 and got a license for Four Shadows in 2017.

“After we bought this place and started growing grapes, it was never our intention to start a winery,” Wilbert says. “But then we were selling grapes [to wineries that] that were all making good wines. People started to ask why we were not making our own wine.”

To get the winery started on the right foot, the Borrens arranged to have the initial two wines – 450 cases of Merlot and 250 cases of Pinot Noir – made in 2017 by Lyndsay O’Rourke, the winemaker and co-owner of the nearby Tightrope Winery. When she could not take on the larger 2018 production for Four Shadows (1,500 cases), the winery engaged Pascal Madevon, the former winemaker at Osoyoos Larose and now a respected consulting winemaker.

Six varieties are grown in the Four Shadows vineyard: Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, Riesling, Merlot, Pinot Noir and Zweigelt. Wilbert kept a third of his grape production in 2018 for the winery, selling the rest.

“We are starting small so we can just ease into it,” Joka says cautiously. “And we can expand if it goes well. If it doesn’t go well, we are not fully into it.”

The tasting room is the building that formerly as Mistral’s wine shop. Empty almost a decade, it has been renovated and smartly updated by the Borrens, helped by the skills of one son who is a carpenter. Another, a welder, created the winery’s steel sign.

The wines are being released initially in the wine shop. The volumes are so modest that drive-by tourists on busy Upper Bench Road are expected to buy most of the wines this summer.

Here are notes on the wines.

Four Shadows Chardonnay 2018 ($23). With 15% of this aged four months in new oak, there is just the right subtle note of vanilla and spice to frame the flavours of apple and ripe pear. 90.

Four Shadows Riesling 2018 ($23). This is an intensely flavoured dry wine with aromas of lime and jasmine. On the palate, there is lime, lemon, green apple and pear. 90.

Four Shadows Rosé 2018 ($21). Made with Merlot and Pinot Noir, this salmon-coloured wine has aromas and flavours of watermelon and strawberry. Bright acidity balanced with a hint of sweetness makes this refreshing and appealing. 91.

Four Shadows Pinot Noir 2017 ($28). This wine, which shows best with decanting, has aromas and flavours of cherry mingled with vanilla (the wine aged 10 months in barrel, 20% new). The wine is medium-bodied and elegant, with a spicy note on the finish. 90.

Four Shadows Merlot 2017 ($26). This is a generous wine, beginning with aromas of black currant and black cherry, which are echoed on the palate. 91.