Photo: Niche's James and Joanna Schlosser
In December, Niche Wine Company of West Kelowna, which has
been open since 2011, released its first unfiltered Pinot Noir.
Other Okanagan wineries have been releasing unfiltered wines
routinely but James Schlosser, the co-owner of Niche, is a risk-averse
winemaker despite his degree from Brock University, Canada’s top wine making school.
“Filtering has always been a de facto
winemaking style at Niche Wine Company,” the winery said in its release announcement.
“The winemaker loves the clarity and sparkle it brings to his wines and he
sleeps better at night knowing his wines are nice and stable. That being said,
there are two sides to every coin. Filtration by its very nature, removes
things from the wine (the good and the bad).”
Only
50 cases of unfiltered Pinot Noir have been released. More may be made,
depending on the reception. I predict the reception will be good. This is one
of the best Pinot Noirs so far from Niche.
As the name implies, this is a small winery
that currently produces about 1,500 cases a year. But James and his wife,
Joanna, are planning to increase that production to 3,000 cases within the next
five years.
For
a little more background, here is an excerpt from the 2014 edition of John
Schreiner’s Okanagan Wine Tour Guide.
The vineyard is off the beaten path, well up a
mountain side at an elevation of 706 meters (2,316 feet), with only one other
vineyard nearby. “The property appears to be an ecological niche at certain
times of the year,” says James as he waxes lyrical about the colourful
dragonflies in August.
And the winery is small enough that two people can
fit it in together with other careers. “When you look up the definition of
niche, it is about fit,” Joanna says. “We feel this business fits with our
life, and our wine fits with everything we do.”
The four-hectare (ten acre) vineyard is on a farm
owned since 1978 by James’s parents, Jerold and Kathleen Schlosser, both of
them Kelowna lawyers. Jerold began planting vines about 1997, starting with two
clones of Pinot Noir, now the dominant variety grown here. James, who was born
in Vancouver in 1975, began working in the vineyard after completing a science
degree at the University of Victoria. His father seized on this apparent
aptitude for grapes by enrolling James in the winemaking program at Brock
University, which he earned a master’s degree in enology. Since James returned to the Okanagan in 2002,
the selection of varieties in the vineyard was increased to include
Gewürztraminer, Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, Riesling and Maréchal Foch and he
began making trial lots of wine. At the same time, his background in science
has taken him to a parallel career as a technology development officer with the
British Columbia Cancer Agency.
Joanna, who was born in North Vancouver, is
equally adept at juggling several interests at once. During a 13-year career as
an Air Canada flight attendant, she also earned a communications degree from
Simon Fraser University. More recently, she has studied graphic design,
equipping herself to develop websites for Niche and for other wineries.
James makes the Niche wines in a rustic former
stable, a charming wooden building constructed entirely without nails. The
building underlines the artisan ideals that James brings to winemaking. He
declares on the website: “Our wines are made without fancy equipment, and
instead benefit from gravity, smarts, and a few strong hands.”
Several years after that was written, the couple adjusted their
careers and moved to the Okanagan. “In the five years that we have been in the
Okanagan now, we have built a lot of connections with the wine industry that we
didn’t have when we were not living here,” Joanna told me recently. “If there
is one thing we can say about the Okanagan wine industry, it is that it is very
collaborative. Wineries support each other and we have benefited greatly from
that, in terms of where to source things.”
They have taken advantage of consulting services from Sandra
Oldfield, the former president of Tinhorn Creek Vineyards. In fact, she may
have put James at ease about making unfiltered wine by offering a simple
stability test: drive around with a bottle of the wine in the trunk of the car
for a month or two. If it referments, the wine is not stable.
Of course, she was not serious. As a graduate of the
University of California Davis, she is aware – as is James – that samples can
be tested for stability in a professional wine laboratory. It is what James
will do if he ramps up production of this wine.
The other change since the 2014 profile was written is that
James and Joanna are designing an addition to the former stable. They need more
space to accommodate increasing production.
They also want to open a wine shop at the winery, subject to
the approval of the District of West Kelowna. Currently, they reach the public
with tastings at selected Save-On Foods VQA stores and with direct sales to selected
restaurants.
“The building we are looking at designing right now could so somewhere
between 3,000 and 5,000 cases,” James says. “We are going to try to stick with
gravity [for handling wine] and all the things we currently do. We still don’t
have a must pump.”
The three wines recently released are two Pinot Noirs and a
Maréchal Foch. “It is my dad’s favourite wine,” James says of the Foch. The
dark-fleshed grape is so versatile that James has even made a rosé and a
sparkling wine with the variety. (Both are currently sold out.) In the 2018
vintage, he supplemented the small Foch planting in the Niche vineyard with
grapes purchased from Monte Creek Winery near Kamloops.
Here are notes on the wines.
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