Solvero Winery debuts in Garnet Valley

Photo: Solvero president Matt Sartor (courtesy Solvero Winery)

When Solvero Winery president Matt Sartor finished his music degree at Dalhousie University, he decided against a career as a concert pianist. “At some point when I was in school, it became clear it was a prodigies-only business,” he says. “I am not that. I am very good at the piano but there might be, maybe, five touring pianists in the country.” His search for work after university ended up with a job in a Calgary wine store, where he was able to taste a lot of wines and read about them. “Wine spoke to me in a way that made me think this is it,” he says.

In 2010, he moved to the Okanagan to take the viticulture course at Okanagan College and begin search for a site suitable for growing Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. He settled on the Garnet Valley, not far from the vineyard that Okanagan Crush Pad Winery has developed. After clearing forest from some of the property, he began planting Pinot Noir in 2016 followed by Chardonnay in 2017. Last month Solvero released its first Pinot Noir from the 2019 vintage. With a production of just 450 cases, it can be found just in a few Vancouver wine shops and restaurants. About 50 cases of Chardonnay will be available only at the tasting room Solvero plans to open by summer. The winery’s address is 25585 Wildhorse Road and the telephone number is 250-487-9891.

Over the next several years, Solvero is planning to increase its production volume to about 6,000 to 7,000 cases, from its own grapes and from leased vineyards. The Garnet Valley, which stretches north from Summerland, is the newest addition to British Columbia wine country. Okanagan Crush Pad began planting in 2013 on its 312-acre Garnet Valley Ranch (less than a third is now under vine). However, OCP’s winery is not here but at its original vineyard east of Summerland. Solvero currently is the only winery that will have a wine shop in the Garnet Valley.

“We are about a kilometer closer to town that Okanagan Crush Pad,” Matt says. “It may be 10 minutes to town but it feels like a world away when you are out here. This small valley is its own small microclimate.” Solvero describes its vineyard as being in a “warm, steep southwest-facing bowl in the narrow Garnet Valley.”

Solvero is a family-owned winery, with Matt’s parents, Bob and Andrea, as his backers. Bob is the former president of Big Rock Brewery in Calgary and is currently the president and chief executive of the Calgary Airport Authority. The elder Sartors also have a home near Summerland with a five-acre vineyard in what they call Happy Valley that is planted to Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and Riesling.

The Solvero winemaker is Alison Moyes, who formerly worked at Stoneboat Vineyards and Liquidity Wines. Born in Ontario, she studied microbiology at Dalhousie. “While I was doing that, I was working at a restaurant,” she recounts. “The owner was opening up a new high end wine bar. He was doing sommelier training and offered a course for the staff. I was a part of that and I just fell in love with it. He saw I had potential and he helped me through my sommelier certification in Halifax. Upon finishing, I would be the new sommelier at his wine bar.” After doing that for two years, her science background “called” to her and she enrolled in the winemaking program at Brock University. She did her first vintage in the Okanagan in 2008, as part of her university program. “I had to go back to Ontario to write my thesis,” she says. “As soon as I finished that, I came back out again. I had fallen in love with the area. It is an amazing grape growing region.”

She joined Stoneboat in 2010, moved to Liquidity in 2015 and then joined Solvero, all of them wineries dedicated to Pinot Noir. “One of the things that drew me to this project is how impressed I was with the work that Matt did in establishing this place, planting this 30-acre property,” Alison says. “Matt and I met about 10 years ago, when I was at Stoneboat,” she continues. “I had been following the progression of what was here and the work that Matt was doing. In the transition from Liquidity, I had come out here the year prior and got a sense of the potential of the project. The vision that Matt and his family have for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay is right up my alley.”

Solvero’s Garnet Valley vineyard has almost 10 acres of Pinot Noir, along with 2 ½ acres of Chardonnay and a planned two more acres each of Chardonnay and Gamay Noir to be planted in 2023. There are seven clones of Pinot Noir: 115, 667, 777, 828 and 43, along with the Pommard clone and the Swann clone. “Part of that was seeing what worked best for us,” Matt says of his decision to plant multiple clones. “Part of it was clonal diversity. Part of it was attracting a winemaker like Alison. Having that kind of diversity to play with in the cellar is catnip to someone who is interested in making Pinot Noir.”

The winery’s name, Solvero, is a loose translation from Latin, meaning truth in soil. “A friend of a friend is a Latin professor,” Matt says. “We bugged him for a name that would represent what we want, and this is where we arrived.”

Here is a note on the wine.

Solvero Pinot Noir 2019 ($35 for 450 cases). This wine was aged 12 months in French oak (29% new). It begins with aromas of raspberry, cherry and spice. On the palate, the flavours are intense, with notes of red berry fruits mingled with spice and forest floor. The tannins are polished. 92.