Horseshoe Found's gold medal Pinot Noir

Photo: Winery owners Pavel and Michaela Horak

The gold medal won by Horseshoe Found’s Pinot Noir 2021 at this spring’s All Canadian Wine Championships is a great reward for all the work that went into this wine, including the vineyard work during the 2021 heat spike. This small Similkameen winery is operated by Pavel and Michaela Horak, a charming, down-to-earth couple. The winery, which opened last year, is only the latest career move by these individuals.

The winery fulfills a dream inspired by his father’s fruit wines and by Pavel’s blackberry wine when, after migrating from Czechoslovakia (as the Czech Republic was known then), Pavel established a home in New Westminster. Trained as a mechanical engineer, Pavel, then 24, slipped out of Czechoslovakia in 1980. He spent six months in Austria, securing his visa to come to Canada – and straight to Vancouver. “I was always attracted to Canada's west coast,” he explains. “This was in my opinion the best choice because of the scenery, weather, nature, and opportunities.” Here, he pursued a technical career in the printing industry and then in medical technology.

Home winemaking in New Westminster nourished Pavel’s ambitions. Once he and Michaela realized that the Lower Mainland is less than ideal for viticulture, they began searching for property in the interior. “We decided to get out of the city and go to the Okanagan, or somewhere where we can actually grow grapes and make wine,” Pavel recalls. In 2006, they found and purchased what was then a hay field near Cawston. Many years earlier, it had been a rodeo ground. That explained why, when he was digging holes for vineyard posts, Pavel turned up several rusty horseshoes, inspiring the winery’s name. Pavel and Michaela planted about three acres (there is not much room for more vines), settling on the varieties they like to drink. There is a block of Gewürztraminer, a small block of Muscat, 300 Cabernet Sauvignon vines, and an acre of Pinot Noir. “Pinot Noir is the holy grail of winemaking, in my opinion,” Pavel says. “It is a problematic grape to grow, but when it grows well, you can make some fantastic wine.”

The vineyard is managed by Michaela. Formerly a stage actress in Prague, she now runs her own home-based accounting service in Cawston. “All our activities around vineyards including planting, cultivation, weed control and nutrients are based on biodynamic and organic practices,” Pavel says. “We are not certified organic, but we certainly follow all practices as we believe in nature, good bugs, and harmony between all living organisms. Weed control is all manual, and we do not use chemicals.” Horseshoe Found is one of British Columbia’s smallest wineries, intentionally. “We would like to stay small, and maintain production between 4,500 litres and 6,000 litres, so we can focus on the quality of what we would like to do,” Pavel says.

Here is a note on that gold-medal-winning Pinot Noir.

Horseshoe Found Pinot Noir 2021 ($26 for 145 cases). This wine was fermented with indigenous yeast and aged 18 months in new and neutral French oak barrels. The wine has aromas and flavours of cherry and raspberry with a hint of forest floor on the finish. The wine is medium-bodied with silky texture. 90.