Celebrating the Italian heritage in B.C. wine

Photo: Howard Soon made the Okanagan's first Sangiovese

The Italian heritage of the British Columbia wine industry was honoured at a recent tasting organized by the Kelowna Canadian Italian Club.

The tasting featured wines made with Italian varietals grown in Okanagan and Similkameen vineyards. The acreage of Italian grapes in B.C. is modest – probably less than 50 acres - but the wines are interesting. There are about 600 native grapes growing in Italy but when the Okanagan was replanting in the 1990s, most of the vines came from French nurseries and the varietals were almost totally French varietals. There was not much room left for planting Italian varietals. That will not change anytime soon. Growers will not pull out proven French varietals to make room Italian varietals without much of a track record either in the terroir or with consumers. If someone here were to plant Grechetto, a well-known white in northern Italy, it might be a hard sell.

The most widely planted white grape in the Okanagan is Pinot Gris. In Italy, the varietal is called Pinot Grigio. A handful of British Columbia wineries release whites under the Italian name as a way to indicate that the wine, as in Italy, is light, fruity and refreshing. In the terroir of the Okanagan, Pinot Gris usually is a more robust wine; some wineries even ferment or age it in oak. Among others, the new High Note winery on Naramata Road offers a Pinot Grigio because the owner, Bert Evertt, once was a professional opera singer in Italy.

The Italian flag in the Okanagan usually is waved by small acreages of Italian varietals. One fine example is Trebbiano. In Italy, there is a family of varietals sharing that name – so many that Ian D’Agata devotes 10 pages to the group in his masterful Native Wine Grapes of Italy. The winery known today as Hester Creek was founded as Divino Estate Winery by Joe Busnardo, a native of Treviso in northern Italy. He established the vineyard in the Okanagan in 1968, planting only vinifera varietals. He may have tested more than 100 to see what would succeed, often getting vine cuttings from Italy (probably in a traveller’s suitcase). Divino ultimately released wines made with Gargenega, Malvasia and Trebbiano. Only the latter remains - and is a flagship white in the Hester Creek portfolio. It is a superb varietal but, to the best of my knowledge, no one else is growing it.

Another significant white Italian varietal in the Okanagan is Arneis, produced exclusively by Moon Curser Vineyards in Osoyoos. Chris Tolley (above), the winery’s co-proprietor, released 533 cases from the 2022 vintage, so well-made that I scored it 92 points. Moon Curser also produced 839 cases of Dolcetto, an Italian red. Chris has family roots in northern Italy, which partly accounts for his interest in these varietals. Stag’s Hollow Winery also makes wines from small blocks of Dolcetto and Teroldego. I am not sure what motivated the planting of those varietals. Stag’s Hollow grows enough Dolcetto that it could release 179 cases of rosé and 237 cases of red wine this spring. The planting of Teroldego, a red varietal, is tiny. Only 72 cases were released from the 2021 vintage.

Evan Saunders (above), the winemaker at Blasted Church, has had a short but good run with Italian varietals from the Mariposa Vineyard in the Similkameen. Through several recent vintages, the winery got small quantities of Nebbiolo, Lagrein, Refosco and Teroldego. After the 2021 vintage, Mission Hill proprietor Anthony von Mandl purchased the vineyard and the grapes now go his new Red Barn winery. Blasted Church, however, has planted about an acre of Nebbiolo at its Skaha Lake vineyard. Bonamici Cellars near Okanagan Falls, one of whose owners is Mario Rodi, has a collection of wines designated as La Famiglia Collection from its own vineyard. The varietals include Sangiovese, Barbera and Pinot Grigio. To the best of my knowledge, there is small block of Barbera Tightrope Winery & Vineyard on the Naramata Bench and another small block at the Sandhill vineyard on Black Sage Road.

Also on the Naramata Bench, Sal D’Angelo (above) at D’Angelo Vineyards in 2018 planted Montepulciano, the red varietal native to the Abruzzo region in east-central Italy, where Sal was born in 1953. The winery’s current release has some Merlot in the blend, largely because Sal needed to fill up a tank. The wine is delici0us; many wineries in Italy are now using Merlot in red blends.

There is probably more Sangiovese than any other Italian red varietal in the Okanagan, with the first grower to plant it being Jim Wyse,(above) the founder of Burrowing Owl Vineyards. “It was my idea to investigate planting the Italian varietals,” he told me. “I forget the exact year, but it would have been about 1999, the year we did most of the planting on the 72-acres leased from the Osoyoos Indian Band, at the back of our vineyard. it was my desire to see if we could ripen any Italian varieties, so we picked three (Sangiovese, Barbera, and Nebbiolo), and planted 4 rows of each in our ‘experimental’ section. After about 3 years we determined that Nebbiolo was not going to ripen here, but the other two seemed to be doing well. He continues: “As I recall, we made cuttings from the Sangiovese and Barbera, and sent these to a nursery in Niagara for grafting onto rootstock. I think it was 2002 or thereabouts when we sold that 72-acre leased patch to Calona Wines. The Italian vines were still too young to have produced any grapes at that point, and as a result Burrowing Owl never made an Italian wine.” Calona established Sandhill Wines on that property. Howard Soon, the longtime Sandhill winemaker, included Sangiovese in Sandhill’s lineup of single vineyard wines. Today, there are 3.69 acres of Sangiovese and 3.44 acres of Barbera in the Sandhill vineyard.

LaStella Winery also has Sangiovese in one of its Osoyoos vineyards. Winemaker Severine Pinte (above) uses it in a number of blends. Fortissimo is a blend of 54% Merlot, 24% Cabernet Sauvignon, 18% Cabernet Franc, and 4% Sangiovese. Classico D’Osoyoos 2020 is a blend of 50% Sangiovese, 18% Cabernet Sauvignon, 17% Merlot, 15% Cabernet Franc. Espressivo 2020 is a 40% Cabernet Franc, 27% Merlot, 22.5% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10.5% Sangiovese. These can all be described as “Super Tuscans”. LaStella releases a Pinot Grigio under the label, Vivace, and a light sparkling wine called Moscato d’Osoyoos.

Still coming is a blend containing Sangiovese made by Hester Creek. “We will also be releasing our first Super Tuscan in 2025 as we harvested our first ever vintage of Sangiovese in 2022 and it is in barrel now,” says Kimberley Pylatuk, the winery’s public relations co-ordinator. “There will be more to say about this wine as it comes closer to a release date, but as of now, it still has at least another year to go in barrel.”

I am tempted to include Sovereign Opal, the white varietal developed at the Summerland research station and released in 1976. My impulse to call it an Italian varietal is because grower John Casorso has it exclusively in his vineyard and sells it just to Calona and latterly to Sandhill. He is descended from Giovanni Casorso, one of the first Italian immigrants to the Okanagan. This is a pioneering Okanagan agricultural family, established in the valley by Giovanni (John) Casorso (1848-1932), who was born near Turin, Italy, and who arrived in the Okanagan (after a short stop in San Francisco) in 1883 to work as an agriculturist at the Father Pandosy mission. He homesteaded land south of Mission Creek in 1884 to which he brought his young family from Italy. By the 1930s the Casorso family were raising livestock and selling it through a chain of retail stores in the British Columbia Interior. Giovanni Casorso also was one of the major tobacco growers when that crop flourished in the Okanagan in the 1920s; and was so successful with onions that he was crowned Onion King one year.

In November 1931 when Guiseppe Ghezzi conceived what was to become Calona Wines, he formed a syndicate to raise $10,000 for what was called the Interior Co-operative Association. The investors included Napoleon Peter Casorso and his sister, Mary, and possibly (the documentation is ambiguous) Giovanni Casorso, who was a member of the Syndicate until he died in April 1932. When the syndicate needed more money, it engaged the Capozzi family who has full control of the winery by 1961. The Capozzi strategy, which grew Calona Wines dramatically in that decade, was to emulate what the Gallo brothers were doing in California. Tom Capozzi even tried to get Gallo to invest in Calona. Giovanni Casorso’s son Charles is credited in the family history with planting a vineyard on a thirty-five acre property at Rutland in 1925. Two other sons, Napoleon Peter and Louis, planted grapes on the family's home property, Pioneer Ranch, subsequently managed by son-in-law Bert Sperling. Grandson August and now great-grandson John continues to grow grapes near Kelowna. Great-granddaughter Ann Sperling (below) -- her mother Velma was Peter's daughter -- became a winemaker and, with her siblings, founded Sperling Vineyard in 2008 at the Pioneer Ranch. The long Casorso involvement in Okanagan winemaking was ended, at least partially, when Anthony von Mandl bought the winery a few years ago. He has kept the Sperling winery open. The Kelowna Canadian Italian Club has a lot of Italian heritage to celebrate.