1 Mill Road expands its portfolio

Photo: 1 Mill Road owners Katies Truscott and Ben Bryant

Under new ownership since 2022, 1 Mill Road Winery, the Naramata-based boutique winery has begun to expand its portfolio with wines made from select vineyards. “2022 was a fantastic vintage,” the winery principals explain. “As a result, we have decided to express the unique sites from which we sourced our grapes, as single vineyard wines.”

The winery has just released a Pinot Noir from a four-acre Naramata Bench vineyard called Black Pine and a Chardonnay from a 10.4-acre vineyard in the East Kelowna Slopes sub-appellation, which has 3.6 acres of clone 95 Chardonnay planted 10 years ago. The winery also made Pinot Noir from its Home Block Vineyard in 2022. Now maturing in bottle, it will be released in the spring of 2024; some will be available in magnums. The 1 Mill Road winery was established by David and Cynthia Enns, the former owners of Laughing Stock Vineyards, which they launched in 2003 and sold to Arterra Wines Canada in 2017. They moved to a five-acre property near Naramata where they had planted a vineyard exclusively with Pinot Noir. Since the first vintage in 2018, 1 Mill Road Home Block Pinot Noir has established itself as one of the Okanagan’s premium Pinot Noirs.

The winery was purchased last summer by Ben Bryant, an Australian-born winemaker, and his partner Katie Truscott, an Okanagan-based wine marketer. “We posed a question two or three years ago to David and Cynthia to ask if they were interested in selling,” Ben told me in an interview last year. “Katie is in a tasting group with Cynthia. It was Christmas last year [2021] that Cynthia rang and asked if we would still be interested.” 1 Mill Road had become available because David and Cynthia have their hands full running Naramata Wine Vaults and the Naramata General Store. “This was a dream business model,” Ben said of the winery. “David and Cynthia have built this business from the ground up with the right mindset. Everything has been done to a level. It is not as if you have to reinvigorate a business; you don’t have to invest a lot of money in repositioning a brand or a product. All of that foundation has been built. Now, it is evolving it to the next chapter.”

“We want Pinot Noir to be one of the key varieties and we want to introduce Chardonnay as well,” Ben said last September. “They are two varieties that we love drinking and that we love making. At the end of the day, we are drawn to the region.” Initially, Ben was recruited to the Okanagan to make wine at Mission Hill Family Estate. While that relationship did not last, Ben decided to stay in the Okanagan rather than return to the Australia. “I came here because there was absolute potential in the wines,” he told me. “I still believe that. [I will] find unique sites of Pinot Noir and of Chardonnay and bring them to life.”

Here are notes on the wines.

1 Mill Road Chardonnay 2022 East Kelowna Slopes ($270 for a six-pack). The grapes were whole bunch pressed. The juice was fermented in French oak: 85% in seasoned puncheons and 15% in new barriques. The wine was aged in oak for nine months before being blended and bottled. The oak is so well integrated that initially I thought this was an unoaked Chardonnay. The wine, which is crisp and fresh, has aromas and flavours of citrus and apple. There is a spine of minerality. 91.

1 Mill Road Black Pine Pinot Noir 2022 ($330 for a six-pack). The fruit for this wine is from a vineyard on the Naramata Bench. The grapes were picked by hand, with 19% going into the fermenter as whole bunches. The remainder were destemmed and crushed gently. Fermentation was in stainless steel. The wine then went into French barriques (one, two and three years old) for nine months. This is still a very youthful wine with intense aromas and flavours of cherry, cranberry and spice. The texture is silky. I would suggest giving this wine at least another year of bottle aging before opening it. 92.