Hester Creek has a good inventory of wine - and a strategy to get through the 2024 vintage

Photo: Hester Creek's Mark Sheridan

Like nearly all Okanagan wineries, Hester Creek Estate Winery will be making wines this fall with Washington State grapes. Hester Creek’s estate vineyards, along with the vineyards of its growers, were devastated by a week-long freeze in January. The winery has to replant 25 acres, a third of the estate vineyards, and is rejuvenating the other vines so they can produce grapes next year. Magnificent wines like those reviewed here will be missing from Hester Creek’s portfolio for a few vintages in the future. This is no different from the position other Okanagan wineries also find themselves in.

What is different, perhaps, is the strategy pursued by Hester Creek president Mark Sheridan to fill the gap in the 2024 vintage. “We knew back in late February that there was significant damage to our vines because of the winter freeze,” Mark told me in a recent interview. “We started looking at options back then.” Washington State was the obvious option because there is a huge grape surplus there after the state’s largest winery cancelled 40% of its grower contracts in 2023. “For the wine we want to make, these grapes stylistically are the closest fit to the grapes we would grow here,” Mark says.

He had a contract in place in March with a grower in the Red Mountain viticultural area in the Columbia Valley. That was risky. It was not until late July that government eased the regulations and allowed land-based wineries to use imported grapes for the 2024 vintage. But Mark wanted to be in control of the grapes he was getting throughout the growing season, not just at harvest. “I wanted to be involved in the growing of the grapes,” Mark says. He is a professional viticulturist who trained and worked in his native Australia before coming to the Okanagan about 20 years ago. The Washington grower allocated a section of vineyard just for Hester Creek and took viticultural directions from Mark during his frequent visitor to Washington State over the summer.

When the grapes are harvested next month, they will be trucked to the Hester Creek winery. The wine will be made there by Hester Creek’s winemakers and with the winery’s unique fermenting tanks. Mark wants the wines to have Hester Creek’s stamp on them. “We will have a series of wines that we make from Washington State grapes,” Mark says. “We will be clearly labelling them as Columbia Valley. We polled a lot of our customers, and our customers have told us they have faith in the Hester Creek brand; and they will support that brand, even if it is from Washington State, because they know the reason why we are doing this. We need to have wine to sell so that we can be economically viable.”

Those wines will not be on the market before next April. In the meanwhile, Hester Creek still has almost 35,000 cases of VQA wines for its customers, including red wines from the 2021 and the (bounteous) 2022 vintages.

Here are notes on some of those wines.

Hester Creek Sauvignon Blanc Sémillon 2023 ($27.99). This classis Bordeaux white is a blend of 60% Sauvignon Blanc and 40% Sémillon. After the grapes were whole-cluster pressed, the juice was co-fermented in four 228-litre vessels, three of which were French oak. The wine was aged five months in barrel. The wine has aromas and flavours of lime mingled with apple and a note of honey on the otherwise dry finish. 91.

Hester Creek Chardonnay 2022 ($24.99). This wine was aged 10 months (60% in French oak, 40% in stainless steel, with weekly stirring of the lees. Because the wine is tightly structure, it benefits from being decanted. The wine begins with buttery and toasty aromas mingled with citrus. On the palate, there are flavours of stone fruit and pear that, with breathing, developed a buttery note on the finish. 90.

Hester Creek Cabernet Sauvignon 2022 ($34.99). This wine is from one of the best Okanagan vintages in years. The crushed fruit macerated for 16 days on the skins, including fermentation. The wine was aged 16 months in French oak barrels (35% new). The wine begins with aromas of cassis and blueberry. On the palate, the texture is full, supporting flavours of dark fruits with a touch of cedar on the finish. 91.

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