The U.S. replacement grapes were crucial to the survival of Tantalus in 2024, but winery owner David Paterson isn't sure yet if they'll be needed this season.Justine Hunter/The Globe and Mail
Stooping down amid rows of 20-year-old pinot noir vines, David Paterson bends a cordon into place, picturing how it might yield grapes this summer. A year ago, these plants appeared to be dead after a devastating cold snap. But he resisted the temptation to replant, and now his optimism is paying off.
“There’s a long way to go, as far as regenerating the whole vineyard and getting back to normalcy,” said Mr. Paterson, the winemaker and general manager of Tantalus Vineyards. “We’re just thankful that it’s alive and we’re not pulling every one of these out of the ground.”
Across the Okanagan, an estimated 95 per cent of last year’s wine crop was wiped out when temperatures plunged abruptly in early 2024. As part of a bailout package, the B.C. government offered a temporary vintage replacement program that allowed five dozen winemakers – including some of the biggest and best-known producers – to supplement their meagre crops with imported grapes and grape juice from the U.S. without losing their benefits under B.C.’s Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA) program.
Starting in April, B.C. liquor store shelves will feature a new category of wines, “Crafted in B.C.,” to roll out some of that unique 2024 vintage. It’s delicate wording meant to be truthful without undermining decades of work in building up the VQA to produce globally competitive premium wines from B.C.
Many of those wineries are still looking to the U.S. for replacement grapes this year as their vineyards continue to recover, but the Canada-U.S. trade war has prompted Premier David Eby to slam the door on additional imports – though his Agriculture Minister later said a final decision hasn’t been made.
The U.S. replacement grapes were crucial to the survival of Tantalus in 2024, but Mr. Paterson is not sure if he will need to import this year – it’s too early to see what his own vines will produce. “I’m hoping I’ve got enough from my vineyards and surrounding vineyards that we wouldn’t need to, regardless of whether the program was put back in. But that’s maybe not the position of everyone in the industry.”
Some of the largest wine producers, such as Quails’ Gate Estate Winery in Kelowna, have already brought in their grapes and juice for this year, getting ahead of any trade ban that may be imposed by the province.
Neither the B.C. government nor the industry alliance Wine Growers British Columbia could say how much was imported last year under the replacement program, although those figures will eventually be available.
While the industry is recovering from the extreme cold of the previous winter, the trade war has created a whole new layer of uncertainty. U.S. alcoholic beverages have been pulled from the shelves of Canada’s largest government liquor store chains, which could create new opportunities for Canadian wine producers.
“To say the state of the industry is in a state of flux would be an understatement,” said Wine Growers board chair Paul Sawler. “There’s certainly an opportunity here – for the whole Canadian wine industry – to step up and be that alternative to U.S. wine.” But in the Okanagan, the heart of B.C.’s wine industry, vineyards may take years to recover and there will be demand for U.S. grape imports again this year.
“My opinion is that there’s not going to be enough grapes in the valley to provide enough wine for the industry in 2025,” Mr. Sawler said. “But no one really knows yet what that deficit is going to look like until we start seeing the leaves and then buds set.”
He said the industry won’t launch its lobbying efforts with the government until May, when the vines reveal what kind of crop to expect. “In all likelihood, we’ll need some form of this program again for the next couple of years. You can’t make wine without grapes.”
Not everyone in the industry was willing to import grapes. Mireille Sauvé, general manager and winemaker for Lakeboat Vineyard & Winery, said they didn’t have an ounce of wine to bottle in 2024 because their crops were wiped out. The small winery in the village of Kaleden, roughly 10 kilometres south of Penticton, has been building a brand based on small-batch wines exclusively from locally sourced grapes.
“At Lakeboat, we are committed to showcasing the unique terroir, or ‘sense of place,’ of Kaleden,” Ms. Sauvé said.
But opting out of the vintage replacement program proved to be painful. Lakeboat lost out on a government grant meant for wineries that sourced their grapes domestically, while the money was shared with vineyards that did import. “It is our hope that the wine industry, the media and other influencers will diligently exercise transparency in their marketing communications so that, at the end of the day, the fine folks who want to drink B.C. wines know where their wines are coming from,” Ms. Sauvé added.
Where the wines are coming from in 2025 will depend in part on how B.C. retaliates against the U.S.
Speaking to reporters on March 5, Mr. Eby said B.C. was grateful for U.S. wine grapes last year, but U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war has changed the equation. “For us, any programs like that are essentially null and void, because we can’t be in a position of pretending like everything’s normal when the President is attacking Canadian families and our economy with the aim of annexing Canada to the United States as the 51st state.”
Agriculture and Food Minister Lana Popham said B.C. winemakers may look to Ontario for grapes this year, but the preference would be for Washington State and Oregon products, which more closely mimic B.C.’s.
“That is up in the air at the moment,” she said in an interview. “As we try and figure out how things progress with the trade war over the next months, I think that’ll become more clear. But to be really honest, I think that it may still be an opportunity.”