Deep Creek Wine Estate breaks the sound barrier
By John Schreiner
December 1, 2007
Walter Huber has become the first Okanagan vintner to put out a price list for his Peachland winery, Deep Creek Wine Estates, that is liberally peppered with wines over $100.
Wines priced at $100 are not unheard of in the Okanagan. House of Rose celebrated its 10th anniversary a few years ago with 100 bottles of Maréchal Foch at that price. Fairview Cellars and Domaine Combret collaborated a few years ago to make 50 cases of a red Meritage priced at $100. But none of these wineries have released this many wines at this price.
Deep Creek is the winery formerly known as Hainle Vineyards. Huber, a Munich-born owner of a fishing lodge near Dryden, Ontario, bought the winery in 2002 from the Hainle family which had opened it in 1988.
At the time, Huber already owned a nearby vineyard planted in 2000, that he called Deep Creek. He was planning to build his own winery when the opportunity came to buy the winery noted for having made Canada’s first commercially available icewines. Wait until I tell you the price of the one remaining bottle of the 1978 Hainle Icewine!
Initially, Huber set out to drive Hainle sales to 10,000 cases a year until he decided to stop butting heads with all the other medium-sized wineries already making a living with $20 and under wines.
In a dramatic change of strategy, he is repositioning Deep Creek as a boutique producer (perhaps 1,500 cases a year) of primarily estate wines. Vineyard yields have been reduced to about a quarter of the average for Okanagan vineyards. The object is to grow ripe, concentrated and age-worthy wines, aging them in barrel and then in bottle for several years. On releasing these small lot productions, Huber offers them to collectors and restaurants at prices one can only describe as audacious for the Okanagan (a few $20 wines remain, however).
The winery’s 2003 Zweigelt, a rich, jammy wine with aromas and flavours of pepper, plums and blueberries, sold out at $159.90 a bottle. Only 30 cases were available.
There are 100 cases of the 2005 Zweigelt – another peppery, plummy red – at $119.90. The list also shows a 2004 Zweigelt at $139.90 and the unreleased 2006 Zweigelt at $99.90.
The most common red variety grown in Austria, Zweigelt is one of Huber’s favourite wines. The winery began selling this variety by purchasing wine from the Benchland Winery (now Stonegate), the first to plant Zweigelt in the Okanagan. Huber now grows the variety as well.
Pinot Noir is the other big red in the Deep Creek portfolio. Huber is asking $119.90 for the 2004 Pinot Noir (an elegant wine with spicy notes of strawberry) and $99.90 for the 2005 Pinot Noir. The winery has 50 cases of this wine, a dark, intense wine with flavours of plums and raspberry and with a voluptuous structure. The yet to be released Pinot Noirs from 2006 and 2007 are in the price list at $79.90.
Whether or not the wines are appropriately priced might be a matter of opinion. But I can say that the examples I tasted were satisfying wines. Others have agreed with that assessment. The 2004 Zweigelt won a gold medal and best of class at this year’s Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition.
There are even more expensive wines on the Deep Creek list – the icewines, all of which are released in 200 ml bottles. The winery’s 2003 vintage, its 25th anniversary icewine, is $188 while the remaining bottles of 1983 are $988.00 each.
The very first Hainle icewine that the winery released was made in 1978. One bottle remains and the price tag – remember that this was North America’s first commercial icewine – is $1 million.
That 375 ml bottle is locked safely in a bank vault. There used to be a second bottle. Last year, Huber was taking it for show-and-tell at a wine show and the bottle was stolen from his car. He says that he collected $10,000 in an insurance settlement, the maximum he could collect under his policy.
The somewhat arbitrary value he has placed on the last bottle suggests that it is not really for sale.
John Schreiner is author of British Columbia Wine Country
|
