When Kim Pullen bought the former Victoria Estate Winery in 2004, much of the former tax lawyer's new business seemed in good order.
First, he decided to rechristen it Church and State Wines. Then, he thought, he would get to work to move out the old wines - about 20,000 cases - and turn to focusing on high quality wines worthy of the new name.
Most of the wine acquired with the winery "was pretty dreadful," he said, so he cut the remaining inventory to about 3,000 cases.
The discipline required to dump all that wine and start anew was among the things that landed a new winemaker, helping convince Bill Dyer in the spring of 2005 to return to British Columbia to take on a new project.
After meeting Pullen in Victoria, Dyer recalls, "I came back with the feeling we could really work together."
Dyer's focus by then had turned solely to California's Napa and Sonoma valleys, although he knew the Okanagan Valley well because he had begun working with Burrowing Owl Estate Winery in 1997.
Thus he brought to Church and State expertise from two regions. In Napa, he and wife Dawnine operate their own winery, Dyer Vineyard, focused solely on Cabernet Sauvignon, a singular passion that dates to the 1970s when he first started working with grapes from the Diamond Mountain District.
Meanwhile, Pullen discovered he liked what he saw in the Okanagan.
"For what I wanted, the Oliver-Osoyoos area was where I wanted to be," he decided. He has since bought about 70 acres of vineyard, 55 acres of it on the Black Sage Bench.
And he's now building a second winery in Oliver at Coyote Bowl Vineyard on the Black Sage Bench. He has sized the facility, which is due to open this summer, to handle the 30 acres of mostly red wine grapes at Coyote Bowl.
The tasting room will feature a long sit-down tasting bar with an all-glass wall separating it from the barrel room. The view, he said, is breathtaking, with the bowl, which perches on the edge of the bench, opening to a vista that includes a pasture about 300 hundred feet below.
Along with the new winery, Pullen has rebuilt ties and trust with the growers. One key innovation, he said, was moving from paying for his fruit by the ton to paying by the acre.
"Each year we get a little more control in the winery and in the vineyard," Pullen said.
From Church and State's 11 acres at the Victoria winery and 70 acres in the Okanagan, plus 40 acres of grapes from growers who stayed with Pullen, each fall's harvest brings enough grapes to produce about 14,000 cases of wine.
"It feels like we're slowly gaining ground," Dyer said.
They also found a vineyard east of Lake Osoyoos that they believe can produce excellent Cabs. Dyer said the 2005 Cab, due out this spring, will set a new standard.
"I can say for the first time, 'It's good enough to compare to any other Cab,'" he said.
The two men's results with both red and white wines are hard to dispute. In 2008, Church and State won 38 awards from competitions in France, the United Kingdom, California, British Columbia, Oregon and Washington. Medals came from reds and whites and from three vintages - 2005, 2006 and 2007.
The 2006 Church Mouse Chardonnay won a platinum award in Wine Press Northwest's annual competition for the Northwest's gold-medal-winning wines, making it the magazine's top-rated Chardonnay. Among the $23 (CDN) wine's other awards was a double gold "Best in Class" ranking from the Tasters Guild in California. The 2005 Quintessential, a Bordeaux blend ($50 CDN), matched those awards at the California competition and recently earned the second highest rating of Bordeaux reds at the B.C. Icons tasting.
The head and the heart clearly are coming into balance - with Gewürztraminer, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, Viognier, Chardonnay, Cabernet Blanc, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and a Bordeaux blend.
Church & State Wines, 1445 Benvenuto Ave., Brentwood Bay, B.C. V8M 1J5, 250-652-2671, churchandstatewines.com.
Print
E-Mail
