Milestones


Quails’ Gate: 25 years on the leading edge


Stewart family played a key role in leading the B.C. wine industry away fromthe brink of collapse.


By Judie Steeves W


hen Dick Stewart bought 62 acres of land across the lake from Kelowna in 1956, he had no idea it would ultimately support a family-owned vineyard, winery, restaurant, visitor accommodation, plus tasting and meeting rooms.


At the time, there wasn’t even a bridge across the lake to connect the north and south Okanagan.


That opened in 1958 and Stewart, along with two local doctors and a lawyer, had partnered up to buy the land, speculating that it would rise in value.


It was 1961 when he bought a further 80 acres above the road that had two springs on it, and built the home where Ben, Cynthia, Andrea and Tony Stewart grew up. He had sold his interest in Stewart Brothers Nurseries, which was started by his father Richard in Kelowna in 1911, to his brother, and he was looking for his next venture. Today, the family owns Quails’ Gate Estate Winery, which this fall celebrates its 25th anniversary harvesting the grapes and making premium wines on that site. The family’s history parallels the history of the wine industry in B.C. as it has moved from production of jug wine for domestic markets to today’s production of world-class, award-winning premium vinifera wines—and accolades from an appreciative international audience. (In fact, in August, the Okanagan Valley was voted the second-best wine region to visit, out of 20 worldwide nominees, by the readers of USA Today, the widest circulation newspaper in the U.S., in a readers’ poll.) The first wine grapes were planted on the site between Boucherie Road and Okanagan Lake in 1961, but it was an accident, recalls Stewart. He had ordered some Diamond table grape plants from Washington State, but after he’d planted them and they leafed out, he realized they were not Diamonds.


Instead, some time later, they were identified as white Chasselas, a wine grape.


They turned out to be susceptible to winter frost, so he tried burying the canes over winter, but the buds rotted. Eventually, they found if they cropped them lighter, the vines were less stressed and survived Okanagan winters, he recalls.


10


JUDIE STEEVES


Dick Stewart and son Tony toast a quarter-century of winemaking at Quails’ Gate in West Kelowna.


(Quails’ Gate is one of only a couple of wineries in B.C. using the Chasselas grape to make wine, and that blend is one of the top VQA wines listed by the Liquor Distribution Board by sales value today, notes Tony Stewart, who is now president of the family company, Bacas Holdings Ltd.) Dick notes that when he moved into wine grapes from table grapes and tree fruits in the late 1980s he was shipping fruit to the Growers Wine Company (now Growers Cider), but he was actually working for Calona Wines himself. At the time, he was getting $120 a ton for his grapes— grapes that today might fetch $2,000 a ton. In 1960 the B.C. Grape Marketing Board was set up by Dick Stewart and several fellow growers so they could have more control over the price they got for fruit.


However, there were issues over quality versus quantity. Heavy cropping gained growers more money because more tons came out of the vineyard, but reduced cropping is needed to produce high-quality wine grapes. Wineries attempting to produce premium quality wines


British Columbia FRUIT GROWER • Fall 2014


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