Cover Story
Oh yes, you can...
The View gets good response to ‘fun and practical’ canned sparkling wine. By Judie Steeves
T
he View winery owner Jennifer Molgat speculates that it’s an outcome of the maturity of B.C.’s wine industry, which is forcing the 250 or so wineries now operating in the province to be innovative and different in their approaches and products.
But, two years in, she says they’ve had no negative remarks yet about the fact they offer a sparkling wine in a can with a silvery leopard-skin background and silhouette of a lady in an evening dress on the front. It’s called Bling. This year’s versions, a white and a pink, are differentiated by the colour of her dress, red or pink, and are a natural complement to The View’s use of a red high- heeled shoe topping a bottle of wine as its logo. Molgat admits quite frankly she was “nervous at first, when we came up with the idea,” but she hasn’t seen any evidence of wine snobbery. “It’s fun and practical,” she says. “It’s not pretentious. It says ‘we don’t take ourselves too seriously’ when it comes to Bling,” she adds. However, it’s a different story when it comes to their wines. Poking a little fun has always been a hallmark of the names and the attitude of The View winery nonetheless, but its wines have won awards and are taken seriously—even if they are fun as well.
JUDIE STEEVES Jennifer Molgat
Hearing comments that some people were reluctant to open their Distraction Frizzante, a sparkling rose
wine, in case they couldn’t finish the whole bottle, it was decided to produce a single-serve sparkling wine in a can. The other advantages are many: it can easily go boating, or be enjoyed around the swimming pool; it fits easily into the panniers on your bike and is great around the campfire or while riding or snowshoeing. In addition, it’s low- alcohol, at only seven per cent, so is a refreshing drink
JUDIE STEEVES
Hailstorm damage prompted decision to produce low-alcohol Bling.
that’s not likely to impair you. “We haven’t seen anyone else in the Okanagan doing this,” comments Molgat. It all began with a white sparkling wine made with the cool climate white grape varietals such as Gewurztraminer that do well in the East Kelowna area where The View’s 50 acres of vineyard are located on long-held family land. But following the devastating 2013 hailstorm which destroyed both orchard and vineyard crops in an isolated section of the East Kelowna bench one August afternoon, Molgat and crew decided to make a pink Bling as well. “We got hammered with hail and the leaves on the Pinotage were in shreds. There weren’t enough leaves left to ripen the grapes,” she recalls, so the fruit was used to produce a pink Bling.
The first year’s production sold out, and this year’s is British Columbia FRUIT GROWER • Winter 2014-15 5
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