Cover Story
More time for Santa and other pursuits
Longtime grape industry adviser plans to spend retirement lending a hand to community and tending his own vines.
By Judie Steeves
or more than 40 years, Pete Straume has been working with the pioneers of the B.C. grape and wine industries — and more recently he’s found himself working with those growers’ descendants. After some 35 years as the field person for the B.C. Grapegrowers’ Association, Straume is retiring and turning his hand full-time to such passions as helping in his community and testing out a range of grape varieties, mostly table grapes, in the vineyard he manages.
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Over the years, he’s worked with Uniacke (now CedarCreek Estate Winery), Summerhill Pyramid Winery and other growers of grapes all over the Okanagan region to get vineyards planted, replanted, kept free of insects and diseases and to determine when the sugars and other measurements of grape maturity point to a harvest date.
However, as 2016 draws to a close, Straume will have more leisure time going forward to spend on his altruistic pursuits, such as transforming into Santa Claus for children, building rocking chairs to raise money for various charities, helping children out at the local riding arena and for Farmer Pete’s Riding Emporium and Bookstore.
While managing those six acres of mostly table grapes for the past 35 years or so, Straume has had to juggle jobs during what is the busiest season of the year, both in that East Kelowna vineyard, and in the BCGA members’ vineyards.
Now, he can concentrate on the vines he planted and has nurtured through the years, which range from the delicate Einset grape to the traditional Himrod, Glenora, Jupiter and Skookum, developed at the Summerland Research and Development Centre, as well as the well- known Coronation table grape, which is also out of Summerland, and a few Gewurztraminer wine grapes,
4 REBECCA STRAUME
Pete Straume often has had to juggle tasks in his own and other vineyards during the past four decades.
grown on their own rootstocks at Priest Creek Ranch. Over the years, he’s seen massive changes in the industry, but also things that have remained the same. There have been challenges, “but we always came out on top,” he says with satisfaction. The Ontario industry is envious of B.C.’s system, Straume adds. “We check maturity to ensure quality; I would walk into vineyards and help out growers if there are issues with problems such as mildew or bugs. “We try to keep the quality bar high.” Although the table grape industry in B.C. has been around since the 1930s, in those early days it was a much smaller industry and less complex.
With acceptance of the locally-developed Coronation table grape in the 1980s, growers began dealing with the major retail chains, which changed marketing and consumer requirements.
British Columbia FRUIT GROWER • Winter 2016-17
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