The winery and surrounding vineyards sit on a rocky knoll that was once part of a golf course. McWatters, who worked for Penticton based Casabello Wines, and partner Lloyd Schmidt, whose father had been a pioneer grape grower in the Okanagan, began laying plans for an estate winery in 1979.
"Cottage" wineries, a new category of winery made possible by regulations enacted in 1977 by the province, were required to own vineyards. Two cottage wineries preceded Sumac Ridge by a year or two but did not succeed under their original ownership. In 1979 McWatters lobbied successfully to have the rules changed and a new category called "estate winery" which allowed for increased production was added and laid the path for what McWatters felt would be a financially viable winery.
McWatters and Schmidt started from scratch. After examining several potential sites for a vineyard and a winery they paid $475,000 for a nine hole golf course and clubhouse in Summerland. Vines were planted on some of the fairways and arrangements were made to buy grapes from other Okanagan vineyards. Meanwhile, the green fees brought the cash-shy partners much needed revenues and the clubhouse became the first winery restaurant in the Okanagan. The golf course was sold in 1990 and McWatters later admitted that he missed its time consuming demands about as much as he would "miss a toothache."
The property retained by the winery had insufficient land for vineyards but it was brilliantly chosen. Sumac Ridge's edge-of-highway location was so accessible that when the wine shop opened in the summer of 1981, Sumac Ridge was out of wine prior to the release of the next vintage. While the public's delight in Sumac Ridge wines was encouraging to McWatters and Schmidt, the shortage of wine to sell was challenging.
In the début 1980 vintage Sumac Ridge produced wines from purchased grapes including varieties like Chancellor, Verdelet and Okanagan Riesling (the most widely planted white grape in the Okanagan at the time). Almost immediately Sumac Ridge showed itself to be a leader among the new wineries. In 1982 at the first Okanagan Wine Festival competition, Sumac Ridge won four medals, more than any other producer, including gold for the Chancellor. The able winemaker at Sumac Ridge through much of the 1980s was Alan Schmidt, son of Lloyd Schmidt, who had apprenticed in both Germany and California.
Of necessity the hybrid varieties stayed in the Sumac Ridge portfolio for more than a decade but the direction of the winery was clear from the varieties planted in its own vineyard: Chardonnay, Johannisberg Riesling, Gewürztraminer and Pinot Noir. "We never planted hybrids," McWatters says. Sumac Ridge's 1983 Chardonnay, a crisp white in the style of Chablis, was one of the first Chardonnay wines made in the Okanagan from British Columbia grown grapes. The variety that quickly became the flagship white at Sumac Ridge was Gewürztraminer. "It showed our consistency fairly early in our history," McWatters believes. The winery won its first medal for Gewürztraminer at the 1984 Okanagan Wine Festival and has never been out of the awards since for that variety.
Schmidt and McWatters dissolved their partnership in 1986 and Schmidt moved to Ontario to further develop his grapevine importing business. Alan Schmidt remained for two more vintages before taking a winemaking position at Vineland Estates Winery in Ontario. He was succeeded by veteran winemaker Harold Bates who remained at Sumac Ridge until 1996 when he left to become an Anglican priest. The current senior winemaker is Penticton born Mark Wendenburg whose winemaking skills were learned in Germany, Australia and New Zealand. Wendenburg joined Sumac Ridge in 1992 with primary responsibility for making sparkling wine and elevating the vinifera table wine portfolio.
Sumac Ridge is Canada's first producer of premium sparkling wines made in the classic method of Champagne (in which the sensuous bubbles are produced by a secondary fermentation in the bottle). In 1985 the winery joined in a new sparkling wine project at the Summerland Research Station. The project yielded trial lots of wine within two years and resulted in the decision to make a vintage sparkling wine from the 1987 harvest. That wine was released to the market two years later under the name Steller's Jay Brut, named for the Provincial bird of British Columbia. This award winning wine has always been made with Pinot Blanc, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes. In the 1988 vintage, Sumac Ridge also made sparkling wines from Chardonnay only (Blanc de Blancs) and from Pinot Noir only (Blanc de Noirs), with the former being discontinued to streamline the portfolio. McWatters, always a showman when it comes to wine, has mastered the difficult art of "sabering" for opening bottles of sparkling wine. This involves adequately chilling the bottle then giving the neck a sharp tap with a saber. The neck breaks cleanly and flies away under the pressure in the bottle while sparkling wine foams out. Surprisingly little wine is lost in this dramatic way of opening the bottles.
In 1986 Bud Richmond took Lloyd Schmidt's place as the new partner at Sumac Ridge for the next five years. It proved to be another tumultuous period in the winery's history because the free trade agreement with the United States in 1989 triggered an enormous upheaval for the Okanagan wineries. For many years the wineries had enjoyed advantages such as preferential pricing and assured liquor store listings which enabled them to compete against imported wines. Those advantages were stripped away by the new trade pact. "It was fairly predictable that the protection we had had was not going to last forever," McWatters says. "The shock was the speed at which it was taken away." Amid the intense pessimism that surrounded the industry at the time, Sumac Ridge shifted gears as quickly as it could to survive. "We were too old and too stubborn to be retrained," McWatters quips. The changes involved altering the taste profiles of some leading Sumac Ridge brands as growers, taking advantage of a government-funded adjustment program, pulled out grape varieties judged inadequate to compete on a world platform. One of these was Okanagan Riesling and almost all of the vines were pulled out after the 1988 harvest.
After the pullout, the search for replacement grapes led Sumac Ridge to the south Okanagan and to Richard Cleave, a veteran vineyardist who had been managing vineyards there since 1975 and had planted his own in 1989. "We made good wine from his plot," McWatters recalled. Based on that experience McWatters and Bob Wareham, the partner who took over from Richmond in 1991, decided to buy 115 acres of a fallow former vineyard. The price, $431,000, was less than the cost of the smaller Sumac Ridge property a decade earlier which speaks to the pessimism which then existed in the wine industry. "That was a huge leap of faith," McWatters says of the decision to buy what is now called the Black Sage Vineyard. Beginning in 1993 it was planted entirely with vinifera grape varieties; 70% were red varieties including Merlot (now the flagship red wine at Sumac Ridge), Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon. The decision to commit heavily to red varieties was driven primarily by the site.
Black Sage's sun-drenched, sandy soil is well suited to matured full-flavoured reds. However, with careful management of the vineyard, Sumac Ridge also produces Semillon, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Blanc from Black Sage. McWatters regrets not buying even more vineyard land in the area. "The timing was right and we had a chance to buy more," he says. "Why didn't we? We had our necks out far enough."
McWatters has been in the industry since 1968 and, in that time, has been provided with many opportunities to lead. When the British Columbia Wine Institute was formed in 1990 as the vehicle to bring the Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA) program to British Columbia, McWatters was the obvious choice for chairman. The VQA program was created to help boost British Columbia's wine quality image by ensuring that all wines that were awarded the VQA seal were made from British Columbia grapes and tasted by a qualified panel of experts to ensure no flawed wines reached the marketplace. McWatters also was the founding chairman of VQA Canada, a body that administers the VQA program nationally.
The pessimism about the future of British Columbia wines after free trade proved to be totally unfounded. The VQA program helped consumers identify and buy the better British Columbia wines. It is a point of pride with McWatters that when the VQA program began and wineries were asked to submit their wines to a tasting panel, all the Sumac Ridge wines qualified for VQA. The sales at Sumac Ridge, which were $915,000 in 1991, had doubled by 1995 and have continued to grow.
In the second half of the 1990s Sumac Ridge responded to the growth in sales by expanding the winery and adding equipment critical to making wines that could compete on a world standard. Sumac Ridge now has stainless steel tanks with temperature control which give the winemakers the tools for preserving the freshness and fruitiness that is characteristic in the wines. Okanagan Estate Distributors, a distribution center where wines are warehoused, is kept at a constant 15º Celsius which is optimum for keeping wines in sound health. A subsidiary company called Custom Estate Bottlers was established in 1996. It operates a mobile bottling line used not only at Sumac Ridge but also at several other wineries.
Sumac Ridge's constant striving for industry growth and improvement led to the decision to join Vincor International Inc. Vincor's acquisition of Sumac Ridge was deemed official on April 26, 2000. Since joining Vincor International Sumac Ridge has strengthened its leadership position in the growing premium VQA segment of the Canadian wine industry. The acquisition provided a milestone in Sumac Ridge Estate Winery's substantive history and laid the foundation for some exciting changes that continue to make both Sumac Ridge and Harry McWatters key industry players to watch.
In 2002 the wine shop and famed Cellar Door Bistro received a much needed major expansion and facelift. The new space allows Sumac Ridge to accommodate more visitors in their wine shop and host special events and parties.
McWatters is particularly proud that both his children remain working by his side at the winery. Christa-Lee heads marketing, hospitality and front of house operations while Darren manages production.
