Kelowna's Juicy Tips

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Vineyard managers will tell you that a critical element to growing great grapes for wine is not to overwater them. You want small, flavourful grapes to make award-winning wine. With the new greywater catchment system of Tantalus Vineyards environmentally-minded winery facility, this winery will be able to achieve this goal using the rainwater they collect.

Photo by Warwick Shaw: Tantalus' Vineyards at daybreak, taken during Icewine harvest 2009

Tantalus Winery has just finished the construction of their new winery facility, expected to achieve it’s Silver LEED certification in a few months. It will be the only LEED-certified winery in British Columbia. It’s a sleek, contemporary, elegant building that is smart in every imaginable way. For one thing, the tasting room features a dramatic 40 foot floor-to-ceiling wall of windows that overlook Tantalus’ vineyards, Kelowna, Okanagan Lake, and the Mission Greenway. From this same tasting room, you can stroll over to another set of windows overlooking the wine-making area of the winery.

The new winery at Tantalus is depicted in this artistic rendering.

For those of you not familiar with Tantalus, this not-so-big winery in South East Kelowna focusses its energies on a small number of varietals which they do exceedingly well: Pinot Noir, Riesling, Icewine, and a brand new Rosé. The vines are some of the oldest in the valley – in particular a section of Riesling from which they produce an “Old Vines Riesling” that you could just put straight into the Webster’s definition of this varietal.

The new winery opens to the public on April 29, in time for Spring Wine Festival. It will be open daily from noon until 5 pm right through to Thanksgiving. Make sure you put in your calendar to visit Tantalus once it opens – your tastebuds will thank you and your sense of “Wow!” will be ignited.