Stephen Cipes, founder of Summerhill Estate Winery, has a bubbly wine personality and passionately preaches about the virtues of growing grapes and making wine organically.
Another of his passions is making excellent organic sparkling wine.
Cipes and his winemaker, Eric von Krosigk, have been enthusiastic about making premium sparkling wine since they founded Summerhill in 1991.
“Both Eric and I had the same vision, which is to make the Okanagan famous for sparkling wine because of the intense flavours in our grapes that we can keep through the fermentation in the bottle. So, we set out to replant in grape varieties from France and brought them over to the pristine Okanagan Valley and grew them organically,” says Cipes.
“One of the factors is that you can detect flaws in sparkling wine more easily than in table wine. And this has been our ‘claim to fame’ because our sparkling wines have won the top awards around the world, including Best Sparkling Wine in the World, in London, England,” Cipes proudly boasts.
I asked Cipes why the Okanagan is such a perfect location to produce sparkling wine.
“We have the early morning sun and the late evening sun and we have the most northern desert or semi-desert viticultural region in the world,” he explains. “This is very important because if the grapes get too much water they get fat and tasteless and watery and they don’t retain their flavour.
“If we growers can keep the water off in this semi-desert viticulture region, we can have very small, highly flavourful grapes that can hold their flavour through the second fermentation and that’s very key,” Cipes adds.
Although Cipes produces a variety of white and red sparkling wines, the flagship wine is Cipes Brut.
“It’s the single-most awarded wine in Canada. It’s never not won a gold medal since it was introduced in 1992. That’s 25 years of gold medals, each and every year.”
Originally, Cipes Brut ($25.49) was mainly a Riesling base, but nowadays it’s a blend of Riesling, Chardonnay, and Pinot Blanc.
Cipes describes it as “refreshing, crisp and light, and it has a lot of effervescence or mousse as we like to call it.”
I enjoyed its fresh apple and lemon fruit and the crisp dry finish. It’s an Okanagan orchard that sparkles in the glass. Cipes Brut would be a perfect choice for celebrating Mother’s Day.
Cipes is quick to mention how versatile his flagship bubbly is.
“It goes with everything. If you want a wine to open a party, wow! With hors d’oeuvres, to have with spaghetti, wow! To have with a hotdog, whatever.”
If you want even more variety, Stephen Cipes and his team have produced several other sparkling wines.
The Cipes Brut Rosé ($30.48) is made from 100 per cent Pinot Noir with limited time on the skins, while the Cipes Blanc de Noirs ($39.10) has no skin contact, so a lighter style white sparkling wine is produced.
And if you want even a lighter style, there is the Cipes Blanc de Blanc ($46) made from 100 per cent Chardonnay.
Eric Hanson is a wine educator and a retired Richmond teacher
