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TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT WINEMAKING March 2017 WINES&VINES 47 Speaking of bubbles, the bar will also have three taps for craft beer as well as six counter seats and room for 16 at four high- top tables. An outdoor patio will seat 44. The arrangement reflects the shift many wineries are making away from the traditional tasting room experience. Play Estate Winery in Penticton, B.C., opened in 2014, does away with a tasting room altogether; instead, visitors enter a bistro. Domaine Roy & Fils in Dundee, Ore., also lacks a tasting bar, preferring to wel- come guests into a space reminiscent of the principal's home. 'Wine mulligan' The premises reflect how far the Fitzpatrick family has come since acquiring Kelowna's CedarCreek Estate Winery in 1986. One of the province's original estate winer- ies, CedarCreek flourished in the hands of Ross Fitzpatrick, a former mining executive who served a decade in Canada's senate, and his son Gordon Fitzpatrick. The winery grew with British Columbia's wine industry to twice win recognition as Canada's Winery of the Year. By the time Anthony von Mandl of Mission Hill Family Estate bought the property from the Fitzpatricks in 2014, CedarCreek was produc- ing 45,000 cases per year, well beyond the scope of its original design. The challenges this created in managing operations weren't lost on Gordon Fitzpatrick, who joined the family business in 1996. An initial $1.6 million makeover of the property in the late 1980s was the prelude to reconstruc- tion of CedarCreek's premises in 2002, but as acclaim and visitor traffic increased, Fitzpatrick began to draft plans for a further $2 million overhaul of its hospitality space. Meanwhile, the family had acquired Greata Ranch, a former stone fruit orchard on the west shore of Okanagan Lake. Situated in the shadow of Mount Eneas, the site receives 2.5 hours less sunlight than other properties but owes its microclimate to the moderating effects of the lake, which releases solar warmth into its nook as the mountains block the setting sun. Purchased in 1994, the property was mainly planted to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay with small quantities of Pinot Blanc and Gewürztra- miner in 1995. Wines bearing the Greata Ranch label were produced at CedarCreek and sold from a modest tasting room that opened at the new property in 2003. The real estate boom of the mid-2000s raised the prospect of making the property the centrepiece of a vineyard-oriented community in partnership with a Vancouver developer, but a combination of local planning requirements and challenging site conditions nixed the plan. CedarCreek's sale to von Mandl created an opportunity for a fresh start. A veteran entrepreneur, Ross Fitzpatrick felt that CedarCreek's experience with award- winning Pinot Noir and Chardonnay could be put to use crafting traditional-method spar- kling wines. Visits to Champagne convinced him that the Okanagan could yield wines that stand shoulder to shoulder with France and show locals "how it's done." Crunching the numbers, Gordon Fitzpatrick targeted a pro- duction capacity of 10,000 to 12,000 cases (current production is 8,000 cases). Gordon Fitzpatrick calls the venture his "wine mulligan," a second chance at develop- ing a winery after cutting his teeth at Cedar- Creek with a menagerie of equipment. It's given him a chance to design a facility and specify equipment with a comprehensive vision for the business. "When I first started at Cedar Creek it had already been operating for 10 years, and we had all sorts of odds and sods," he says. "It started out as a hobby business that became more than that, but you tried to make do with a bunch of stuff. This, we got it sorted out and (will) do it right from the beginning." A clean start Fitzpatrick has vision and an eye for detail, but he also knows the value of assembling a solid team. A key coup at CedarCreek was attracting Tom DiBello as winemaker. He also tapped the expertise of California viticulturist Eric Neil to ensure that the fruit the winemak- ers received was top-notch. Similarly, Fitzpatrick Family Vineyards winemaker Sarah Bain, a veteran of Burn Cottage Vineyards and Quartz Reef in New Zealand's Central Otago region, was tapped to bring her experience making traditional- method sparkling wines to the Central Okanagan. Vineyard manager Merle Law- rence, who has worked with the family for 25 years, applies his deep-running knowl- The estate vineyard is planted primarily to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Ross and Gordon Fitzpatrick run the family winery. KEY POINTS The Fitzpatrick sparkling wine house completes construction for its new prem- ises at the former Greata Ranch Vineyards. The design integrates production and hospitality functions within view of Okan- agan Lake. Site characteristics facilitate passive systems such as wine movement via gravity flow.