All You Need To Know About the “Crafted in BC” Wines That Are Just Hitting the Market

What Happened?

The Crafted in BC program came about as a result of the disastrous cold snap that hit Okanagan and Similkameen vineyards in January 2024. The unprecedented weather event severely damaged the vast majority of planted vines. The lucky ones only lost the crop for the coming season (no grapes for 2024), but the unlucky ones had the entire vine killed, meaning not just missing the 2024 season, but going through the serious cost of replanting and then waiting another three years for those vines to bear useable fruit. The disaster, happening as it did in the winter, never really grabbed the attention of the public in a way a forest fire does, but it was an order of magnitude more destructive than any fire has ever been.

The Problem

Think about this as a business. Imagine you make slingshots and then something happens and suddenly you lose an entire year of production. Sure, you might have some leftover in storage but realistically you’re screwed… unless you can somehow find new slingshots to satisfying your customers. The problem is, grapes aren’t interchangeable like slingshots. Further you can’t buy them from other spots in the Okanagan, because almost everyone was affected. And still further there were strict regulations imposed—at least in part by the prior lobbying of the wine industry—that prohibited you from buying grapes from outside of B.C. At the time those laws were enacted it was thought that letting wineries import grapes to make wine here would undercut existing growers/producers and devalue the reputation BC VQA wine had been working so hard to create. But now, they were an impediment to survival.

The Response

Industry went back to the government to see about relaxing the regs: not a open-ended reversal, but a timed limited lifeline that would enable them to buy the grapes lost so that they might have a 2024 “harvest” and be able to keep the doors open and the people in the industry employed. Washington State was the main choice for most wineries, mostly due to proximity but also, as luck would have it, a serious glut of grape’s due to overproduction. Oregon is in second place—especially for Pinot Noir producers—while California is a distance third. And some wineries actually looked East to Ontario as well. And to be clear, for the most part these aren’t wines made in Washington or Oregon—the grapes were purchased and then transported to the Okanagan wineries were winemaking continued as it would during a regular year.

Why Are Talking About This Now?

Because the first of the wines have started to trickle into the market—whites and rosés—already with a big push starting April 1^st (and no, this isn’t an April fool’s prank). The reds will not likely to come any time soon—it’ll be next year for most. The bottle shots in this story all come from wineries that are in the first wave of Crafted in BC releases, and who are being super transparent in the requisite parts that made up these unique wines.

So What Do We Think About This?

It actually has the potential to be sort of amazing. The prices seem really fair, all things considered. Poplar Grove, who’s been one of the wineries leading the charge, is selling their 2024 Cascadia Pinot Gris with grapes from Washington’s Horse Heaven Hills and Yakima Valley regions for $22. There’s almost no Washington wines available at that price point in our market, so it seems like a bit of a fun interlude, to be honest. And once some of the Oregon-graped wines hit the shelves, that benefit will only grow given how pricey Oregon wine is in our market. And this is helping the grape growers down there as well—a rare potential for win-win.

Downsides?

I have little worry that this will damage the B.C. wine industry’s reputation. For starters, these are 2/3 of the most desirable grape growing regions in the world. And if I’m being brutally honest, Pinot Noir and Gris from Oregon and Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot from Washington enjoy much better worldwide reputations than our still-making-its-name wine region has. I mean, the wine might be too good, I guess? In the coming weeks and months we’ll taste some of the wines and keep you posted on how this forced experiment is all playing out.