Every vintage tells a story shaped by the land, the people, and the weather. The 2024 growing season began with uncertainty after a severe cold snap in January. Like most BC wineries, our vineyards suffered significant winter damage. All early signs, including bud dissections, indicated that we could expect little to no crop and limited…
Our winemaker Alex expressed it best when he said that grape growing in Canada is very challenging. At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that we are farmers, and we are at the mercy of Mother Nature, who tested our vineyard and winemaking team in 2023. While this report is specifically about…
Mother Nature continued to challenge our vineyard and winemaking team in 2022. Despite the challenges, it ended up being another remarkable growing season. 2022 Harvest Highlights The winter of 2021-22 was cold and harsh with a record low temperature of -25.7 degrees on December 27th. Despite our expectations, the vines ended up showing minimal winter…
2021 was a challenging year globally, across Canada, within BC, and here in Lillooet. Locally, we had many challenges to deal with, from COVID-19, the heat dome, wildfires, mudslides, floods, and road closures throughout the province. In addition, there were supply chain issues and labour shortages. These challenging times continued to push us to pivot…
2020 represented a key milestone for us, as it marked the completion of our 10th harvest here at Fort Berens. For a winery in an emerging wine region, this is an important milestone and one worth pausing to celebrate. We are eternally grateful for the support from Lillooet, our customers, liquor stores and restaurants, and…
With 10 years of growing grapes in our vineyard in Lillooet, we have seen a variety of weather patterns over the years. The weather tends to move in cycles with hot or cooler seasons, dry or wet seasons, years with fire or smoke, and seasons with more or less sunshine. When farming, we try our…
2018 started off well. We had a mild winter, so there was not a lot of bud damage. We had a normal start to the growing season; it wasn’t particularly early or exceptionally late. Warm weather in April accelerated the vine development and the buds began swelling. By the end of April, after multiple days…
Reflecting back on 2017, the growing season started with a longer and colder winter than usual, with snow and frost persisting beyond normal. Thankfully, temperatures remained above critical levels, so we did not see significant bud damage. Early spring was very wet with a lot of precipitation. With frost in the ground, we saw some…
As we reflect back, we are very happy with our 2016 vintage. The season started very early with some consistently warm days, lots of rain, followed by warm, dry weather. The longer season and lots of rain at the right time helped produce a bigger crop than we saw in 2015. The summer was hot,…