On the weekend my oldest son took a drive up Highway 3A to check on the progress of vineyard that slopes down to Duck Lake. Ten acres of vines are now in position and some produced grapes last year, with more to be harvested in this and coming years.
The wines will be made under the Wynnwood label, a salute to the Wigen family’s history of operating a sawmill in Wynndel. Vineyard owner Michael Wigen has teamed up with local wine enthusiast Dave Basaraba to create the vineyard, which is different in many ways from those closer to Creston.
The Wynnwood property is situated on land that slopes dramatically downward from the highway to railroad tracks and on down to Duck Lake. It abounds with limestone, a desirable asset because grapevines love stone, drawing the minerals from them. Some of France’s best wine producers are situated on limestone-rich land.
Early indications are that red grapes that won’t ripen in the Creston Valley’s climate have a shot at the Duck Lake location. The property is at a lower elevation and it gains light and heat from its proximity to the shallow lake and the late afternoon sunlight that reflects off the water.
I’ve sampled some of the test wines made from grapes grown at this location and the results have been very impressive. Basaraba said the hope is to have a winemaking facility on site for this fall’s harvest. If not the grapes will be hauled to a custom facility in the Okanagan. The prospect of another, and entirely different, wine producer in the Creston area is exciting and I’ll keep readers posted as more news emerges.
I dropped into Gary and Susan Snow’s cherry orchard this week to check on the harvest and the progress of their Tabletree Black Cherry Juice production. Now in their second year of making this fabulous juice (one pound of cherries in an 8.5-ounce bottle!), the Snows are tripling production but all indications are that demand from across the country will justify and large expansion. Also in production is Black Cherry Culinary Sauce, a reduction made by cooking down the juice.
Last year I experimented with samples to produce a whole wheat oat bread, using a favourite recipe that calls for molasses. The cherry reduction was a wonderful substitute for the molasses and the result was quite wonderful.
This week I took another sample to try using it with meat. While a locally raised chicken (from Randy Meyer’s farm) was roasting on the barbecue (happily squatting on a can of Kokanee beer) I boiled some new potatoes. In a frying pan I added a diced onion and a couple cloves of spicy garlic to melting butter. Once the onion softened I poured in the sample of cherry reduction, then added freshly ground pepper and a sprinkling of Herbs de Provence, then a handful of sliced mushrooms. I let the sauce cook down a bit and it was ready to serve.
Along with the chicken and potatoes, dinner included local squash and green beans, and cherry tomatoes and cucumbers from our garden. The cherry sauce was a hit with our company and ,when I cleared the table, the plates were nicely cleaned of the dark red sauce. It’s a simple recipe that could be adapted to any meat. Excellent, indeed, and yet more proof that one doesn’t have to go far to find the ingredients for a meal with an exotic twist.
Lorne Eckersley is the publisher of the Creston Valley Advance.