After spending a busy week making some great wines at Canada’s newest winery, I thought I would share the news:
Local Saskatoon, Saskatchewan foodies and good food aficionados will have a new option for their next dinner party or cocktail soirée. Living Sky Winery, located just 30 minutes west of Saskatoon, has begun production on a range of high-end artisan wines crafted from local fruit. Living Sky Wines will be available from the winery starting early Summer 2010.
Husband and wife team, Susan Echlin and Vance Lester are the co-proprietors of this new venture, the first of its kind in Saskatoon and one of the few artisan wineries in Western Canada. “To see our fruit go from the small twigs we planted four years ago, to the point where it has been crushed into colourful juice being feasting on by yeast, is incredibly exciting,” says Echlin. “We planted our entire orchard specifically to produce fruit for our winery – producing high-end wines was always our goal and it is great to see the years of hard work finally start the process to becoming liquid art.”
Living Sky Winery’s first releases will include raspberry, strawberry, Juliet cherry and rhubarb varieties.
A heartfelt congrats to Sue and Vance’s perseverance and passion, these two traits always pay off!
Clover Hill Vineyards & Winery figured its pre Christmas release of a strawberry pear dessert-style wine would last well into March.
Marketing director Kari Skrip said that the plan for what has become the winery’s annual release of a fruit wine flew out the window in, oh, like seven days.
“That has been hugely popular for us,” she said. “The strawberry pear, I’ve never seen anything sell like this. To be honest, just before Christmas we bottled 130 cases and we figured that would last us til about March. We sold 130 cases in a week. Never in our history have we sold something that quickly.”
Skrip said they went back to the tank and bottled the rest. “Now, it will all be completely gone by March. We had expected that [original release] would take us through the majority of 2010, and now it’s gone.”
Made out of local strawberries and pears, Skrip said the pale pink mixture is selling for $10.99 for a .375-sized bottle.
A member of the Lehigh Valley Wine Trail, Skrip said the winery overall produces around 72,000 gallons, the largest in the state per 2008 figures in terms of production and gallons sold. The 2009 numbers come out in April.
Prairie Berry Winery in Hill City is enjoying the attention surrounding its latest success, a success that’s been a long time in the making.
The family behind Prairie Berry Winery’s been making wine – oh since 1876. That’s nearly 135 years of experience in every bottle.
Most recently that experience helped them bring home the Judges Choice and Best of Class awards back to South Dakota from the San Francisco Chronicle’s wine competition.
Marketing Director Michele Slott says, “They have really high standards, a silver’s like a double gold at another competition. It’s a big thing, it really is.”
Their red rhubarb wine is what has the judges talking. Made of 10 percent raspberries and 90 percent rhubarb.
“They named the top ten things they learned, we were number 3. They said that they had to drink more fruit wine, especially from Prairie Berry Winery – we’re the only ones named in the article,” says Slott.
Prairie Berry gets their fruit from all over the state of South Dakota. While the family’s been making wine for decades, Prairie Berry opened as a commercial winery in 1998.
After spending a busy week making some great wines at Canada’s newest winery, I thought I would share the news:
