Winemaking
Our winemaking takes its inspiration from the terroir and old vines to form the core of our distinctive wines.
Terroir
Terroir is the term used in wine to describe the nexus of climate, soil, topography, and aspect. The effect of these elements coming together can influence the growth of the vines, ripening of the grapes and overall profile of the final wine. At Hester Creek, we mainly source grapes from our own Golden Mile Bench vineyard, but we also source grapes from local growers in the South Okanagan to provide different characteristics to the resulting wines. No matter where the grapes are sourced, all the winemaking is done by our winemaking team at Hester Creek.
Crush Pad
All our grapes are hand harvested. Once picked, they are brought to our crush pad where each bunch of grapes is hand sorted and put through a destemmer – this means that the word “crush” is irrelevant. By avoiding the crushing of the grapes, we maintain the fresh, fruit forward characteristics of the fruit as the juice doesn’t start oxidizing too early in the process. As a result, we practice what is called “whole berry pressing,” wherein the whole grapes are transferred directly into the press for white wines or directly into our Ganimede fermentation tanks for red wines.
Ganimede Tanks
After pressing, the juice of the white varietals is transferred into stainless steel tanks for fermentation. For red wines, we transfer the whole berries into Ganimede tanks. These stainless steel tanks are of an Italian design and use the naturally occurring C02 to mix the cap back into the juice during fermentation. The cap is made up of skins and seeds which add colour and tannin to the wine. During fermentation, they separate from the juice and rise to the top where they are traditionally punched down or pumped over to get the colour back into the wine. These methods can be abrasive, and as an alternative, Ganimede tanks allow for a gentler method of integrating the cap back into the wine to develop a pleasing colour, tannin structure, and fruit-forward notes.
Barrels
Since Winemaker Mark Hopley joined Hester Creek in 2013, our barrel program has expanded immensely. We provide barrel aging for the majority of our red wines and use barrels to ferment and age our Chardonnay. We use both French and American oak and a combination of new and neutral oak for this process. During his tenure at Hester Creek, Mark Hopley has made the transition to using mostly French oak as it provides a softer, more integrated influence on the wines, rather than the heavy influence of the American oak. Each barrel provides its own nuance to the wine, and the length of time spent in barrel varies from wine to wine. The best way to learn about the use of oak in your wine is to visit us for a tasting experience in our tasting room.
Wine Store
