Tasting Note – Canada’s best gewurztraminer?  Gets my vote after three encounters in recent years (obviously not all from this vintage). The honour is likely due to the fact that these could be the oldest gewurz vines in Canada, planted in the 1973 on the recommendation of the Becker Project that trialled many European varieties in B.C. in the sixties. This is profound stuff! It has picked up a feint pink-copper hue from four-day skin contact with ripe gewurztraminer grapes that turn this shade as they ripen. The nose is very rich and super-ripe as well, almost a bit raisined, but with an onslaught of gewurzy rosewater, lychee, orange peel and honey. It is full bodied, creamy, warm and just off-dry – almost heavy and oily, which some will prize and others not so much. There is also considerable bitterness on the finish, very common to this grape.  The length is excellent to outstanding.

Backgrounder – Rust is a small unique and almost antique 12-acre site at the southern boundary of the Golden Mile Bench. Winding up the gravel road through the vineyard to this small property, that includes an old log and thatched roof Heritage House, is to transport out of the present into an idyllic, historic south Okanagan world. Now owned by Mt. Boucherie but operating separately, it also owns/sources from vineyards in Okanagan Falls and the Similkameen Valley.  It’s home vineyards are among some of the oldest in the Okanagan, and include rare Zinfandel. The name Rust is a link to the hue of the granitic soils, expanded in the following statement on the winery website. “One of the most wonderful characteristics of the wine – which it shares with rust – is that it is truly alive, evolving, timeless and beautiful” Rust was created by much loved and respected Kane Morgan who was killed in a car accident in 2023.  Since 2019 winemaker Ryan de Witte, who came from Leaning Post in Niagara, has been making the wine. This soulful gewurztraminer seems to exemplify the place. 

Accolades: Gold National Wine Awards of Canada