Tasting Note This 2023 is no longer showing on the winery website, very soon to be replaced, I presume, by the 2025, which I have not had an opportunity to taste. But this and other 2023s will still be in the retail and restaurant market in B.C., Alberta and perhaps Manitoba. When I tasted it at the winery in June 2025, among the entire range of single block rieslings, I was very impressed by its even-handed, tensile demeanour. A little less loud and more compact than its peers — elegant, laser-like…Mosel-like — perhaps due to its source in a pocket of slate soil and gravel below the face of volcanic Peach Cliff that dominates the Storm Haven property. The nose was a bit softer with fresh apple, petrol, mineral and spice. It is lively, off-dry and so even-keeled. And the length is excellent.

Backgrounder Synchromesh is the B.C. winery most singularly focused on riesling, a life’s passion by Alan Dickinson, a former sommelier and manager of Vancouver’s Wine Vault. He and his wife Amy made an initial purchase of five acres on a south-facing slope in 2009 below Peach Cliff. They now holistically farm 30 acres (20 acres of riesling) centred on this Storm Haven site, which is parcelled into blocks based on aspect and soil type. Another 70 acres are given over to natural conservation. They also have three smaller sites in Naramata and one in the Golden Mile in the South Okanagan. They are “powered by (and defined by) riesling,” making a small amount of pinot noir and excellent cabernet franc as well. The farming is organic; wild yeast fermentations are in tank.