Culmina Family Estate Winery

The Free Bacchus Story

Culmina began with two years of homework. Donald and Elaine Triggs bought land on the Golden Mile Bench in 2007, and until 2009 they worked with the Bordeaux consultant Alain Sutre, digging soil pits, studying temperatures and mapping the slope block by block. Some 3,500 tons of rock came out of the ground along the way. The goal, as the winery still puts it, was an icon-quality wine from their own estate.

The Golden Mile Bench lies near the town of Oliver in the South Okanagan, British Columbia’s main wine valley, and in 2015 it became the valley’s first official sub-appellation. Culmina farms three vineyards there. Arise Bench, the largest at 38 acres, grows the red Bordeaux grapes. Margaret’s Bench, named for Donald’s mother, climbs a cool slope to 595 metres and holds Riesling, Chardonnay and Grüner Veltliner, Austria’s own white grape. Culmina planted the first Grüner in British Columbia there, and its Unicus is made from it. Stan’s Bench, named for Elaine’s father, followed in 2013.

The vineyard team began farming to organic standards in 2018, and after the three-year conversion PACS, the British Columbia certifier, certified the grapes in August 2021. The work is hands-on. Grass is cut by hand or with a trimmer because the ground is uneven and rocky, and leafhoppers are sprayed with a tea the team brews from ferns foraged in the mountains above the vines. The winemaker, Jean-Marc Enixon, ran a château in Fronsac, near Bordeaux, before coming to Canada in 2016, and he thinks the dry Okanagan climate makes organic farming easier than it was in France.

Two things to know before buying. Culmina has belonged to Arterra Wines Canada since July 2019, when the Triggs family sold it, so the family in the name is history rather than ownership. And PACS certifies the grapes, not the winery, from the 2021 harvest on. Hypothesis, the Bordeaux blend that is Culmina’s flagship, is still on sale in vintages made before that: the 2020 and the 2019. The 2025 Unicus, from certified grapes, won Gold at the 2026 National Wine Awards of Canada.