Summerhill Pyramid Winery

The Free Bacchus Story

Stephen Cipes bought Summerhill Vineyard in Kelowna in 1986 and moved from New York the following year. The farm began its transition to organic in 1988, and in 2007 Summerhill released some of the first wines to carry the Canada Organic logo.

In 2009 it went a step further and required every independent grower who sold it grapes to move to organic certification as well.

Then there is the pyramid. In 1997 the winery built a four-storey cellar, an 8 per cent replica of the Great Pyramid, and time inside it is the final step in making every Summerhill wine. The winery ran its own side-by-side tastings for three years and says tasters picked the pyramid-aged wine as smoother and more aromatic almost every time.

Summerhill is certified organic by PACS, the British Columbia certifier, as client #16-077. It also farms biodynamically, and has described itself as the first vineyard in British Columbia with Demeter status, but Demeter Canada now lists Summerhill among farms practising biodynamics that it does not certify. The certificate that stands is the organic one.

Cipes Brut is the flagship, a traditional-method sparkling wine of Riesling, Pinot Blanc and Chardonnay that gets its second fermentation in the bottle. It smells of Honeycrisp apple, white flowers and lime zest, and tastes of green apple, pear and lemon meringue with a hint of toasted brioche.