Rust Wine Co.

Three Mountain Vineyard is located on a southeast-facing slope in West Kelowna, a cooler and highly suitable region for that fickle prima donna we call Pinot Noir. The lake’s influence moderates things here. Combine that with the crazy amount of summer daylight (we are so far north in Canada!), and you get fruit that ripens gently and evenly. Planted in 2006 with clones 115 and 777, the soil is a silt clay loam with volcanic rock, with more topsoil than any other Rust vineyard. After harvest was in (September 20th 2023), Ryan de-stemmed it all but without crushing the berries, a laborious but winning whole-berry fermentation technique (his time working in Central Otaga on full display), he fermented in tank then racked to French oak of various sizes, mostly neutral, though 10-20% new oak gets involved each year as well. This is a spontaneous fermentation with indigenous yeasts, bottled unfined and unfiltered, and only 471 cases were made. So happy to see wines like these coming from our own backyard.