When wildfire raged about a kilometre from the vineyards owned by Blue Mountain Winery in 2021, winemaker Mike Mavety says he knew the vintage would be difficult work.
“It was pretty nasty,” Mavety recalled of the smoke that hung over the vines near Okanagan Falls, B.C., for close to a month, just as the grapes were beginning to ripen.
“It would have been fairly difficult to breathe … We were having to limit the number of hours our guys were out working.”
But the real challenge would emerge in the fermentation tanks.
“We went into the harvest, assuming or hoping that we would be able to do some bottling,” Mavety said.
But lab tests revealed
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