Harry McWatters, BC Wine Icon and Pioneer, Passes

Harry McWatters, founder of Sumac Ridge Estate, SYL Ranch, Time Estate, Time Winery and Evolve Cellars died in his sleep on July 23rd, 2019.

I’m profoundly saddened by his unexpected death as, I know, are the legions of his friends and others who knew him. Not only was Harry a force to be reckoned with, to many of us he was a ‘true blue’ friend—and mentor to many more.

The thought of the wine industry without Harry is hard to fathom. If Harry wasn’t the genesis of the modern BC industry, indeed the Canadian wine industry, I’m not sure who was. There’s good reason we call him ‘The Godfather of BC Wine.” 

Early Days

Harry McWatters with Sumac Ridge Gewürztraminer, once BC’s largest selling BC grown white

For sure, in the late 70s and early 1980s, there were a few ‘believers’ that the Okanagan Valley would one day be on the world  map. But nobody believed in BC more than Harry McWatters. He lived every moment of his 74 years for wine. Even in his teens Harry was making wine, a few years before he became sales manager for Casabello Wines.

In 1979 McWaters and Lloyd Schmidt founded Sumac Ridge Estate Winery. It was BC’s first estate winery, built and planted on part of the Summerland Golf Course. It was also—Harry was happy to tell everyone—a ‘far better use for the land than wasting time playing golf.’ And it was home to BC’s very first licensed winery restaurant.

I don’t have to dig too deep to find any number of good memories. Above all, however, it’s important to put this true pioneer’s achievements into perspective. 

An uphill battle

When Harry was getting started with Sumac Ridge the market was dominated by the old world, particularly France, while California and Australia were still upstarts. At the time the industry was still ruled by snobbery and elitism—words antithetical to Harry’s personality.

Harry at Sumac Ridge, Tim Pawsey photo

In those days the Okanagan was still largely producing bulk wine for major players such as Brights and Andres. The emphasis was purely and simply on volume. In fact  growers would turn on their overhead sprinkler irrigation before the big winery buyers arrived. That way the grapes would be as plump—and the crop as heavy—as possible. The transition to today’s quality driven wines had barely begun. 

Moreover, there were plenty of people who thought it would never—could never—happen. 

Harry McWatters (along with others such as George and Trudy Heiss, the Langs, Stewarts, Fitzpatricks, Gehringers, Krugers and Mavetys) were determined to change all that. But it was Harry who was the singular driving force. He laid much of the groundwork for what we today take for granted, not only succeeding but doing so in the face of formidable odds.

The Gospel according to Harry: VQA

Grasping early on that critical need for quality over volume, McWatters realized that nothing could be achieved without some form of regulated standards. He worked tirelessly to establish VQA (Vintners Quality Alliance), the national standards put in place in 1990. 

Part of the process in BC involved a peer blind tasting panel which accepted or rejected wines. Not surprisingly it was sometimes divisive. But it was critical, especially at that time, to weed out wines that often suffered from basic flaws. (Even a few wines that made it through the panel could be sometimes ‘suspect’.)  However, for McWatters, VQA’s arrival was the defining moment. And he had little time for those who opposed the idea.

He remained an emphatic—and unforgiving—believer. Here’s what he told me (in his inimitable way) for a Taste Magazine article in 2013: 

“Before VQA, nobody used “Okanagan Valley” on their label. The trouble is we’ve dumbed down the original intent. At a time we should be raising the bar, we’re not enforcing it.  There wouldn’t be anyone coming up the road (to the wineries) if it wasn’t for VQA in the first place. If you can’t push or you can’t pull the wagon, then get off and lighten the load for the rest of us. Don’t ride on ‘Okanagan Valley’ as an appellation if you don’t want to play by the rules.”

A love for sparkling

Harry McWatters sabers a bottle of Steller’s Jay with a ski, pre 2010 Winter Games

McWatters always had very definite ideas about what he wanted to achieve. Much of that flowed from his early commercial background with Casabello. He understood the need for ‘a balanced portfolio’ to offer restaurateurs and sommeliers. It was one reason why, early on, Harry decided he needed to make sparkling wine. The other reason? He loved drinking it!

In 1983 he was involved in making several test batches at Summerland Research Station (with Gary Strachan and winemaker Eric von Krosigk). 

He was convinced that grapes coming from a triangle within the central Okanagan had the right amount of acidity to make good sparkling wines. Those trials laid the groundwork for Steller’s Jay.

In an interview for Quench Magazine, McWatters told me: 

“One thing we’ve never been short of is acid, so rather than fight it, we thought, why not capitalize on it?” However, “It was a way too ambitious project. We made six bottles each of—I don’t know how many—different cuvées, as well as single varieties, using six different yeasts.” 

But all was not in vain. “What we learned from it still holds true in my mind, especially if we look at what each variety brought to the (Steller’s Jay) blend: Pinot Blanc delivers the fruit, Chardonnay elegance and finesse, while the backbone and character came from Pinot Noir.”

He also thought it was too bad those trials didn’t happen years earlier, and that they would have been equally as successful using hybrids. (“Just look at what Bruce Ewart has achieved (at l’Acadie), in Nova Scotia”.)

Bubbles to Ice Wine

Harry went on to develop a legendary love for bubbles. Moreover—one of the first to bring winemaker dinners to Vancouver—he probably hosted more than anyone else in the BC industry. Every one started with a glass of Steller’s Jay—and finished with ice wine, often Pinot Blanc ice wine.

His last venture, Time Winery (housed in a beautifully restored and adapted cinema complex in downtown Penticton) has just released its first sparkler— predominantly a Chardonnay / Pinot Blanc blend that mirrors Steller’s Jay.

Today, sparkling is wine’s fastest growing category, both at home and abroad. Numerous BC wineries are now producing sparklers, some by traditional method and others by Charmat, or by CO2 injection.

Again, McWatters proved to be the visionary.

Putting the ‘edge’ in Meritage

Another, indelible memory I have of Harry is of him standing on a rise in the South Okanagan in a sudden and windy downpour. It was 1993, the unveiling of a plan for Canada’s largest (at the time) planting of 115 acres of  Bordeaux varieties. Again, to put things into context, many people were saying ripening such varieties, especially Cabernet Sauvignon, couldn’t be done.

Sundial Vineyard (image courtesy Time Estate)

Up to that time BC’s only remotely palatable reds had been made with the likes of Chancellor or Marechal Foch. (However, to the north, in Okanagan Falls, Blue Mountain’s Pinot Noir and Gamay had just begun to turn heads.) Harry had little use for Foch, remarking at any opportunity that he loved it—preferably with the vines chopped and burned on the barbecue!

Nonetheless McWatters (and vine guru Richard Cleave) firmly believed that the right vinifera in the right place would get results. Even less than a decade later, the dramatic early successes from Black Sage Vineyard proved them right—and the cynics wrong. 

McWatters also insisted that BC join the fledgeling Meritage (pronounced like ‘heritage’) Association, formed in 1988 by a group of Napa and Sonoma wineries. U.S. regulations required wines containing 75 percent or more of a specific variety be labelled as that single variety. That flew in the face of the Americans’ efforts to label Bordeaux style wines. Harry convinced them BC belonged. And thereby gained the right to also use the term.

Here again, Harry understood the importance of being able to properly compete with Bordeaux—still regarded as the flagship of red blends. He very much foresaw the time when BC wines would appear beside top-tier French wines on restaurant lists. And loved to rib me, for years afterwards, that I didn’t ‘get it’ at the time!

A significant legacy

In addition to Sumac Ridge, in 1986 Harry and business partner Bob Wareham purchased LeComte Estate from Albert LeComte. It later became Hawthorne Mountain Vineyards and is now See Ya Later Ranch.

In the year 2000, over a hastily called breakfast meeting, Harry broke the news that he had sold his beloved Sumac Ridge and HMV to (then) Vincor. We were utterly shocked. But those who thought that might be the end of Harry McWatters’ wine career were very wrong.

Time Estate Winery founder Harry McWatters with architect’s model, Tim Pawsey photo

He stayed on to manage the properties sold to Vincor. He then assumed other roles before leaving, in 2008, to start his consulting business and later Time Estate. In 2016, that property was sold to and recently completed by Phantom Creek Estates. McWatters invested the proceeds from the sale to establish his  Time Winery and Evolve Cellars.

Fort Berens proprietors Rolf de-Bruin (l), Heleen-Pannekoek and Harry-McWatters

In addition to sitting on several major boards, he established Vintage Consulting Group. It assists winery startups in every aspect of the business, from identifying suitable sites to hiring a winemaker. Harry believed BC’s once borderline ripening areas, such as around Lillooet and Kamloops, would eventually be viable. Clients included, most notably, very successful Fort Berens Estate Winery, now the anchor for a new and expanding region.

Wine and much more

Along the way McWatters was also instrumental in founding the Okanagan Wine Festival. He was founding chair of the British Columbia Wine Institute.  It was in that role that he hired Christine Coletta as its first executive director. The two proved a potent team which very much shaped today’s successful industry. (Listen to hear what Coletta has to say about Harry on CBC.)

Harry was also the founding chair of the B.C. Hospitality Foundation, an organisation which meant a great deal to him.

Read McWatters’ bio for a complete list of his activities, achievements and accolades.

A personal career highlight for him? Aside from helping to found VQA, as mentioned, he was immensely proud of meeting the Queen. He personally introduced Her Majesty to Canadian wineries at a 1997 tasting to reopen London’s Canada House.

Above all, though, beneath the bluster, Harry had a huge heart, a generous spirit and love of family and friends. Those qualities combined with his keen business sense, boundless determination, indefatigable positive spirit and unbridled passion for wine made him formidable. 

R.I.P. Harry … and many, many sparkling cheers to you for all that you achieved.