Winery owner needs help selling 100,000 litres of wine made from saved Okanagan grapes

The team at a winery in the Okanagan has been working non-stop this fall saving and processing 160 tonnes of local grapes that otherwise would have gone to waste.

Jesse Gill, who owns Back Door Winery in Summerland, calls the mammoth-sized initiative Save the Grapes. His small winery is currently operating at four times its normal capacity.

“Some of the guys were doing 20-hour days for a month straight, we’re pretty exhausted, I don’t even know what day of the week it is,” Gill said.

He started the Save the Grapes campaign in October when local growers were left with a glut of grapes they were unable to sell. His team facilitated tank space and a processing space to take on the additional tonnage, and grabbed extra tanks.

“Some farmers had acres of grapes and no home for them, it’s where they get revenue for an entire year,” Gill said. “There’s an emotional side to this around the mental stress these growers were under. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing, there was desperation.”

The grape glut was in part due to a bumper crop and partly because of a provincial exemption put in place to support the wine industry.

Grape growers in the Okanagan and Similkameen Valleys were hit hard by extreme cold events for the past two years. The Ministry of Agriculture and Food put an exemption in place that allowed wineries to import grapes from out of province.

“This was the second year of the exemption,” Gill said. “The first year nobody had grapes and the government stepped in. It was needed to help keep the industry going. Wineries and growers were really supportive of it.”

When grape growers in the Thompson-Okanagan region had a bumper crop this season, Gill said the exemption was no longer needed.

“Some of the wineries kept pushing the provincial government for ongoing support, thinking they’d be short on grapes,” he said. “Part of the problem is a lack of accurate information on production, it depends on who you talk to.”

In late September, the exemption was extended until next spring, allowing wineries to continue purchasing cheaper grapes from across the border.

This year local growers were heavy on cabernet franc and merlot grapes.

“In a normal year I may have more of some varietals and less of another, so I have to adjust my bottling and marketing to incorporate the more abundant varietals,” Gill said. “Instead of filling their overall tonnage by harvesting those grapes, some wineries left them and purchased other varietals from the states.”

He said it created a glut and a panic for local growers unable to sell tonnes of grapes. Prices per tonne of their grapes quickly dropped to below what is needed to cover operating costs.

Gill helped roughly a dozen local farmers by taking their grapes on consignment with 60% of the sale proceeds going back to the growers.

“We thought the grapes needed to come off, we’ll solve the problem immediately and deal with marketing and selling afterward,” he said.

His winery will be selling four times as much wine as it normally does. White, red and rose wines called 2025 Save the Grapes Vintage are ready for preordering to be delivered in spring.

It is far more product than Gill able to move and local grape growers are depending on the sales.

“I’m reaching out to the ministry and provincial wine growers associations to step up,” he said. “I did my part, saved the grapes and put them in tanks. Now we need marketing access and marketing support. We also need BC consumers to help out.”

Go here to check out the 2025 Save the Grapes Vintage wines.