vinAmité

By Ronda Payne

It’s not the road less travelled, but it can be easy to fly along the Okanagan Highway just south of Oliver and miss vinAmité Winery and Wine Lounge.

It looks a little bit like a fruit stand snuggled into a hillside. Once people get to know that there is fruit here – just in the form of luscious grapes fermented in a French fashion – they seek it out and keep coming back not just for the wine, but also for the comfortable feeling.

Catherine Coulombe is the winemaker of the family operation and says that while the wine making process and end results are taken very seriously, guests will see nothing but a relaxed inviting environment at this winery.

“Unpretentious would be a good word to use,” she says. “While taking the wine very seriously. But at the end of the day, it’s a beverage that you can share with the people you love. We’re too small to be putting out a product that doesn’t fit our brand. After 10 vintages of making wine, we know our style.”

That style – French with slight tannins - was formed through the family’s tastebuds. Wine creation including the blending and tasting, then tasting and blending is very much a family event.

“We do all the tasting together,” Coulombe says of her father Ray, mom Wendy and sister Nathalie.

Wendy, notes that her husband and their daughter Catherine have “the same taste buds. And I have a love of my vines; to take care of them in terms of health. We don’t use any herbicides or pesticides, so we are really fussy about our vines and our grapes. We are sustainable.”

And the vines are where this family’s story with wine began. Ray and Wendy had been running their own marketing communications firm in Montreal for more than 20 years but craved a change of pace. They began travelling North America extensively and thought they’d move to the country. In 2008 they found their way to Oliver and started a new love affair.

“They found this beautiful five-acre vineyard,” Coulombe says. “They fell in love with it. Just being out there nurturing the vines as natural as possible.”

The couple went to Okanagan College to learn about pruning and vineyard management. They grew the grapes for other wineries until 2013 when Coulombe followed her parents’ move to the Okanagan.

“They used to do it all by themselves, just the two of them and they loved it,” she says. But although they were a grape grower for wineries, her dad had a vision of making their own wine. “It was a dream. It wasn’t something we necessarily thought would happen,” says Coulombe.

In 2012, they made a very small amount of wine, just enough for friends and family to try, but it was enough. More than good enough for a boutique winery to be established in a tight-knit community that still believes in bartering and sharing with neighbours.

“Duck eggs and duck fat in exchange for rosé,” she says. “The morel guy comes in with his muddy boots with handfuls of mushrooms.”

The open community feel is a fit for a tasting room that mirrors a good friend’s home’s kitchen in both its style with comfortable chairs and tables and the atmosphere. Coulombe’s sister’s paintings adorn the walls and ensure her presence is at the winery even when she can’t be.

“It’s like an art gallery when you walk in,” she says. “It feels like you’re with family. It’s comfortable, it’s cozy.”

Nathalie used to work in the vines a lot before her artists’ career took on more of her time, but she still participates in all of the important winery decisions with her family because she is an integral part.

“The name, vinAmité, in French means friendship and wine,” she says. “That’s how we were brought up. My parents would collect our friends who didn’t have a place to go for Thanksgiving. My dad grew up in a large family on the prairies where everyone played an instrument. I think it just always shone through our personalities to have that little bit of, ‘You’re always welcome and you should feel at home here’.”

The four acres under vine on the site are supplemented with grapes from local vineyards the family knows well. Chardonnay, pinot gris, gamay noir, cabernet sauvignon, petit Verdot, merlot, malbec, viognier, and cabernet franc make up the varieties used in the wines.

As a boutique winery, the first couple of vintages were single varietals and these still exist in the vinAmité pinot gris, chardonnay and gamay noir wines. There are also a number of blends as well as a rosé and a port making up the portfolio of nine wines.

“I think the most we’ve made is just under 3,000 cases,” Coulombe says. “It’s pretty small compared to a lot of bigger wineries, but for our size, it’s just right. It’s manageable.”

In addition to Wendy’s oversight of the vine care and Catherine’s winemaking, everyone participates in keeping things running smoothly, including in the lounge which offers Canadian cheese and charcuterie boards inside, or on the outdoor patio with sweeping views of the vineyard. There are food items for sale and books focused on wine, food, the Okanagan and more. It’s a nod to one of Ray’s passions, which is short story and fiction writing.

Under the patio is Coulombe’s wine room; the house sits atop over the barrel room. It’s all purposely built into the hillside so it can be deceptive when people drive up thinking they’ve stumbled upon a fruit stand.

“When we’re small like we are, we know many of our customers,” she says. “We’re lucky in this area that there are so many different styles of wineries.”

This allows smaller, intimate wineries like vinAmité to refer visitors to other similar wineries, creating their own niche within a wine region. It all comes down to taste, which she agrees is personal.

“At the end of the day, it’s about your own personal taste and thinking about that taste and when you’re going to share it with people,” she says. “It shouldn’t be complicated.”

When the wines are a fit for someone, they can join the wine club which is a commitment of just one case at any time in the year and can be personally curated to ensure the exact right wines for the customer. 