Northern Lights Estate Winery, which makes Canada’s best-selling fruit wines, took the top spot at this year's Calgary Stampede wine competition.
“We are incredibly honoured to win these awards including the best fruit wine in Canada at the Calgary Stampede wine competition,” said Doug Bell, operating partner and developer at the winery. “One of the things that’s interesting as we continue to win awards internationally, nationally and regionally in British Columbia is that it seems that we’re being recognized not just because fruit wines are great quality but because fruit wines have changed over the years. They are now suited for all flavour profiles and taste palettes where historically they were more of a dessert-style wine. The thing that makes us different and fruit wines today different is that they are really similar to grape wines in that they have the same body, acidity, tannin and structure – just more flavour profiles.”
When Northern Lights Estate Winery first opened, the owners imagined it would be a boutique winery, Bell said.
So plans were to plant orchards for a maximum of 4,000 cases of wine a year, he added.
“We actually grew a lot quicker than that and are currently producing over 10,000 cases of wine,” Bell said. “As a matter of fact, we’re actually going to produce our one millionth bottle in 2025, only 10 years after we opened. As we’ve grown and are making different wines throughout the year, we haven’t been able to keep up with demand on many of the wines.”
Christmas Crush, a cranberry rhubarb wine, at times has sold out in less than a week.
“And there’s probably about 10 wines that we release throughout the year that sell out within a month,” Bell said. “So a good problem and a bad problem to have as customers enjoy some of these wines.”
Recently Northern Lights Winery made a huge amount of a Golden Hour wine, an apple rhubarb blend, that has a similar taste profile to mainstream white grape wine. It was set at a lower price point and sold for under $15.
“We expected it to be available right up until December and it actually sold out in July,” Bell said.
“So that tells you something about the popularity of that wine,” he laughed.
This year Northern Lights Estate Winery has more orchards resulting in its largest production year yet.
“We harvested close to 30,000 pounds of just rhubarb alone,” Bell said. “With that it allows us to continue to increase our production and supply more customers with requests coming from Alberta and The Yukon within the liquor store systems and have also increased our direct-to-consumer components where we ship wines to provinces where allowed. We ship all the way to Newfoundland.”
In 2015 the winery started a program in partnership with the Northern Bear Awareness Society to help reduce bear attractants in Prince George.
Of the 22,000 calls that are put into the BC Conservation Service annually about problem bears 98 per cent of them are for two reasons: People who have not contained their trash or people who have not harvested their fruit effectively, Bell noted.
“This happens especially in the north where we have a lot of crab apple trees and fruit that people don’t always use to its full capacity, and that happens when people leave their apples and other fruit on the trees,” Bell said. “The fruit falls and eventually rots, attracting bears into the area. The bears become habitualized and are eventually often destroyed.”
The winery has collected more than 200,000 pounds of apples and often collects 30,000 to 40,000 pounds a year.
“And those apples are used to make a delicious selection of our wines,” Bell said.
“We also make significant donations that vary year to year to the Northern Bear Awareness Society and the Northern Lights Wildlife Society in Smithers who rehabilitate orphaned bears. It’s a great program that continues to grow and it always makes for delicious wine.”
Being an estate winery Northern Lights is required to produce a substantial amount of their own fruit for their wines and 100 per cent of the fruit they use has to be from BC, Bell said.
“We’re always sourcing fruit from partner farms from across the province and in particular we try to focus on the north where possible,” Bell said.
A minimum batch is more than 1,000 pounds of fruit so the winery needs to make sure they can source fruit that will offer the right flavour profile to their valuable customers, he added.
“The first thing has been to increase our production supply from our farms and that will allow us to make more wine and as we come up to capacity we will probably have to increase our facilities’ sizes as well and the amount that we can produce from a bottle stand point. From there we will continue to grow in British Columbia and in Canada and we expect to be able to significantly increase the number of bottles consumed and enjoyed across the country every year.”
Right from when Northern Lights Estate Winery opened they wanted to be known as a community-based winery, not just a place for adults to go, Bell said.
“So we really focus on families when bringing events to the community,” Bell said.
They’ve got Light Up the Orchard in November and December where people can walk a path of Christmas lights and special feature displays where people can stop for photos along the way.
The Pumpkin Walk is held in October ahead of Halloween and the most recent addition to the events list is the Sunflower Festival at Foreman Farms on the Fraser River.
“These attract a lot of families and we try to make them really affordable so everyone can enjoy them and it’s also great from a tourism stand point because it’s bringing people to Prince George, especially from the regional areas like Quesnel and Mackenzie, McBride and Vanderhoof, and even Terrace and Burns Lake,” Bell said. “We also find a lot of people travelling north from the lower mainland and other provinces and even other countries who really enjoy these events. So I think it’s bringing a great notoriety to Prince George, showcasing some of the best of the North and exposing more people to our beautiful scenery and this is the type of thing we will continue to grow as we encourage all families to come to the winery – it’s the community’s winery not just the Bell’s winery.”
