From Vision to Spectacular Realization

Lake Country’s 50th Parallel Estate Winery.

Writer Rod Phillips

From Vision to Spectacular Realization: 50th Parallel Estate Winery

Conventional wisdom has it that grapes for wine grow best between 30 and 50 degrees north and south of the equator, and the world’s best-known and most prestigious wine regions are located between those latitudes. It’s not as if some successful wineries aren’t situated outside them, but naming your winery after the 50th parallel might suggest that you happily embrace risk.

In Okanagan Valley’s Lake Country sub-appellation, 50th Parallel Estate Winery sits on the east side of Okanagan Lake, a 40-minute drive north of Kelowna. It’s the creation of Curtis Krouzel, who built an oil and gas design and technology company in Calgary before moving to British Columbia. In 2004, he and his partner, Sheri-Lee Turner-Krouzel, had bought land and built a vacation home on the other side of the lake, directly opposite the site where their winery is now located.

From Vision to Spectacular Realization: 50th Parallel Estate Winery

Krouzel was already fixated on the idea of starting a winery, and in 2006 he planted vines of merlot, syrah, pinot noir, and other varieties on his property to see how they would do. But, as he tells it, he used to look across the lake and think how the land opposite would be perfect for his favourite grape, pinot noir. The land had been planted with hybrid vines in the 1970s, but in the early 2000s it was mostly cherry orchard.

Crouzel had the soil and climatic conditions assessed, bought the land in 2008, and the couple began planting vines in 2009. That year, they planted 10 acres of pinot noir vines by hand in what became Block 1 of the estate vineyard, but Krouzel put his engineering talent to work and developed a vine-planting machine to cope with the site’s stony slopes. They produced their first wines in 2011 and now have 55 acres planted in vines.

From the beginning, the focus was on pinot noir, which now makes up a third of 50th Parallel’s production. The pinot noirs at the centre of 50th Parallel’s portfolio display finesse and balance, and if you’re looking for a stylistic throughline, it’s elegance. The flagship wine, 50th Parallel Estate Pinot Noir 2022, sports well-structured dark fruit and spices, finely calibrated acid, and some residual grip from the silky tannins, while 50th Parallel Estate Unparalleled Pinot Noir 2020, a barrel selection, is a beautiful wine that shows focused, layered fruit in the red and dark zones, and balance throughout. These are cellar-worthy wines, as an older vintage shows: 50th Parallel Estate Pinot Noir 2015 is holding well and is in an assertively bold style that retains its elegance, with rich dark fruit flavours moderated by clean acid and fine-grained tannic structure.

Pinot noir is key to other wines, too, such as 50th Parallel Estate Blanc de Noir 2019. All pinot noir, it is a fabulous traditional method sparkling wine with flavours dominated by ripe red berries and cherries and a veneer of brioche. The acidity is vibrant, and the bubbles fine and streaming. Pinot noir is also the sole variety in 50th Parallel Estate Pinot Noir Rosé 2022, a very dry pink where you’ll find gorgeous, quite intense berry and red fruit on the palate and bright acidity.

From Vision to Spectacular Realization: 50th Parallel Estate Winery

The care that has gone into the vineyards, and that winemaker Matthew Fortuna puts into the wines, extends to the structure of 50th Parallel. There is one long building that runs parallel to the lakeshore, with the winemaking area at one end, the tasting room at the other, and a year-round restaurant, Block One, between them. The restaurant and the tasting room—which sits as essentially a free-standing glass box—are topped by an impressive, cantilevered roof that has won awards for its design.

The barrel cellar is well worth a visit. It’s a winding passage carved through the pink feldspar granite of the hillside that slopes to the lake, and it is lined with the Burgundian barriques that mature the pinot noir. Off the main passage, there are tasting and meeting rooms where tables have stunning tops made from the staves of old barrels.

There’s a sense of integration at 50th Parallel, from the cellars underground to the vineyards and facilities above. Twenty years after Curtis Krouzel envisaged a winery from his house across Okanagan Lake, everything is in place.

From Vision to Spectacular Realization: 50th Parallel Estate Winery