The Okanagan Valley’s Phantom Creek Estates Is A Winery of the Future
Just five years since its first release, Phantom Creek Estates is setting the bar for the Okanagan Valley’s wine industry.
Since releasing its first wines five years ago, Phantom Creek Estates in Oliver, British Columbia, has established itself as one of the most estimable wineries in the Okanagan Valley. Richter Bai, who purchased the estate’s eponymous home vineyard in 2016, has assembled a team of professionals with little comparison in the greater world of wine, let alone the Okanagan. Led by multigenerational wine-industry legends Mark Beringer, of Napa Valley’s Beringer family, and Olivier Humbrecht, of Alsace’s Zind-Humbrecht lineage, the winemaking team at Phantom Creek has its sights set on propelling the Okanagan Valley to the upper echelons of the wine world.
In the intervening years, Phantom Creek has become the region’s benchmark winery when it comes to both viticulture and winemaking. In 2021, the estate produced its first ever entirely certified organic vintage, and it is currently working toward Demeter biodynamic certification. (Humbrecht is one of the wine world’s most vocal proponents of organic and biodynamic viticulture, and Zind-Humbrecht was among the first of Europe’s classical estates to be certified biodynamic.) In the winery, no expense has been spared for the toys Beringer and Humbrecht have available to play with. From the jaw-dropping, state-of-the-art optical analysis sorting machine that separates grand cru from village-level grapes to the elegant French barrels and monolithic Austrian foudres that they age in, Phantom Creek’s wines’ journeys from vineyard to bottle is one of unparalleled precision.
As with all wines, Phantom Creek’s are made or broken in the vineyards. According to Beringer, Phantom Creek, with its four estate vineyards spread across the Okanagan’s Black Sage and Golden Mile Benches, as well as the neighbouring Similkameen Valley, provides ample opportunity for him and Humbrecht to explore the region’s terroir. Unlike many Okanagan wineries that source fruit from all over the valley, Phantom Creek remains focused on crafting single-vineyard and small lot wines. “We saw that evolution in Napa, where everything became micro, even the bordeaux varieties,” he says. “And I think that’s starting to spill over up here as well, because I think it’s going to be how we bring the Okanagan and the Similkameen to that next level of exposure to the major wine world. Because that’s our terroir.”
But while the vineyards are most important to Beringer, Phantom Creek has always placed nearly equal emphasis on hospitality, with its restaurant, tours, and tastings garnering acclaim by professionals and hobbyists alike. The most recent addition to its property portfolio, a brand-new 4,075-square-foot office and event space in Richmond, B.C., aims to bring the winery’s signature brand of hospitality to its customer base in the Lower Mainland. The announcement of the new facility coincided with the release of Phantom Creek’s new ultrapremium wine: Baoshan. Using fruit from all three of the winery’s Okanagan Valley vineyards, Baoshan encapsulates half a decade of the winery’s trail-blazing successes in one bottle. While Baoshan is not currently available to the public, Phantom Creek has a dizzying array of other wines for purchase, with six of the best rounded up below.
A half-case of Phantom Creek Estates Wines:
From Phantom Creek’s Becker Vineyard, which was first planted in 1977 as a part of the pioneering Becker Project before being replanted to red bordeaux varieties in 1993 by wine industry legend Harry McWatters, the 2020 Becker Cuvée is a little piece of the larger history of premium wine production in the Okanagan Valley. A blend of merlot (51 per cent), cabernet sauvignon (27 per cent), and cabernet franc (22 per cent), the 2020 vintage of this wine is a concentrated affair with lavish dark and stewed fruits, mulling spices, and eucalyptus flavours.
This big, bold, 100 per cent cabernet franc from the Kobau vineyard shows what the famously malleable grape can do when planted in the Okanagan’s warmer pockets. Clocking in at 15.5 per cent alcohol, and with a ripe tannic backbone, this wine is given the bordeaux treatment in the cellar, spending 18 to 20 months in oak, 20 per cent of which is new. Unsurprisingly, secondary vanilla, cinnamon, and clove flavours lead the way, while maraschino cherry, plum, and blackcurrant notes round things out. A wine to drink now or to cellar for four to six years.
Cabernet sauvignon dominant, but with significant splashes of cabernet franc, merlot, and syrah, the 2020 Kobau Cuvee is about as Okanagan Valley as wines get. Made with fruit coming off the Kobau Vineyard, Phantom Creek’s property on the Golden Mile Bench, which is on the generally cooler, western side of the valley, it oscillates between power and precision with each sip. Up front, ripe-black and stewed fruit and vanilla notes dominate before giving way to cassis, sagebrush, and rose. You might be tempted to squirrel a few bottles of this away, but it is more than ready to drink now and in the next five years.
2022 Evernden Small Lot Pinot Gris
The 2022 vintage was the last before B.C. was hit with devastating cold-weather events in consecutive winters—luckily, it was a banner one. In the case of the pinot gris from Phantom Creek’s Evernden Vineyard in the Similkameen Valley, nearly perfect harvest conditions allowed for enough hang time for the grapes to reach phenolic ripeness while retaining ripping natural acidity. Unlike many B.C. pinot gris, this one goes above and beyond. Bright mandarin, key lime, and chamomile notes are buoyed by an unctuous honey quality that foreshadows a positive development window that will extend at least seven years.
2022 Evernden Small Lot Riesling
The other noble Alsatian variety planted in the Evernden vineyard in 2017, riesling, has long been one of the Okanagan Valley’s hallmark grapes, and Phantom Creek’s 2022 small lot offering shows ample evidence that it too can be the best of the whites in the Similkameen Valley. Here, lithe white flower, lemon, and apple are followed by an enchanting petrol quality, evidence of the hot Similkameen sun that is capable of producing the well-known characteristic early on, à la Australia’s Eden and Clare Valleys.
Sourced entirely from Phantom Creek’s crown jewel home vineyard, the 2019 Phantom Creek Cuvée encapsulates how far the winery has come since releasing its first wines five years ago. Primarily cabernet sauvignon but with a significant proportion of petit verdot (34 per cent), this wine showcases impressively the powerful wines that are capable of being produced in northern climates such as the Okanagan Valley. Rich blackberry and plum notes are buoyed by healthy dollops of chocolate, sagebrush, and mint.
