Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/72545
COVER STORY Hester Creek hen he agreed to become winemaker at Hes- ter Creek Estate Winery in 2006, Rob Summers told the owner that he could make the best red wine in the Okanagan from that vineyard. It was a cocky promise, since the winery was just emerging from a chaotic bankruptcy and with a Brettanomyces- laden cellar of 500 barrels, many of them old. The low point was December 2003, when the winery could not afford to buy labels and bottle its wines. That might not have mattered anyway. The winemaker at the time, Glenn Barry, who had made the 2003 vintage, had just gone back to Australia, claiming unpaid sala- ry. His alleged payback tactic – it was never proved in court that he was the one who did the deed – stunned 42 VINEYARD & WINERY MANAGEMENT JULY - AUG 2012 the consultants that the receiver sent to look after the wines. They could find no written or computerized fer- mentation records, nor any identifying tags on tanks and barrels of wine. "The facility had an appearance of being unkempt and confused," they reported to the receiver. "Equip- ment looked abandoned and the aromas of the tanks suggested sanitation was not a top priority." The winery was put into bankruptcy two months later. Surprisingly, given the state of the cellar, at least three serious bids were made to the court-supervised auction, including one from the owners of prestigious Quails' Gate Winery. The winning bid of $5.25 million (all figures in Canadian dollars) came from a man with WWW.VWM-ONLINE.COM Okanagan Valley winery makes a dramatic comeback