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COVER STORY merlot, the backbone of a juicy estate-grown blend called Charac- ter Red. Supernak and his partners even- tually ran out of money. In July 1999, Hester Creek was taken over by Bolton Capital Corp., a junior company listed on the Alberta Stock Exchange. Bolton assumed Hester Creek's debt of $2.8 million. Hester Creek continued to lose money and exhausted its credit lines by 2002, even though Super- nak had begun to make award-win- ning wines. Quality slipped after he resigned in the summer of 2002. That November, he died of carbon dioxide asphyxiation in another Okanagan winery. Ironically, Hes- ter Creek collected $500,000 on his insurance policy, most of which went to pay down bank debt. THE NEXT LEVEL By this time, Rob Summers, who has an honors degree in food sciences from the University of Guelph in Ontario, had become the national winemaker for Andrew Pel- ler Ltd., based in Niagara. Starting with the 2002 vintage, he began helping Peller's British Columbia winemaker. He liked the Okanagan and was taken especially with the Hester Creek vineyard, which he first saw in 2003. "I always thought it was a great site," Summers said. "I pulled into the parking lot once. It was rainy. I was looking at some grapes and at some other vineyards around. I thought, 'What a great location.' They were in receivership then. I went back home and said to my wife, 'We should try to buy Hester Creek.' I called my financial guy and we started talking about it. Then life got busy and I put it on a back burner." V&WM in more ways than one Despite the winery's troubled history, Rob Summers didn't hesitate when Curt Gar- land asked him to become Hester Creek's winemaker. Photo: Lionel Trudel He left Peller for a startup Ontar- io winery in 2005, a career choice so unsatisfactory that he was look- ing for another job when Garland called him in 2006. The introduction was made through John and Lynn Bremmer, Okanagan consultants whose cli- ents included Peller and who had looked after Hester Creek for the receiver. "Curt Garland was not happy with the direction Hester Creek was going and wanted to move it to the next level," Lynn Bremmer said. "He asked us if we knew of a winemaker who could do this." They recommended the technically seasoned Summers. "His exper- tise allowed Hester Creek to build their new facility without the errors that might have occurred with less knowledgeable personnel." Summers took the job on a handshake. "There was some- thing about Curt that I felt was really genuine," Summers said. He also appreciated Garland's abil- ity to finance the winery Summers designed, along with other critical improvements. When the wine- maker made the case for replacing overhead irrigation with drip irriga- tion, Garland listened quietly and then said to do it "A lot of small wineries are run on a shoestring and it gets tough to make the great wines," Sum- SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2011 WWW.VWM-ONLINE.COM NORTH AMERICA'S LEADING INDEPENDENT WINE TRADE PUBLICATION Somerston Wine Co.'s High-Tech, Sustainable Winery Consistency in Barrels Optical Grape Sorters Viticulture Online Click or call today vwm-online.com/magazine 800.535.5670 46 VINEYARD & WINERY MANAGEMENT JULY - AUG 2012 WWW.VWM-ONLINE.COM