Open House May 1st
11:00am - 5:00pm
Welcome to the spring of 2010. We are looking forward to another banner year at Averill Creek Vineyard. The winery is now open for tastings and tours.  The open house May 1st is open to all to come and taste the wines and tour the winery and vineyard. This year we will feature the wood burning oven of Pizzeria Prima Strada from Victoria, seafood from Evening Cove Oysters, artwork by Canadian artist Toti and music by Andrea Smith.

We had a quiet winter, with bottling going smoothly in February thanks to the capable assistance of Artus Bottling. We bottled 5000 cases with good volumes of our summer wines. We have over 1000 cases of Pinot Grigio and nearly 500 cases of Gewürztraminer.  2009 was the first year since we started planting (in 2002) that we picked fully ripened Gewurztraminer in good volume- over seven tons. While this was very gratifying, Gewürztraminer as a variety at Averill creek is still very much a work in progress. We are experimenting with various pruning methods, plant spacing and crop loads; I am still not convinced that it can be a consistent quality variety on the Averill Creek site.

New Staff Members
Averill creek is pleased to announce that Simon Spencer has joined our team as vineyard manager. Simon comes to us with a diploma in oenology and seven years of experience at Cherry Point Vineyards. He is already working hard with the crew and the vineyard has never looked this good so early in the year. We will be starting to tent the Pinot Noir on April 5th and should have it completed by the end of the month. Averill Creek would also like to introduce two new members of our sales team, Jason Hyde on Vancouver Island and Denis Chen in Vancouver. Our winemaker Daniel Dragert continues to work wonders in the winery with the assistance of David Burr as cellar man. We are very happy to have such a dedicated and knowledgeable team at Averill Creek Vineyard.

New Wines
April 17 marks the exciting debut of our new wines. We have a full range this year: 2007 Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir and Prevost; 2008 Cowichan Black; 2009 Pinot Grigio and Gewürztraminer; and introducing FOCH-EH. We had a very large and ripe crop of Marechal Foch in 2009 so we decided to create a new wine. This has been called FOCH-EH. It is 100 per cent Canadian Marechal Foch, estate grown at Averill Creek Vineyard. The grapes were put in tank under carbon dioxide for two weeks. During this time the grapes were macerated and anaerobic fermentation started. The wine was then pressed off and cool fermentation continued to dryness. This produced a big bold fruity wine a lot like Beaujolais. This is a great wine for quaffing on the patio this summer.

The Playhouse Festival in Vancouver
We have just presented our wines at The Playhouse Festival in Vancouver. We were the only Vancouver Island Winery at the Festival this year. We enjoyed seeing all our Vancouver wine lovers and hope that they enjoyed the visit to our booth and tasting some of the new wines.