Currently Drinking - Ten New BC 2025s
BC Wineries Bounce Back With a Large and Balanced Vintage
Back in May, the Wines of British Columbia hosted an interesting tasting of some of the very early releases of the BC 2025 vintage. Most of the wines were whites or rosés, since red wines are usually aged longer prior to release. There were wines from several GIs and one Sub-GI, and included the Fraser, Okanagan, Similkameen and Cowichan valleys.
The extreme cold weather that occurred during 2023 and 2024 in the Okanagan and Similkameen Valleys, as well as elsewhere in the province, created devastating vineyard losses in some areas of over 90%.
Other B.C. wine producing areas such as the Kootenays, Thompson Valley, Lillooet and the Shuswap were also affected. To help mitigate the effects of two years of significant crop losses from these cold snaps, the B.C. government allowed B.C. VQA wineries to produce BC wines with imported wine grapes and grape juice for the 2024 BC vintage.
Naturally, BC wineries were hopeful that an unblemished 2025 vintage would help heal the industry and move it forward into a new era.
Nature delivered wonderfully in 2025, bringing the warmest vintage ever in the Okanagan and in many places a bumper crop. The season was very warm but even and consistent. There were also none of the wildfires and their smoke that has been challenging in some years of the past decade.
I very much looked forward to tasting the wines to get an idea of where things stood with British Columbia wines in this going-forward vintage.
2025s Reviews
#1 WHISPERING HORSE PINOT GRIS 2025
An interesting blend of oranges and strawberries with some notes of cardamom. A well placed, pleasant changeup of texture in the mid-palate leads into a longish finish touched with orange pith. Good supporting acidity. 88 points Purchase Link
Located at the foot of Vedder Mountain in Yarrow, a small town between Abbotsford and Chilliwack, Whispering Horse is a family-owned boutique winery producing wines made from 100% estate grown grapes. You might tend to think of the Fraser Valley mostly in terms of its maritime portion in and around Vancouver but it’s a long wide valley that winds into the continent for more than a hundred and fifty kilometers before it vanishes into the Skagit Mountain Range. The winery is located fifty-five kilometers or so from the Pacific Ocean in the Eastern portion of the Fraser Valley. Though Vancouver’s maritime climate and Yarrow’s more slightly continental climate share similar annual numbers for precipitation, average temperature and growing degree days, the GDDs pile up in Yarrow more rapidly in the summer. Yarrow is consistently 2°C to 4°C warmer than Vancouver in July and August. This difference allows Yarrow to ripen crops requiring more heat, including corn and wine grapes.
#2 WHISPERING HORSE L’ACADIE WILD 2025
The most important lesson I learned during the core of my wine education was to give your mind over to every glass of wine, without assumptions whatever you may know about it beforehand. Always, pause, pay attention and be prepared to learn. Hybrid grapes are one of the variations in wine along with obscure regions, strange names, and bizarre labels that sometimes test my fidelity to this essential advice.
L’Acadie? Huh? It was new to me. In Canada, this grape is found much more often in Ontario and the maritime provinces. I nearly let myself be led by my expectations and unfamiliarity instead of by my palate but I caught myself, dropped my assumptions and opened my mind to what was in the glass. I am very glad I did.
L'Acadie blanc was created in 1953 in Niagara, Ontario at the Vineland Horticultural Research Station. It’s a white Canadian wine grape variety that is a hybrid crossing of Cascade and Seyve-Villard 14-287. It is s a very cold hardy vine able to withstand temperatures as low as −25 °C.
Harvested from ten year old vines the juice was wild fermented and then aged in neutral oak barrels for 6 months. It was bottled unfined and unfiltered.
Slightly off dry, the wine is fairly aromatic with rounded fruit flavours and a juicy acidity. There are very light touches of apple, savoury spice and white grapefruit. Reminiscent of an unwooded chardonnay or pinot blanc. Clean and fresh, the appealing intensity is just this side of medium. 88 points Purchase Link
#3 BLUE GROUSE CHARME DE L’ILE – Sparkling White Blend
Charme de l'île means "charm of the island". This trademarked designation for sparkling wines was invented by Vancouver Island wineries and they must be crafted exclusively from Vancouver Island and Gulf Island grapes.
Unsworth Vineyards in the Cowichan Valley was very instrumental in creating Charme de l’île. The wines are made via the Charmat method and Unsworth has the only pressurized fermentation tank on Vancouver Island capable of producing these wines. Other wineries offering a Charme de l’île include: Averill Creek Vineyard Enrico Winery, Blue Grouse winery, and Salt Spring Island Vineyards.
The wine is made with a blend of 100% Vancouver Island grapes that can include Ortega, Schönburger, pinot gris, and Bacchus, sourced from both Blue Grouse Estate and other growers.
Predominantly pinot gris and Schoenberger, it’s light and clean with drifts of stone fruit with a flavour level like that of Prosecco and finishes crisply with a touch of citrus pith. 87 points Purchase Link
#4 BLUE GROUSE PINOT NOIR 2025
The winemaker here is Stacy Hornemann. She joined the Blue Grouse team in May 2024, after her tenure at Stonestreet Estate Vineyards in Sonoma County, California where she was part of the winemaking team at Jackson Family Wines. This is the first Blue Grouse pinot noir vintage completely under her supervision.
Having followed the ups and downs of Blue Grouse pinot noirs over the last fifteen years or so through two changes of ownership and shifting vineyard sources. I was very interested to see what the hand of a new winemaker would bring.
The wine had just been released and so was very shy to begin with. Then there was a quick passing of slightly confected grape, leading to a simple mid-palate. In the finish, there’s more interest and some clear pinot noir character including some blackberry and forest floor notes that are typical of Cowichan Valley pinot noirs, so it definitely seemed like it was on the right track. The wine was fermented in amphora and stainless steel, then matured 18 months in new and seasoned French oak barrels and puncheons. 88 points Purchase Link
#5 SPEARHEAD WHITE PINOT NOIR 2025
Despite it’s reputation as being difficult to work with (winemakers I’ve spoken to say it’s particular yes, but truly difficult no) Pinot noir’s versatility makes it a great friend to winemakers as it can be made still or sparkling, red, rosé or white as with this good example from Spearhead. It’s lighter in body and flavour even than a typical rosé with pure, bright, rounded but vibrant, flavours of white peach, and melon. Pair with subtle Asian food or light flavoured fruit. 87 points Purchase Link
#6 SPEARHEAD PINOT GRIS 2025
Clear, rounded, pure fruit flavours of apple and melon as well as a subtle end twist of honeysuckle and almond. Grapes sourced from Ghost Pine Vineyard & Blair Family Vineyard in the Central Okanagan. 90% was fermented in stainless steel and 10% in neutral French oak puncheons. 88 points Purchase Link
#7 ROCHE WINES PINOT GRIS ‘ARTIST” 2025
The pinot gris style here tilts more towards Alsace showing very pure flavours of apple, peach pineapple fruit and pineapple rind with some spiciness. There’s decent intensity here overall and classic fresh Okanagan Valley acidity. 88 points Purchase Link
#8 ROCHE WINES PINOT NOIR ROSÉ ‘ARTIST’ 2025
Again, as with all the 2025s fresh, clean fruit flavours of pink grapefruit and light strawberry. Like many of the 2025s what’s striking is the combination of pure fruit flavours combined with fresh vital acidity. Because of the great diurnal range of temperature in the Okanagan and other wine regions in B.C., the wines are already well known to possess these qualities but the 2025s seem to be declaring it with a little more insistence. 88 points Purchase Link
#9 OROFINO VINEYARDS POZZA VINEYARD CABERNET FRANC ROSÉ 2025
Clean, pure notes of strawberry and grapefruit with an especially smooth texture and some real length in the finish.
The wine is sourced exclusively from the Pozza Vineyard in the Similkameen GI. The site’s elevation, shade from the morning sun and North facing aspect in the Olalla Gap, makes it one of the valley’s coolest sites despite the desert like heat of the Similkameen. 88 points Purchase Link
#10 OROFINO GAMAY 2025
Opens immediately with engaging fresh yet dusty red cherry and raspberry fruit. For me it leans towards France and Beaujolais. The fruit flavours really dance here showing great grape expression, balance, good length in the finish and an acidity that keeps it lively. 89 points Purchase LInk