Wine stories First nation fruit (appeared in the Wine Spectator) By Cinda Chavich (OSOYOOS, B.C.) - Sam Baptiste has been a cowboy, a fruit picker, a company president and an Indian chief. But these days the 49-year-old member of the Osoyoos First Nation in south-central British Columbia is a wine growe r - and one of the best in this small but successful western Canadian wine region. The story of the band-owned and operated Inkameep Vineyard is like any good western yarn, stalwart souls struggling against the elements in a rugged landscape, with plenty of setbacks and hardships. But in the end plain perseverance triumphs. And a devoted but tiny group of band members proves they can product premium vinifera grapes for some of the best wineries in the land. Rewind to a time before the Osoyoos Indian Band Development Corporation was created by the savvy generation of forward-thinking , business-minded Natives who live on the reserve today. The place that this interior Salish tribe has called home since the 1870s is what most people would call marginal scrub, too rocky and dry growing much of anything. It's known as a pocket desert - an outstretched finger of the vast Sonoran desert that reaches up across the Washington/B.C border into Canada - the only true desert landscape in the country. The Osoyoos band has long struggled to eke out a living here among the rattlesnakes and sage brush. Baptiste remembers his grandfather growing tobacco alongside the irrigation canals and families working seasonally, picking apples and other fruit for cash. But farming is not a historic pursuit for his people. The sandstone cliffs that enclose the 32,000 acres of band land are etched with ancient petroglyphs that tell of a tribe that hunted and fished in this lush, lake-strewn valley knownto western Canadians as Okanagan. They were a trading nation who called this hot, arid land Nk'Mip (or Inkameep) - which means "gateway to the lower lake" - a strip of rocky real estate that parallels the main highway south from the tiny town of Oliver nearly to the American border. "The government put us back there because they wanted the bottom land," Baptiste chuckles, surveying the staggering cliffs that define the reserve land along the eastern rim of Osoyoos Lake. "It's all rocks, not high enough in the alpine to have good timber. It's amazing how the good timber starts right at the reserve boundaries." It's also amazing that, in the last decade, Okanagan winemakers have realized that this rugged Native land is the best terrroir in the region for premium grapes. The lusher northern reaches of this valley have been producing tree fruit, vegetables and grapes for a century. But the southern extremity of the massive Okanagan Valley is a particularly hot and dry part of Canada. A 40-degree C day is not uncommon in summer and the area has long a summer holiday destination for beach-loving tourists. The Inkameep reserve has the highest daytime heat units in all of Canada. With nearby Osoyoos Lake to moderate frigid winters, some experts are now describing it as the best place to grow premium wine grapes in the country. top of page But it's only been in the last dozen years that the vineyard has flourished on the reserve. When the first vines were planted here more than 30 years ago, after an agreement with a local winery and the federal department of Indian Affairs, there were many seasons of failure. That is, until the feisty former band chief found his calling among the vines. The son of a professional rodeo cowboy and a one-time saddle bronc rider himself, Baptiste took the reigns at Inkameep Vineyards in 1989. It was he who pulled out nearly all of the old Chancellor, Baco Noir and other hybrid grapes which were once widely planted in western Canada, and replaced them with the vinifera varieties that all Okanagan growers have since adopted. And it was he who has gained the respect of some of the best winemakers in the region. His longtime customers include some of the top producers of fine B.C. wines - wineries like Andrés, Gehringer Brothers, Quail's Gate, SummerhillEstate Winery, Inniskillin Okanagan, and Vinecor International - all who have used Inkameep fruit in their award-winning VQA wines. "It's a perfect place for growing grapes, more ideal than anywhere in the world," says Summerhill owner Stephen Cipes, pointing to a recent Cabernet Sauvignon , made with Inkameep fruit, that took top honours at the 2000 Okanagan Wine Festival. "We have bought grapes from them for 10 years," says Cipes. "The berries are intense." This is also the part of the valley that is attracting big money and development today. You'll find some of the best new wineries south of Oliver, across the main highway from the reserve. Wineries like Tinhorn Creek Vineyards, Inniskillin Okanagan, Domaine Comb ret and Hester Creek Vineyards have set up shop, dubbing the strip between Oliver and Osoyoos "The Golden Mile." The Okanagan is an important Canadian wine region, a few hours west of Vancouver and the western equivalent of the Niagara Peninsula near Toronto. While there are only 55 producers here, investment is exploding, and some are dubbing the growing strip of fancy new wineries and tasting rooms Napa North. Of the 5,000 acres of grapes growing in the province, nearly one quarter are on the Osoyoos band's reserve. And with much of the private land suitable for grape growing in the Okanagan already planted, the undeveloped land on the reserve may well be the only good vineyard land left. Baptiste is the only person in the small, 375-member Oysoyoos band with formal training in viticulture , but he has trained his crew well. When I visit in spring, it is his aunt and assistant manager Sophie Louie who is directing the small staff of Native workers, many members of her extended family, who are in the vineyard, carefully tying the brittle brown arms of each dormant vine to its trellis. We climb into her half-ton truck, and bounce along between the plots of vines on the rough, sandy roads while she talks about her life here. Louie and her husband Fred have been working in the Inkampeep Vineyard for more than 30 years. She remembers the leaner times when there were no jobs on this arid reserve and many of her people were forced to go "across the line" into Washington to pick fruit. Louie was here in the 1960s and '70s when non-Native managers were in charge years when money from the federal government arrived too late to get vines into the ground, and when labor shortages and financial losses almost ended the fledgling grape-growing experiment. She remembers cutting the scrub pine and sage, and picking the endless rocks, to get the vineyards ready for planting. "My husband was here from day one," she says."I started as a field worker in 1970. It was hard, hard work." But she stayed with it and, like her friends and relatives who work here tirelessly, until the last ice wine grapes are handpicked around Christmas time, now Louie understands the vineyard business as well as her ancesters understood how to hunt and fish here. "At harvest, we work 7 days a week, 12 hours a day," she says. "We're out when it's15 below picking ice wine. They don't complain. They know that these grapes have to come off and so we work." top of page The rugged desert landscape at Inkameep is marginal for vinifera grapes, and Baptiste's early decision to replant the reserve vineyards was initially considered risky if not foolish. But the risk paid off. The first plots were German varietals like riesling and ehrenfelser. When they thrived, classic French varietals were added - cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, merlot, sauvignon blanc, pinot noir and cabernet franc. The reserve is now home to the largest grape plantings in the province , but it is easy to miss the 250-acre Inkameep Vineyard as you head down the back roads onto the reserve. A spectacular sandstone cliff - aptly named Indian Head Rock and reminiscent of an aboriginal profile in full headdress - rises up behind a flat sprawling benchland, where neat rows of grapes parallel an essential irrigation canal. Like every growing season for the last dozen years, Baptiste can be found in the tiny second storey clapboard office-cum-storage building or walking the rows. He is busy as always, attached to a cell phone, orchestrating pruning crews and negotiating with salesmen for wind machines designed to protect the vineyards from late spring or early fall frosts - a constant concern for grape growers north of the 49th parallel. He is the both brains and brawn behind the only Native-owned and operated vineyard in North America and as passionate today about wine growing as ever. "These grapes, I deal with them myself," he says, of the vines that are minimally irrigated, pruned and picked by hand. "I'm the grape grower, so I do a lot in the vineyard." While he doesn't attribute his farming style to his culture or his connection to this ancestral land, Baptiste is committed to sustainable agriculture and the minimal use of pesticides and herbicides. He has been a pioneer in labour-intensive canopy management, pruning away foliage to expose grapes to air circulation to reduce rot and fungal disease. He buries new vines to protect them over winter, and he practices a kind of deficit irrigation - designed to conserve precious water and simultaneously encourages deep root growth. The fruit produced here is top quality and commands top prices - $4,000/ ton for this year's cabernet compared with the region average of $1,800/ton - a result of Baptiste's vineyard management and the gravelly, sandy loam where his vines struggle in the heat. When grapes were first planted here, the land-locked location was suitable for winter hardy French hybrids. The best vineyard locations, however, are now known to be along the lakeshore, where Baptiste would like to expand his Inkameep operation. The corporate-minded band council has other ideas. They recently inked a multi- million-dollar deal to lease 800 acres of prime lakeside land to Vincor, Canada's largest wine producer . Baptiste says council opted for fast cash rather than future profits by agreeing to lease the land for 30 years to outsiders. This is short-sighted, he says, especially considering the fact that band-owned and operated businesses like Inkameep Vineyards have made this the only reserves in B.C. that can boast full employment. Band CEO Scott agrees that the best grape growing land on the reserve is now in the hands of leasees but, with planting costs running $20,000 an acre, and a shortage of skilled labour, he says planting the vineyards themselves was impractical. "This represents a substantial revenue source for us," he says of the $400,000 in annual income from the new vineyard leases. "At the end of 30 years, we could have as much as 1,400 acres of vineyard," he adds. "Nobody else can claim that in Canada." Still, Baptiste may have his hands full enough with other Inkameep Vineyard ventures. This year, the Osoyoos Indian Band Development Corporation will build a winery on the reserve, and soon Inkameep Cellars will make the first Native-produced wine in the world. The $13 million, 6,000-square-foot facility should be operating for the 2003 harvest. But the band has already contracted with a nearby winemaker to produce it's first vintage. The first fully-aboriginal Merlot, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay was custom crushed in 2000 and is now aging in barrel. This year (2002) 750 cases of Inkameep wines, the first ever 100 per cent aboriginal-grown and produced wine, will be available. Baptiste and his generation of Osoyoos band members are making the best of their harsh desert land, mining gravel, running golf and holiday camping resorts and, of course, growing grapes. With it's business savvy, the Osoyoos band has an enviable record of self sufficiency. For council member Tony Baptiste, their success in the face of difficult odds is simple. "Some things we've done, people wouldn't do in Indian country," he says. "We are known as fighters, as warriors - it's part of our history." top of page