It's About Time
Harry McWatters was right when he predicted that B.C. could become a serious wine region, even though back then all it produced was mediocre jug wine. He was right when he insisted the Summerland-Naramata-Okanagan Falls triangle would be the perfect place to grow sparkling wine. And he was right when he declared that an old 1950s movie theatre in downtown Penticton, so rundown that even his own son-in-law called it “a dump,” would be the perfect place for a winery and restaurant he called TIME.
At 40, and after a 16-year career with stints in several top restaurants, he’s back to making breakfast. He produces a wellrounded morning meal every day for a group of disadvantaged youth at Operation Come Home. After breakfast, he becomes an instructor and mentor for those interested in pursuing a culinary career or using cooking skills to get back on their feet.
The only thing he got wrong was that he thought he would be able to see it all through. Instead, just months after finishing his 50th harvest, the larger-than-life “grandfather of British Columbia wine” died peacefully in his sleep in July 2019, at the age of 74.
So this is not his story. But it is the story of his legacy, and how the next generation of the McWatters family is not just carrying it on but taking it to a whole new level with a thoughtful rebrand and the opening of OROLO, an elegant destination restaurant that may well be Penticton’s most exciting new dining experience.
“Wine is all about time and place. It’s not just about the terroir. It’s about creating these circles of magical connection,” says ChristaLee McWatters, Harry’s daughter and the general manager of TIME Family of Wines, which comprises the Evolve Cellars, Chronos and McWatters Collection labels as well as OROLO. “We chose the name OROLO because it’s the science of time.”
And it seems that the time, for the McWatters family, is now.
Bubbles to begin
Christa-Lee is a busy woman. Aside from her work for TIME Family of Wines, which she shares with her sister Darrien, the company’s operations manager, she is also the chair of Wine Growers B.C., the organization that represents the interests of the province’s wineries through marketing, communications and advocacy. As if that’s not enough, she’s been building a new winery, a “bubble house” to showcase Evolve, at the same time as finishing the makeover of their urban winery in downtown Penticton.
It's a lot. But you’d never know it as she cheerfully pops open a bottle of non-vintage Chronos Brut.
“Yesterday this wine was named best sparkling wine in Canada,” she says, pouring some into our glasses and adding, “We did very well in bubbles yesterday.”
That’s right — along with everything else, they’ve been winning barrels of awards. In addition to double gold for the traditional method Chronos, the All Canadian Wine Championships also awarded gold medals to the 2018 Evolve Brut Rosé and Charmat-method Evolve Effervescence and Pink Effervescence and silver to the 2017 McWatters Collection Brut.
We raise our glasses in a toast — to all those medals, to Harry, to winemaker Lynzee Schatz, to the beautifully revamped space, to the new owners who are making all of this possible.
Opened in July 2018, TIME was the “encore presentation” winery for Harry, who had famously founded Sumac Ridge, B.C.’s first estate winery, in 1980, and nine years later, introduced the province’s first traditional method sparkling wine, the ancestor of what we are drinking right now. When he passed away, his daughters quickly realized they couldn’t carry his legacy on their own. On July 1, 2020, they sold to Ron and Shelley Mayert, who live in Abbotsford and have a passion for the kind of big red wines Harry loved almost as much as he loved his bubbles.
But the McWatters family is still largely running the show. So far, it’s been a terrific partnership, although Christa-Lee admits to one small worry at first: “When I sold our winery to our current owners, Ron said, ‘I’m not really into sparkling,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh no.’ But now we’re building a whole sparkling house.” She laughs a little.
“It’s going really well. They’re really keen. I’m so happy to still be family-owned and operated.” She pauses and looks around the restaurant, where earlier the staff had greeted her with warm hugs. “Literally, we are all family.”
Worldly bites
If you’ve ever been to what used to be called the TIME Winery & Kitchen, you will surely be delighted by the transformation. While the soaring ceilings and curved wooden beams of the old theatre are still intact, the space is no longer cavernous and industrial, nor is it awkwardly split between tasting room and dining room. In fact, there’s a whole new tasting room, off to the side in a private space that used to be Theatre 4. (You will love the green velvet banquets almost as much as the bubbles.)
In the dining room, the furniture is stylish, contemporary and comfortable. The former tasting bar is now a popular hangout for locals popping in for happy hour or a nightcap. Circular pendant lights hang from the ceiling, mimicking the Chronos and OROLO branding while also creating a sense of intimacy in the vast space.
And carnivores take note: OROLO was designed to fill a gap in the market by featuring high-quality, dry-aged steak. “We wanted to do something different for the south Okanagan. No one was focusing on steak,” Christa-Lee says. But, she hastens to add: “We don’t call ourselves a steakhouse.”
“Our food philosophy at OROLO is we want this restaurant to be an expression of the region,” says (now former) culinary director Kirk Morrison. “We’re trying to keep things in this region as much as possible. It’s really based around phone calls with the farmers.”
That means grass-fed, grain-finished beef from Two Rivers Meats, seafood mostly from the waters off B.C.’s coast, produce from local farms and orchards, dairy from up the valley, coffee roasted in Summerland.
We begin our meal with a selection of globally inspired appetizers: crispy cauliflower with a chive aioli; roasted bone marrow with grilled sourdough and a caper and apple salad; dry-aged beef tataki; and Spanish-style roasted octopus with bravas sauce, almonds, olives and crispy potato. If you think octopus is a bold choice for small-town Penticton, well, that was the old Penticton. “This has taken off to be a massive success,” Morrison says.
Alongside, we sip a McWatters Collection White Meritage, a silky blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon, as well as a Syrah-based 2022 Chronos Rosé, juicy with notes of strawberry and black pepper. It all hits the perfect sweet spot between sophisticated and comfortable, ambitious and accessible.
Best of all, this sophisticated addition to downtown Penticton is just part of an exciting refresh for a community that has, like so many others these past few years, struggled with street disorder and business closures. OROLO is joined by several other new restaurants and bars, including Wildflower Distilling, the much-raved-about Kin & Folk restaurant and Chulo Tapas Bar. And, adding to the culinary excitement here, Stacy Johnston and Minette Lotz, formerly of the Naramata Inn, have taken the helm at Poplar Grove Winery up the hill as executive and chef de cuisine respectively.
“There’s lots of things happening downtown,” Christa-Lee says. “There’s things happening, and that’s good for all of us.”
Meaty matters
Although the team at OROLO insists it’s not a steakhouse, the restaurant does feature certain steakhouse characteristics. Take the tableside salad. Who doesn’t love to see the cart roll up and a server get to work whisking dressing in a big wooden bowl? But Morrison was bored with the classic Caesar, so his tableside salad is a wedge: crisp iceberg lettuce, blue cheese and hearty chunks of crispy bacon with a buttermilk dill dressing. “I’ve always loved a wedge salad. My Ukrainian grandma used to make it with fistfuls of dill,” he says fondly.
As with the very best steakhouses, Morrison takes his commitment to high-quality beef seriously. You could even say he brings serious chops to his chops. He spent a year working as a butcher for Windsor Meats in West Vancouver, and has cooked everywhere from Cibo Trattoria to Saltlik Steakhouse, the Four Seasons Toronto, Restaurant e18hteen in Ottawa and, for the last five years, he was head chef for JOEY Restaurant Group.
He’s especially proud of the dry-aging fridge that is a centrepiece of the restaurant. Well stocked with prime cuts of beef and lamb, it controls temperature, humidity and bacterial growth, while the meat’s natural enzymes break the muscles down slowly, making it more tender and bringing out those deep, dark umami flavours.
“We’ll age anywhere for 40 to 100 days. Anything beyond that, you get into serious blue cheese territory,” Morrison says. “This is one of the cornerstones of our program. We wanted to make sure we had the best steaks in the Okanagan.”
They are also raising a cow in Summerland, and Morrison is planning to do whole nose-to-tail butchery and preserving, offering, in addition to the prime cuts at OROLO, jerky, sausage, beef skewers and the like at its satellite venue at The District Wine Village in Oliver. “That’s our way to utilize the whole animal,” he says.
Certainly, the bone-in ribeye we’re sampling is decadently tender and swoony with umami, lavished with chimichurri and housemade steak sauce. The dry-aged rack of lamb is even better, rich and buttery soft, without the fatty gaminess that can be so off-putting. Indeed, it is among the best lamb any of us has ever tasted, and a perfect partner with the lushly plummy, peppery 2020 Chronos Syrah, as well as the bold and complex 2020 McWatters Collection Red Meritage.
Perhaps the best reason for OROLO to focus on steak is that TIME Family of Wines also produces exceptional red wines and the new owners, who used to own an inn in Napa, “are all big red wine drinkers. They love the Malbec, they love the Cabernet Franc, they love the Meritage,” Christa-Lee says.
If you are unfamiliar with “Meritage” (which rhymes with “heritage”), it is the trademarked name for red or white Bordeaux-style wines made outside Bordeaux, with Bordeaux varieties but without infringing on that region’s legally protected designation of origin. Winemakers can only use the designation if it’s licensed by the California-based Meritage Alliance. White or red, Meritage has to be a blend of 100 per cent Bordeaux grapes (Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc for white; and any of eight varieties, including Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec, for the red). The McWatters Meritage is always Cab-Sauv dominant.
“As a family, we were the first outside the U.S. to produce a Meritage. Our first vintage was when we had Sumac Ridge, in 1993,” Christa-Lee says. “My dad was very passionate about Meritage, so this is very near and dear to my heart.”
A sweet finish
Throughout his life, Harry McWatters was the founding force behind many of the things we take for granted as simply part of the B.C. wine world.
He opened the province’s first estate winery, made its first traditional method sparkling wine and pioneered big, Bordeaux-style reds. In 1990, he became the first chair of the newly formed British Columbia Wine Institute (now Wine Growers B.C.), a role Christa-Lee is fulfilling today. He was also the founding chair of the British Columbia Wine Information Society, Vintners Quality Alliance of Canada and the B.C. Hospitality Foundation, as well as a long-term director on the Canadian Vintners Association and a founder of the Okanagan Wine Festivals Society. Most of all, he was an exuberant host, a convivial guest, the epitome of what wine culture is all about.
Perhaps his greatest achievement, though, is the family he left behind.
Darrien, who completed her gender transition in 2021, is quietly recognized as a trailblazer and role model in the community, a powerful symbol of representation. And Christa-Lee is a champion of her community, serving on countless boards including Summerland’s Bottleneck Drive Winery Association, Canadian Vintners Association, B.C. Hospitality Foundation and Les Dames d’Escoffier B.C. Now she is bringing expertise and compassion at a time of rising anxiety about last winter’s disastrous deep freeze and the long-term impacts of a changing climate.
Next for the siblings is the new Evolve Cellars sparkling wine house. “We’ll be the first winery on the Naramata Bench, right on the Kettle Valley Trail,” Christa-Lee says, noting that alongside the sparkling wines will be the kind of nibbles that work best with bubbles: seacuterie, potato chips, truffle popcorn and the like. “It will evolve — ha, ha,” she says.
And with that, she will have come full circle to where her dad began. Harry loved bubbles and liked to say, “Sparkling wine is what I drink while deciding what I’m going to drink with dinner.” He believed passionately in the future for B.C. wine — sparkling and otherwise — and the food, culture and community around it. Most of all, he believed in his family.
“He was a visionary,” Christa-Lee says, and pauses for a moment. “I think he would be proud.”
OROLO Restaurant + Cocktail Bar
TIME Family of Wines
361 Martin St., Penticton
timewines.ca | 236.422.2556 | @timewines
