With collaboration, optimism and some exciting new projects, the Okanagan Valley is ready to face the future.
The day a West Kelowna winery owner told me about the collective she belonged to, I almost fell off my barstool. A winery collective? Here, in the proudly, even stubbornly, independent Okanagan Valley?
As it turns out, it’s just one of several collectives, hubs, collaborations and other community initiatives that are bringing people together to share resources and expertise and, most importantly, mutual support.
And all this collaborative spirit is paying off. The valley has had some big recent wins to show for it, among them, the city of Kelowna being named UNESCO’s first Canadian Creative City of Gastronomy. Add to that a spectacular 2025 vintage and you can see why the mood these days is one of resilience paired with cautious and growing optimism.
It’s a big change from just a couple of years ago, when one disaster seemed to follow another and cynicism was rising as fast as the cost of glass for wine bottles. But now, after a tough few years, the Okanagan Valley is going to be more than OK, and it’s all thanks to the power of community.
Aikins Loop Walking Tour. Credit Discover Naramata.
A special place
In the first half of this decade, the Okanagan Valley was famously battered by one disaster after another: the 2020 pandemic, with its travel hospitality restrictions; the 2021 heat dome, wildfires and floods; the December 2022 cold snap, which killed about half the next year’s grape crop before it even got started.
Then there was August 2023, when an out-of-control wildfire in West Kelowna resulted in more than 35,000 people being evacuated and nearly 14,000 hectares burned — and non-essential travel banned throughout the region right at the height of tourist season. A chef later told me about watching the river of red taillights as cars and RVs left the valley. “And they never came back,” he said. He had tears in his eyes.
Worse was yet to come. In January 2024, an extreme, extended cold snap wiped out the entire vintage, destroyed swaths of vines and caused major damage to fruit orchards. The estimated agricultural loss was over $400 million.
Recovery is well under way, but it’ll take time. Taylor Whelan, the chief winemaker for Mission Hill Family Estate, says he expects it will be a decade before grape harvests return to previous levels. As many as a quarter of the region’s 200-plus wineries are reportedly up for sale. Several are in receivership.
“It’s always heartbreaking when one of these wineries doesn’t make it,” Jeff Guignard, the president and CEO of Wine Growers BC, noted to Global BC. “But this happens every year — a few more open, a few more close. Certainly after a few tough seasons, you have people looking at the value of their land and thinking, ‘Maybe I want to do something different.’”
Sure enough, new wineries are popping up, including Modesta Winery and Evolve Sparkling House on the Naramata Bench, Observatory Wines and Pamplemousse Jus in Summerland, Domaine Artema near Oliver and, in Lake Country, the grand Persian-themed Azhadi Vineyards and even grander O’Rourke Family Estate, with its two helipads, two restaurants, underground caves, amphitheatre and full-sized indoor theatre.
If there’s any doubt things are bouncing back, look to James Suckling, one of the world’s most renowned wine experts (based in the Napa Valley, he was a senior editor at Wine Spectator for nearly three decades). In May, he visited the valley for the first time, posting numerous videos of his travels along the way.
“What struck me right away is lots of new plantings, and apparently most of the wine is consumed in British Columbia, or even locally,” Suckling said in one of them. “It’s interesting, because the wine world is going through a crisis, but in this special place it’s going really well.”
It takes a village
If things are going well here, credit some pretty savvy collaboration.
Take the District Wine Village. This complex just north of Oliver has become a busy and buzzy community hub where locals and visitors alike drop by for concerts, markets, art shows and, of course, food and drink.
The founders, local businessmen Max Brock and Matt Kenyon (and, after Brock’s untimely death, long-time wine executive Mike Daley), were inspired by wine villages they’d seen in the U.S. to build something that would provide production facilities to small wineries that couldn’t afford their own. But they also designed the project with a community mindset. They worked out a long-term lease with the Osoyoos Indian Band, which owns the 11-acre property, and built a circular complex of 16 buildings, all licensed to produce alcoholic beverages, around a central plaza.
Today, this unique-in-Canada village comprises eight wineries (one of which, The Opera Room, produces low- and no-alcohol wines), as well as a brewery, distillery, French bakery, bookstore, coffee shop and roastery. Each unit has a patio with tables and chairs, and guests can order food from the on-site restaurant, Ward’s Kitchen, while watching their kids play in the central amphitheatre. Those same guests can meander easily from tasting room to tasting room, sampling products from small businesses that would otherwise be hard-pressed to offer this level of hospitality.
Everything here is not just the result of collaboration; it’s designed to foster even more of it.
Inspired by the Cittaslow philosophy of intentional living and community connection, Naramata’s longtable dinners bring neighbours together to share local food, wine and conversation in one of Canada’s most celebrated “slow communities.”
Slow and steady wins
The new District Wine Village may have been purposebuilt for collaboration, but the process for the historic village of Naramata was more organic.
Recognizing its distinct, even quirky, character, Naramata became Canada’s second certified “Cittaslow,” or “slow community,” in 2010, after Cowichan Bay on Vancouver Island in 2009. Cittaslow is at once a philosophy and an international accreditation inspired by the Slow Food movement. Founded in Italy in 1999, it now comprises more than 300 communities across 30 countries, each committed to embracing conscious living, sustainability and community well-being.
Naramata originally joined Cittaslow as an economic development initiative, says Naramata Slow president Miranda Halladay. “We quickly realized it wasn’t about business. The truth and the power come from authenticity and community,” she says. “Philosophically, it was about what we make and grow in Naramata.”
In April, the tiny community (pop. 1,012) became the first-ever North American destination to host a gathering of international Cittaslow communities, including representatives from Italy, Turkey, Quebec and elsewhere.
Among them was Cittaslow International Secretary General Pier Giorgio Oliveti. The point of Cittaslow, he told the gathering, is “not to be bystanders of our history. We have to be better, to build capacity and create our future.” Oliveti added: “Cittaslow is a philosophy, but it is also a practical approach to life in our communities. It is not a choice. It is a necessity. We need to be slow.”
Or, as Halladay says, “It’s not slow, it’s about being intentional.”
Among Naramata Slow’s projects: a weekly community market; an edible (and hugely bountiful) school garden; a little free seed library known as the Seed Snail; a laneways project that sees self-described “commando gardeners” beautifying the lanes to preserve public spaces with “the idea that beauty is protection.” There’s also a community fridge for sharing surplus food so no one goes hungry, and in winter, community soup suppers at the church.
Until recently, one of Naramata Slow’s core projects was a harvest supper, “an elevated potluck” of “food and wine and a shared table,” held every year for a decade at Centre Beach.
“It carried us through the pandemic,” Halladay recalls. “It gave us the opportunity to know about our neighbours. Even in a small town, it’s shocking that you don’t know your neighbour until you sit down and share a meal with them.”
Downtown Kelowna
Locals first
Whether it’s the District Wine Village, Naramata Slow, a local wine collective or the growing number of chef collabs and winemakers’ dinners (Chris Van Hooydonk of Backyard Farm Chef’s Table especially is popping up everywhere these days), what all these projects have in common is that, in a region that relies so heavily on tourism, they are really designed for the people who live here.
And that fits seamlessly with the Cittaslow philosophy that tourism and hospitality should support both residents and visitors. “The same tools Cittaslow gives us can make our communities so strong,” Halladay says.
Meanwhile, tourism and industry organizations like the Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association (TOTA), Wine Growers BC, Oliver Osoyoos Wineries Association, Tourism Kelowna and others have put their muscle behind some of the most ambitious projects in the valley.
TOTA, for instance, led the campaign to secure recognition of the region as the first Biosphere Gold Certified Destination in the Americas, a commitment that encourages local businesses to align with the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals. While that’s a great marketing strategy, surely it’s even better for the people who live in a destination to have clean water, good health, quality education, food security and “peace, justice and strong institutions.”
Meanwhile, a collaboration between the City of Kelowna, Westbank First Nation, Tourism Kelowna and Okanagan College has led to Kelowna being named Canada’s first UNESCO City of Gastronomy through the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. Again, this is great for tourism, but it’s even better for local farmers, chefs, producers and residents.
The next big project in the works is the Centre for Food, Wine and Tourism at Okanagan College in Kelowna, a spectacular new facility featuring the Okanagan Chef School, learning labs, a state-of-the-art kitchen and a full-service restaurant. It is scheduled to open in fall 2027 and is designed to address perennial issues in the region — such as skill shortages, climate change and resource scarcity — while also training the professionals of tomorrow.
As local wine educator Rhys Pender MW told a seminar on innovation last fall at the WGBC Swirl Around BC Wine Expo: “With change comes opportunity and there is so much opportunity in the world of wine. This is the most complex small business you could ever be in.”
Lakeside Dining at Hotel Eldorado.
A tradition of mutual support
The funny thing is that while all this community minded collaboration might seem new and inspired by recent crises, it really isn’t at all.
BC VQA (British Columbia Vintners Quality Alliance) was established way back in 1990, the same year as the British Columbia Wine Institute, now known as Wine Growers BC, which oversees wine standards, research and marketing. And in 1996, the BC Wine Info Centre opened in Penticton, operated by a non-profit society that puts all profits into education, and quickly became the very best place to learn about and shop for BC VQA wine. “We are a support system for the local wineries,” explains the centre’s long-time manager, Donna Faigaux.
For a while, there was a fair bit of grumbling about BC VQA and WGBC, about the messaging around 2024’s disastrous winter freeze and the legal complexities involving replacement grapes, not to mention the endless wrangling about inter-provincial shipping and other issues. But these days, there’s a renewed recognition that everyone is in it together, and that these groups are essential to a healthy industry. It helps that 2025 is turning out to be one of the valley’s best years ever, in both quality and abundance. As Guignard pointed out in a press release, “After everything this industry has endured over the past several years, there’s something especially meaningful about seeing a truly great B.C. vintage back on shelves and tables again.”
The result is that people are saying things like what Neelam Dhaliwal, operations manager at Kismet Estate Winery, told me on a recent visit: “I feel so passionately about VQA,” she says. “We’ve worked so hard to get to where we are.”
Dhaliwal also talked about the importance of family and neighbours, something I’ve heard over and over again during my recent visits to the valley. “We love our neighbours and want to lean into that,” one tasting room manager told me. Those neighbours are joining together to create exciting new experiences, such as the Westside Wine Trail in West Kelowna or the Akins Loop on the Naramata Bench.
And when Michael Ziff was opening Lapin Perdu, the new bistro at the Naramata Inn, he first asked the neighbours what they wanted. “It was very much about welcoming the locals and being their local,” Ziff says. “If you take care of the locals, the visitors come because guess what the locals do? They host guests all summer long.”
Now that’s the power of the collective.
