Who We Are

RELATIONSHIPS

We strive to nurture an environment of caring and genuine interaction with each other, with our clients, customers, and guests, and with everyone with whom we do business. We welcome people from around the world with open arms, and our wines are shipped around the world. It is important to us to aid a culture of authenticity and transparency for the betterment of our community, and to do our small part in uplifting all of humanity.

TEAM

We provide a caring and nurturing environment for our team that is relaxed, fun, and healthy. We work to provide opportunities for advancement from within for real career development. We really care for our team members. A company is the people. We cherish our employees like our own family, because they are. When we support one another, we grow stronger together.

COMMUNITY

When Stephen Cipes came to the Okanagan Valley in 1986 some of the first relationships he established were with the Hall/Derickson family of the Okanagan first nations. These relationships continue to this day, marked by a collaborative earth-building on the vineyard. Modelled after the pit houses that were the traditional indigenous winter homes of the Okanagan, the “Makwala Hall Memorial Kekuli” was built by a team including Ron Hall, Weston Hall, and Makwala Hall (1992-2010), Stephen’s son Gabe, and members of the various local First Nations including West Bank, Penticton, Osoyoos, and Shuswap. The beautiful, semi-underground earth structure now exists on the land as a community gathering place and as a glimpse into another perspective of living in harmony with the earth as a part of nature.

The Makwala Hall Memorial Kekuli and the Summerhill Pyramid are sacred gathering places to celebrate the phases of the moon and the passage of the seasons. Gatherings are held every new and full moon, and every solstice and equinox. All are welcome.

When Stephen Cipes purchased Summerhill Vineyard in 1986, he had a vision to preserve the pristine conditions of his family’s new home in spite of the rapid agricultural and civic development. To protect the Okanagan’s lake and inhabitants, Cipes set out to prove that organic wines are better in every way – in the way they taste and make you feel as well as in their impact on community and environment. The result is that Summerhill has been a hub for organic viticulture in Canada. Winemakers have apprenticed here, former growers have opened their own organic wineries, and other wineries have taken note and begun their own conversions. This has helped foster a substantial rise in the amount of organic viticulture happening throughout the valley and Canada.

Summerhill continues to foster a sustainable future. Here is an overview of our commitments, initiatives and accomplishments:

• In 1988 we began the ‘official’ transition to organic status for Summerhill Vineyard with our certifier. At that time the mandatory transitional period was seven years! There were very few organic vineyards in the Okanagan at that time, and organic vineyard management systems were not well understood.
• In 2007 when the Canadian national standard for organic winemaking was established, we released among the first wines in Canada to bear the Canada Organic logo. Prior to that our wines were ‘Made with Organic Grapes’, but since then our entire process of cleaning tanks and equipment and making wines has been transparently monitored to be environmentally responsible and free of synthetics.
• In 2009 we mandated that all of our independent grape suppliers officially transition to organic certification for their farms. We now purchase the crop from about 200 acres of vineyard, all grown by independent family farmers who have committed to growing organically for us.
• In 2012, Summerhill Vineyard became the first vineyard in BC to gain Demeter Biodynamic status. Biodynamic agriculture is the world’s first “organic” certification, and still the most holistic, treating the whole farm as an ecosystem, and engendering life and diversity in the soil, in the ground cover, and in nature preserves on the farm.
• At Summerhill Vineyard, many plants have been trialed between and underneath the vines to convert a mono-crop paradigm into a synergetic Permaculture system, increasing biodiversity, health, and yields. These plants include many flowering species to increase the population of beneficial insects and various culinary herbs for use in Summerhill’s on-site kitchen.
• In 2006 we planted a half-acre Chef’s Garden just below the dining patio. Providing the kitchen with heirloom vegetables, herbs and berries, this garden is managed with hand-tools, no-till farming methods and biodynamic preparations to organically enhance the biological activity within the soil. An additional half-acre Forest Garden of perennial food and medicine producing trees and plants was added in the years following to serve as a harvest source as well as an educational resource.
• Working in partnership with renowned Canadian artist and naturalist Robert Bateman’s foundation, we offer a series of wine labels featuring Bateman’s artwork. With each bottle sold money is donated to the foundation, which works with the park service and schools to bring North American youth into nature to form meaningful relationships and foster the next generation of conservationists.
• Twenty acres of the Summerhill property are under restrictive covenant with The Land Conservancy of BC to protect wildlife habitat for future generations, adding to the biodiversity of the farm, and providing a source for wild-crafting (harvesting wild plants for use in our onsite restaurant).
• We participate in third party environmental assessments to monitor and improve our impact, including Green Tourism Canada, where we score at a “gold” standard
• Our purchasing is committed to sustainable sources, including wine labels printed on 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper, closures from the renewable resource of cork, and office paper and menus printed on tree free paper made from the agricultural waste streams of sugar cane and wheat. Our restaurant purchases all organic, local, and “Oceanwise” ingredients.
• We have a strong commitment to reduce, reuse, and recycle. We monitor waste streams and organize all recyclables onsite.
• We compost all non-wine production outputs (grape solids, stems, seeds, skins, and yeast sediments), landscaping outputs and kitchen compost. If you dine in our restaurant and don’t finish your plate, it will be scraped into a compost bucket rather than into the garbage.
• We are proud to showcase internationally revered, award-winning wines that are produced organically, proving that the world’s best wine is made without using “conventional” farming and winemaking methods. We have been at the forefront of the organic movement, receiving major awards for our wines including the UK’s International Wine and Spirits Competition (IWSC) trophy for ‘Best Sparkling Wine’ (Cipes Gabriel NV) in 2010, and the IWSC trophy for ‘Canadian Wine Producer of the Year’ in 2009.
• The Cipes family offers advice and education freely and willingly to our local wine industry, including support for competing wineries to transition to organic, inspecting smaller operations for the peer reviewed “Certified Naturally Grown” designation, and hosting workshops on biodynamics.
• Stephen Cipes and a team of volunteers under the banner of Organic Okanagan have led an initiative called the “2020 Vision” to convert the entire pristine Okanagan Valley to be organic, including all agriculture and all civic landscaping (www.organicokanagan.com).

“Be whole unto yourself at all times, and envision the world in which you want to live.”

STEPHEN CIPES, FOUNDER OF SUMMERHILL PYRAMID

The Cipes family bought Summerhill Vineyard in 1986, and moved to Kelowna from New York the following year. At that time Summerhill, along with much of the valley’s vineyards, was planted with table grapes and hybrid wine grapes. The Cipes’ new vineyard also had one experimental block of Riesling planted in the 1970s.

Almost as soon as the Cipes family arrived, the vineyard was transitioned to organic maintenance and replanted with European vinifera winemaking grapes imported from France and Germany.

Summerhill’s first experimental crush of wine was in 1990. This was the same year as the formation of BC VQA, in which the Cipes family took an active role developing. Preliminary meetings to form VQA were hosted by the Cipes family at Summerhill Vineyard.

Stephen’s New York business sense drove the tiny Okanagan wine industry forward in those early years by focusing on making traditional method sparkling wine, producing the most expensive wines the valley had seen to that point, creating the region’s first destination tourist attraction winery, and by bringing international attention with write-ups and glowing wine reviews in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

His vision was that the pristine Okanagan valley, the northernmost desert viticulture region in the world, had the potential to make the finest wines in the world and bring pride to all Canadians. Summerhill has accomplished a long list of “firsts” on the way to making this vision a reality.

• We are Okanagan Valley pioneers in making organic wine, ultra-premium quality wine, and in establishing the model of a tourism destination winery in this beautiful place. We have worked with our provincial government to change rules so as to allow wineries to cater to wine tourists, establishing over twenty new policies for the entire province including the allowance of restaurants at BC wineries.
• Our team members have sat on boards and committees to help draft the national organic standards for wine in Canada, and we have worked with the BC chapter of Demeter to certify the first biodynamic vineyard and wine in our province.
• We have integrated Permaculture design principles into our farm and business.
• The Summerhill Pyramid is the first wine cellar in the world to knowingly integrate sacred geometry for the benefit of the wine.

We are continually driven by our conscience and passion and do not plan to stop pioneering anytime soon!