How US Wineries Saved Canada’s Wine Industry After a Devastating Freeze

In a historic trade arrangement between U.S. and Canadian wine growers, Washington state wineries shipped massive amounts of American grapes north of the border last summer after a “catastrophic loss” of 90% of British Columbia’s grape harvest.  

That’s what the British Columbia government is calling an event that began on five moonless nights in January 2024. After a stealthy freeze crept down the Okanagan Valley — a 155-mile-long basin slicing down the middle of British Columbia and containing 86% of the province’s wine output — many vines were killed outright. 

As winter turned into spring, the extent of the losses became clear: a US $254.7 million loss to growers and wineries, and another US$72.9 million for support industries and loss of work for everyone from grape pickers to winemakers to hotel staff.

But to the south, Washington State winegrowers were awash in grapes. This was due to a bumper crop and the fact that Ste Michelle Wine Estates, the state’s largest wine producer, had announced a 40% cut in grape purchases in 2023. Growers in the country’s second-largest wine-producing state were loaded with unsold grapes. “We’ve had amazing yields; 2023 was huge in Washington,” said Colleen Frei, executive director of the Washington Winegrowers Association. “Our growing conditions are wonderful here: Great land, good water supply, good soil.”

By mid-March, the Association had published an eight-page guide on regulations for across-border grape shipments through a thicket of state and federal regulations. 

“To see another wine community facing a challenge from Mother Nature, we realized that could be us,” Frei said. And the Washingtonians were pricing to sell, she added, despite the lessened buying power the Canadian dollar has to the American dollar. 

At least 25% of some 300 wineries in the Okanagan Valley region ended up contacting U.S. vineyards, says Craig Pacheco, founder of Seattle-based Vin-Star Consulting, a firm linking Canadian wineries with U.S. growers. Washington met the bulk of the demand, but in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, “some really premium Pinot Noir [found] a home with some of the premium wineries in the Okanagan Valley because there’s not a whole lot of that in Washington,” he said. 

Despite all the outreach on the part of U.S. growers, it nevertheless took months for the Canadian government to allow local wines to be made from grapes outside the province without tax markups. Winemakers went ahead and cut their deals regardless. Ron Kubek of Lightning Rock Winery in Summerland, a small community on Lake Okanagan, recalled, “Frank Roth [head winemaker for Tagaris Winery, in Richland, WA] and I went down to Lake Chelan and visited wineries and vineyards; they could not have been more hospitable. The Washington State Winegrowers set up a wine grape dating service — I wish our government did one percent of what yours did. Ours did nothing. By July 25, a lot of people already had their fruit contracts signed. But our government acted like idiots.”

Vin Star Consulting’s Pacheco, who drove to the Okanagan in June, wondered if British Columbia officials actually grasped the scale of the once-in-100-year calamity. “Acres and acres of dead vines,” he said. “What makes this an existential crisis for the British Columbia wine industry is the massive replanting effort that will be needed, which is only possible over a period of several years.

“Wine is not a commodity that you can just turn on next year. The average cost to replant an acre is $50,000 Canadian, with additional farming and production costs on top of that. Once vines are replanted, it’s three to four years to a fully productive harvest, then it takes time to make the wines and age them. That takes us to 2031 before the industry can recover to the levels of grape and wine production we saw from 2018 to 2022.”

Some wineries are throwing in the towel. The Canadian outlet Global News stated in January 2024 that “the multi-billion-dollar BC wine industry is teetering,” and that 25 percent of the area’s wineries were already for sale. 

Philip Fox, a local real estate agent, observed that a true percentage of sale properties is tough to come by, in that while some wineries are officially for sale, many more are unofficially available.

“There’s a ton of wineries who, if you knocked on their door today and asked if they’d like to sell, they’d rush to get a pen,” he said. “There will most likely be a consolidation of some of the small-to-medium wineries by the large ones, but the area will not lose the small family-run wineries that make the region so charming.”

Up until 2024, British Columbia wineries have had their 2020, 2021, and 2022 vintages for sale, and 2022 was a high-quality crop. The problem starts now, in 2025, as the effect of the two freezes hits in earnest. Nor is this the only problem.

“We’ve had a lack of tourism because of seasonal wildfires, which has impacted wineries, too,” said Christine Coletta, owner of Haywire Winery and Okanagan Crush Pad in Summerland. “The government last year [2023] told people not to come here, which ruined our August, September, October period. They rescinded that advice three days later, but the damage was done.”

Canadian vintners like Coletta have noted that their American counterparts have been selling them top-quality grapes at below-market prices.

“We are getting a ton of cooperation from Washington growers,” she said.“We have gone through periods like this before and we are a bloody resilient people.”

“In Lake Chelan, we got 12 tons of Chardonnay from a lady there,” Kubek recalled. “From Frank Roth at Tagaris, we got some of their organic grapes: Riesling, Syrah, and others. When Chateau Ste Michelle canceled 40% of their grapes, there was a lot left over.”

Jeff Andrews, proprietor at Andrews Family Vineyards in Prosser, Washington, said he was glad to sell Kubek and another Canadian winemaker some of his Block 98 Cabernet grapes, a percentage of which are annually set aside for his top-level Trothe Cabernet.

“We offer a fairly unique proposition in Washington wine; fourth-generation family-owned, third-generation vineyard,” he said. “We’re very invested in stewardship of our land, which is important to British Columbia winemakers, and we have a long record of producing high-quality fruit.” 

Eventually, a dozen Canadian wineries placed orders with Andrews, ordering anywhere from a few tons to a few hundred tons. A number sent their winemakers to Prosser to oversee the shipping of grapes and juice up north.

“We’re all in this together, right?” Andrews said. “Even though we are separated by an international border, we’re only six hours away. We can help each other.”