A Foolish & Romantic Notion Made Real

The story of Little Farm Winery begins not in a cellar but in a bakery in Kelowna — and in a chance meeting in London in 1996. Rhys Pender, born in Canberra, Australia, first connected with wine as a teenager working in a liquor store. After university, he strapped on a backpack and headed to Europe, where he met Alishan Driediger — born in Vancouver, raised in Kelowna, and already possessed of a robust appreciation for food and wine. They spent a couple of months in the South of France, where Alishan immersed herself in a culinary course in Avignon and Rhys delved into language study. It was a love formed by mutual interest, and it would eventually lead them across the world and back to a five-acre parcel of Cawston land in the Similkameen Valley.

Over the next several years, the couple hungrily educated themselves — professional culinary courses, food sciences, winemaking, and wine courses through the Wine and Spirit Education Trust. Alishan earned a Professional Culinary Diploma, studied in the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences at UBC, earned a certificate in winemaking from Guelph University, and later completed the UC Davis winemaking program and WSET Level 3. Rhys worked in hospitality for several Okanagan wineries, taught wine classes, consulted, and embarked upon his journey toward the highest wine knowledge designation — Master of Wine. For extra income, Alishan sold her artisan breads at local farmers' markets; the bread was a hit, which led them to opening the Okanagan Grocery Artisan Breads bakery in Kelowna. Simultaneously, they were raising two daughters — Madeleine, born in 2004, and Elodie, born in 2007. They had outgrown their home in Peachland, and the dream of making wine from their own land was becoming impossible to ignore.

In 2008, they sold the bakery and purchased the Cawston property — a windfall that came with a slightly run-down, century-old house and, most importantly, a mulberry tree. The land was affordable, the farmhouse offered sufficient room for a family, and the arid landscape of the fruit-growing region reminded Rhys of the potential he had seen in the Similkameen. In 2009, they planted four acres of Chardonnay and Riesling — varieties chosen specifically to show the best expression of the vineyard, its soils high in calcium carbonate. The single mulberry tree lent its name to the vineyard: Mulberry Tree Vineyard. The estate itself became known as Little Farm Winery — derived from paysan, the French term for small farmer. The first winter was a harsh one, and 70 per cent of the vines died. But they were slowly replanted over the next three years, and the first vintage in 2011 — a meagre but exhilarating 56 cases — announced that something special was happening in this quiet corner of Cawston. This is not a winery built by investors or marketing teams; it is a winery built by a family, with their own hands, from a foolish and romantic notion that became a life's work.

The winemaking at Little Farm is defined by a philosophy that Rhys and Alishan have refined over more than a decade of hands-on work: the vineyard determines the wine, and the winemaker's job is to let the natural flavours of the place and the grape shine through. They consider themselves winegrowers rather than winemakers — a distinction that reflects their belief that the most important work happens in the vineyard, not the cellar. The wines are "low-tech" — foot-pressed and basket-pressed, with minimal manipulation and intervention. They specialise in wines of bright freshness and minerality — food-friendly wines with intensity but only moderate alcohol. The goal is not to impress with power or oak but to capture the growing season in a bottle — the chalky soils, the mountain winds, the cool nights, and the wild yeasts that live on the skins of the grapes.

The Heritage Series wines — the dry Riesling and Chardonnay — are crafted with precision and restraint. The Riesling is made in the style of German Riesling: hand-harvested, foot-pressed, and fermented with indigenous yeasts, with some vintages spending time in neutral oak barrels to gain texture and soften the bracing acidity. The wines are powerful, racy, and mineral — with pure, direct nectar-like notes, lime pith, rye bread, and savoury undertones. The Chardonnay is whole-cluster pressed, partially wild-fermented, and aged with lees stirring to add complexity and texture. The result is a wine that is crisp, refreshing, and reminiscent of Chablis — delicate citrus aromas, flavours of grapefruit and green apple, and a slicing, savoury minerality that communicates the chalky, calcium carbonate-rich soils. These are not wines for the mass market; they are "geek wines" — harvested earlier, lees-stirred, and made in quantities that would make a large winery spill more in a harvest than Little Farm produces in a year.

But it is the Pied de Cuve series that reveals the full depth of Little Farm's experimental courage. These are the low manipulation, low intervention, and more natural wines — made with wild ferments and bottled unfined and unfiltered. The Pied de Cuve Riesling is fermented with wild yeasts captured from the vineyard itself, bottled with its natural sediments, and left to express the raw, untamed character of the Mulberry Tree Vineyard. The Pied de Cuve Orange is a skin-contact wine — an unfiltered, amber-hued Riesling or Chardonnay fermented on its skins, with bright orange colour and intense aromas of citrus zest, honey, and floral spice. Look for flavours of Mandarin orange and spice — a savoury, umami-driven expression that challenges every preconception of what Canadian white wine can be. The Pied de Cuve Chardonnay is fermented in neutral barrels with wild yeast, unfined and unfiltered — a wine that captures the complete, unadulterated expression of the grape and the soil. These are wines for the adventurous, the curious, and those who believe that natural wine's greatest gift is its capacity to surprise. For Rhys and Alishan, this is winemaking as translation — not creation, but attendance.

Little Farm Winery is not merely a winery; it is a proof that a foolish and romantic notion can become one of Canada's most honest wine estates, that a Master of Wine and a culinary artist can leave their successful careers behind to build a life around four acres of vines and a mulberry tree, and that the best Canadian wine sometimes comes from the smallest scale and the hardest work. In an era when the Canadian wine industry was often defined by either industrial scale or trophy-chasing luxury, Rhys Pender and Alishan Driediger demonstrated that the truest Canadian wine is made not by choosing between tradition and innovation but by holding both in balance — respecting the old-school techniques of foot-pressing and lees-stirring while experimenting with wild ferments, skin-contact, and zero-additive natural wines. The same Riesling that might have been made into a conventional, filtered, sulphite-heavy white has become a benchmark for Canadian mineral Riesling. The same Chardonnay that might have been drowned in new oak has become a Chablis-like expression of calcium carbonate soils. And the same four-acre property that might have been developed into a commercial estate has become a model for organic, small-scale, family-driven viticulture.

The legacy of Little Farm is the legacy of the paysan — the small farmer who does not reject modernity but redefines it through the lens of soil health, biodiversity, and radical humility. Rhys and Alishan's belief that "we let nature take care of itself" is not a slogan of neglect but a creed of trust — a recognition that the vineyard, when farmed organically and harvested with care, knows better than any winemaker what it needs to become truly alive. The vineyard's biodiversity — birds, insects, indigenous plants, windflowers — is not merely a feature of the farm but evidence of a healthy ecosystem that produces grapes of extraordinary character. The early harvests that preserve acidity, the low crop levels that promote intensity, the foot-pressing that extracts phenolics without aggression, and the lees-stirring that adds texture without oak are all choices that prioritise the vineyard over the cellar — the grape over the gadget.

The future of the project is tied to the future of the Canadian natural wine movement — to the growing recognition that the most interesting wines come not from technology but from terroir, patience, and the courage to do less. As the Riesling continues to define what Canadian mineral white wine can be, as the Pied de Cuve Orange collects admirers among natural wine enthusiasts, as the Chardonnay matures in bottle and the vineyard's calcium carbonate soils continue to imprint their character on every vintage, and as the two daughters who grew up among the vines prepare to inherit a legacy of organic farming and honest winemaking, Little Farm remains what Rhys and Alishan have always intended it to be: a living farm grounded in one mulberry tree, one hillside, and one unwavering conviction — that wine is an agricultural product, that healthy soil produces healthy grapes, and that the best winemaking is sometimes simply to get out of the way and let nature speak. The story of this farm is the story of two people who looked at a run-down century-old house and a single mulberry tree and saw not limitation but potential — and who proved that the best Canadian wine is sometimes the one that comes from listening to the land, trusting the grape, and never forgetting that we are winegrowers, not winemakers. This is not merely a winery; it is a way of life — and Little Farm invites every drinker to walk the path of the paysan, one glass at a time.