Two Families, One Meadow & the Living Soil

The story of Scout Vineyard begins not with a business plan but with a friendship forged over many years and, according to Aaron Godard, many beers. Aaron spent nine years as assistant winemaker and vineyard manager at Orofino Vineyard, one of the Similkameen Valley's most respected wineries, where he first purchased grapes from Murray and Maggie Fonteyne. The Fonteynes had been the custodians of a vineyard near Cawston — a mountain-flanked piece of land that had once been an apple orchard and was planted to vines roughly 14 years before Scout's founding. Over the years, as Aaron sourced fruit from the Fonteynes and the two families grew close, a shared vision began to take shape: what if they made wine together, not as a commercial enterprise but as an expression of the land itself?

In 2018, that vision became Scout Vineyard — named after Murray and Maggie's daughter, Scout, a name that perfectly captures the spirit of exploration and curiosity that defines the project. The four partners — Aaron and Carly Godard, Murray and Maggie Fonteyne — all still hold day jobs while they pour their energy into this dream project. Aaron brings nearly a decade of winemaking experience and a deep technical understanding of the Similkameen terroir. Murray and Maggie bring the land itself — a vineyard they have tended with organic practices and a profound respect for the ecosystem. Carly brings the organisational force that keeps a small, hand-built winery running. Together, they have done basically everything by hand, from constructing the physical winery to farming the grapes to bottling the wines. This is not a venture capital-backed wine brand; it is a labour of love built by four people who believe that the best wine comes from the healthiest soil.

The team's philosophy was clear from the beginning: farming comes first. Aaron gives full credit to Murray and Maggie for the excellent quality of the grapes, and together Aaron and Murray share responsibility for winemaking. They chose to focus on what they love to drink — Syrah for reds and Riesling for whites — and quickly discovered that these varieties responded beautifully to the Similkameen's granitic soils and dramatic diurnal shifts. The first vintage in 2018 produced three Rieslings, including a skin-contact expression that immediately announced Scout as a serious new voice in Canadian natural wine. The wines were native fermented in a mix of Georgian qvevri and neutral barrels, left undisturbed for months, and bottled unfined and unfiltered. The reception was immediate — critics and natural wine enthusiasts recognised that something special was happening in this tiny Similkameen winery. But for the Scout team, the praise was secondary to the work itself: restoring life to the soil, building a closed-loop farm, and proving that regenerative agriculture can produce wines of extraordinary character.

The winemaking at Scout is defined by a single principle: the farm determines the wine, and the winemaker's job is to preserve what the vineyard has already created. All fermentation is spontaneous and wild — counting entirely on the indigenous yeasts and microorganisms that exist naturally on the grapes and in the cellar. There are no cultured yeasts, no enzymes, no adjustments, and minimal sulphites — typically 10 to 25 ppm, added only when absolutely necessary for stability. The wines are unfined and unfiltered, bottled with their natural sediments and living organisms intact. For Aaron Godard, this is not a stylistic choice but a logical extension of the farming philosophy: if the grapes have been grown with such care for soil health and biodiversity, then the winemaker's role is not to manipulate them but to get out of the way and let the natural biome do its work.

The qvevri are the heart of Scout's winemaking — traditional Georgian clay vessels that allow for extended maceration and gentle evolution without flavour transfer. For the Skin Contact Riesling, grapes are destemmed into open-top tanks and qvevri for two weeks of fermentation and maceration with gentle cap management, then pressed into qvevri and neutral barrel for six months of elevage. For the Light Syrah, grapes are harvested slightly earlier for higher acid and a focus on red fruits, destemmed into qvevri for two weeks of maceration, then pressed off into clay and neutral barrels — with a blend of co-fermented Syrah and Riesling used for topping, further emphasising the lighter profile. For the Extended Age Syrah, grapes are harvested slightly later for ripeness and structure, macerated in qvevri for 10 to 14 days, then aged for nearly two years in clay before racking into barrel for additional integration. The team believes this extended ageing helps with stability and the integration of both flavours and structural components. This is winemaking as patience made manifest — a virtue that Aaron considers a winemaker's most prized, though he acknowledges that cleanliness might actually be the true champion.

What makes Scout's approach particularly courageous is their willingness to hold back barrels for years to allow the wines to properly develop — a huge economic strain for a new winery, but one they believe is worth the risk. In an industry that often demands immediate cash flow, Scout's patience is radical. The 2023 Riesling spent 22 months on lees in neutral barrels before bottling. The 2022 Light Syrah aged for 22 months before release. The 2022 Extended Age Syrah spent nearly four years in vessel before bottling. This is not neglect; it is radical trust in time — a belief that wine, like the soil that produced it, needs time to find its balance. The results are wines that feel alive in the glass: textured, evolving, and profoundly connected to their place of origin. For the Scout team, this is winemaking as midwifery — not creation, but attendance.

Scout Vineyard is not merely a winery; it is a proof that two families, a former apple orchard, and a set of Georgian qvevri can produce wines that challenge every convention of the Canadian wine industry. In an era when British Columbia wine was often defined by either industrial scale or Okanagan glamour, Scout demonstrated that the truest Canadian wine is made not by choosing between tradition and modernity but by rejecting both in favour of something older and more essential — the living force of the soil itself. The same Riesling that might have been made into a conventional, filtered, sulphite-heavy white has become a benchmark for Canadian skin-contact wine. The same Syrah that might have been blended into anonymous commercial reds has become a powerful, individual expression of granitic terroir. And the same four people who once held day jobs while dreaming of a farm project have become leaders of Canada's natural wine vanguard — a transformation that is as improbable as it is inspiring.

The legacy of Scout is the legacy of regenerative agriculture applied to wine — a model that does not merely sustain the land but actively restores it. The team's focus on composting, cover crops, no-till practices, and wood mulching is not a marketing narrative but a daily practice — one that they acknowledge is still early in its journey, with much to learn. Their hope of achieving a closed-loop system, where the only inputs come from the farm itself, is not a distant dream but a guiding principle that shapes every decision. Aaron Godard's belief that "regenerative farming practices are a necessary path forward for grape growers if we hope to see positive change" is not a political slogan but a farmer's credo — a recognition that the climate crisis makes ecological collaboration not optional but essential. The vineyard's thicker-skinned grapes, its fungal networks, its deep-rooted cover crops, and its microbially alive soils are not merely features of the farm but defences against an uncertain future.

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 Skin Contact Riesling continues to redefine what Canadian orange wine can be, as the Extended Age Syrah collects admirers among sommeliers and collectors, as the qvevri programme expands and the regenerative farming practices mature, and as the team's experiments with co-ferments and hybrids push the boundaries of what British Columbia wine can become, Scout remains what the four partners have always intended it to be: a living farm grounded in one valley, one friendship, 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 do nothing and let the natural biome speak. The story of this farm is the story of four people who looked at a former apple orchard and saw not emptiness 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 farming comes first. This is not merely a winery; it is a way of life — and Scout invites every drinker to walk the path of the regenerative farmer, one glass at a time.