Love & Labour Since 1925

The story of Sperling Vineyards begins not in a cellar but in the soil beneath a five-year-old's bare feet. Ann Sperling remembers walking through the vineyard as a child, barefoot, noticing the texture of the different soils beneath her toes — the way the earth changed from row to row, from slope to slope. She was raised on the family vineyard in Kelowna, and through her mother she is a member of the Casorso family — the same family that planted the first vineyard in the Kelowna area in 1925. The land at 1405 Pioneer Road has been farmed by the family for 135 years, and the vineyard itself has been in continuous operation since the 1920s — making it BC's oldest heritage vineyard and the oldest continuously operated vineyard in the province. This is not a winery that bought a vineyard; it is a vineyard that became a winery, slowly, over four generations of love and labour.

Ann's path to winemaking was set early. When the family planted Riesling in 1978 — clone 21B from the Mosel — winemakers began visiting the farm to meet with her father, to walk the vines and discuss how grape growing related to winemaking. Ann was about 15 years old when she realised that she could translate what happened in the vineyard into wine — and that the industry was opening up at exactly the right moment. She went on to complete a Food Sciences degree at the University of British Columbia and entered the wine industry full-time in 1984. Her talents were recognised in the early 1990s when her 1992 Merlot won medals in every competition it entered, taking Gold at the International Wine and Spirits Competition in the UK and Platinum at the Okanagan Wine Festival. She played pivotal roles in the start-ups of CedarCreek winery in BC and Malivoire Wine Company in Niagara, where she oversaw the conversion of the Moira Vineyard to organic. In 2004, she was named Winemaker of the Year at the Ontario Wine Awards. In 2021, she was named Winemaker of the Year by the Cambridge Food & Wine Society and received the coveted RIEDEL Award.

But despite her international reputation — consulting with innovative French winemaking firms, serving on VQA Technical Committees in both BC and Ontario, and co-founding the Versado Malbec estate in Mendoza, Argentina with her husband Peter Gamble — Ann has always returned to the family vineyard. In 2008, she began making Old Vines Riesling from the 1978 block, and the Sperling Vineyards winery was established to bring the family's grapes to bottle under their own name. The vineyard received organic certification in 2017, and Ann has since implemented biodynamic practices and embraced regenerative agriculture as a member of Regeneration Canada. Today, the winery is a multifaceted operation that produces three distinct series: the Heritage Series (crafted from the oldest, most cherished vines), the Vision Series (experimental, small-lot, innovative wines from younger vines), and the Market Series (approachable, everyday wines). This is not merely a winery; it is a living farm grounded in one hillside, one family, and one unwavering conviction — that the best wines come from the healthiest soils, and that the Okanagan Valley's future depends on farming that benefits the environment instead of degrading it.

The winemaking at Sperling is defined by a philosophy that Ann Sperling has spent three decades refining: the vineyard determines the wine, and the winemaker's job is to translate what happens in the soil into the bottle. This begins with a holistic approach to fermentation — using native and organic yeasts, allowing wild malolactic fermentation, and avoiding the additives and adjustments that characterise conventional winemaking. The Heritage Series wines are crafted with precision and patience: the Old Vines Riesling is hand-harvested cool in the late fall, sorted and destemmed with a 4-6 hour cold soak before gentle pressing, then fermented cool in stainless steel with a combination of non-aromatic and wild yeast to desired dryness. The wine is not released until two years in the bottle have passed — a patience that allows the petrol aromas, honeyed depth, and mineral backbone to fully develop. The Pinot Blanc is hand-harvested, destemmed, and soaked for 4 hours before pressing, then fermented in stainless steel to bone dryness — a process that yields a wine of vibrant acidity, green apple, and lemon zest.

But it is the Vision Series that reveals the full depth of Ann Sperling's experimental courage. The Amber Pinot Gris is perhaps the most radical: 95-100% of the grapes are included in the ferment — whole clusters, stemmed grapes, skins, seeds, and all — fermented with wild yeast and wild malolactic, taken to complete dryness, then pressed and settled rather than fined or filtered. Zero sulphites. Zero additives. The result is a wine that Ann describes as a "whole expression of Pinot Gris vines that have adapted themselves over 20 years to our site" — not an expression of vessel, but a savoury, umami-driven expression of the complete grape. The wine is alive: when opened in the tasting room, it can be sampled over a week, changing but never falling apart, the tannins keeping it vital. The Speritz Pet Nat is wild-fermented in the bottle from Perle de Csaba (planted 1934), Chardonnay, and Bacchus — hazy, unfiltered, with no additives, vegan-friendly, and alive with sediment. The Ruby Pet Nat blends Marechal Foch (85%) and Pinot Noir (15%), with the Foch whole-cluster fermented for five days before pressing and blending — a unique dry natural ruby sparkler that recalls the sparkling Shiraz of Australia. These are not conventional wines; they are experiments in terroir expression — and they work.

The Vision Series Chardonnay and Pinot Noir Rosé are made with whole-cluster pressing, barrel fermentation in puncheon barrels, wild ferment, and full malolactic — aged for about 12 months before bottling. The Sparkling Brut is 100% Pinot Blanc with 36 months on the lees, producing a creamy, toasty, Champagne-like wine that rivals the finest traditional method sparklers in Canada. What unites every wine is Ann Sperling's belief that winemaking is an act of translation, not creation — that the winemaker's role is to preserve the living forces that the vineyard has already created. This is winemaking as midwifery — not imposing a style upon the grapes but allowing the grapes to impose their style upon the wine. For Ann, the greatest compliment is not a high score or a gold medal; it is when someone tastes her wine and says, "This tastes like the vineyard."

Sperling Vineyards is not merely a winery; it is a proof that a barefoot child walking through vineyard rows can become Canada's foremost authority on organic and biodynamic viticulture, that a family farm planted in 1925 can produce wines that challenge every convention of the Canadian wine industry, and that the most radical act in modern winemaking is sometimes simply to do nothing and let the vineyard speak. In an era when the Okanagan Valley was often defined by either industrial scale or trophy-chasing luxury, Ann Sperling demonstrated that the truest Canadian wine is made not by choosing between tradition and innovation but by holding both in balance — respecting the old vines while experimenting with whole-cluster ferments, wild yeasts, and zero-additive natural wines. The same Riesling that might have been made into a conventional, filtered, sulphite-heavy white has become one of the finest Rieslings in the Okanagan. The same Pinot Gris that might have been pressed off its skins and stripped of its character has become a benchmark for Canadian orange wine. And the same Perle de Csaba vines that might have been pulled out for more fashionable varieties have become the heart of a pét-nat that connects the 1930s to the 2020s.

The legacy of Sperling is the legacy of the barefoot pioneer — a figure who does not reject modernity but redefines it through the lens of soil health, biodiversity, and radical humility. Ann Sperling'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 treed perimeters, native bushes, permanent cover crops, and undisturbed roots are not merely features of the farm but defences against an uncertain future — carbon sequestration, drought resistance, and habitat preservation all working in concert. The family's 135 years of continuous farming on the same land is not merely history; it is a model for regenerative agriculture in a country that has seen too much of its farmland degraded by industrial monoculture.

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 Old Vines Riesling continues to define what Okanagan Riesling can be, as the Amber Pinot Gris collects admirers among natural wine enthusiasts and beer drinkers alike, as the Vision Series expands into new experiments and the regenerative farming practices mature, and as the fifth generation of the Sperling-Casorso family prepares to take the reins, Sperling Vineyards remains what Ann Sperling has always intended it to be: a living farm grounded in one hillside, one family, and one unwavering conviction — that the best wines come from the healthiest soils, that nature's forces must be allowed to develop better conditions for future generations, and that the Okanagan Valley's greatest gift is not its sunshine but its soil. The story of this farm is the story of a woman who looked at the earth beneath her bare feet and saw not dirt but potential — and who proved that the best Canadian wine is sometimes the one that comes from listening to the land, trusting the vine, and never forgetting that farming comes first. This is not merely a winery; it is a way of life — and Sperling Vineyards invites every drinker to walk the path of the barefoot pioneer, one glass at a time.