The Bear, the Vine & the Wild North

The story of Ursa Major begins with a boy in the vineyards of Oliver — Rajen Toor, who was born and grew up among the vines of the Okanagan Valley, a desert-like stretch of southern British Columbia where the Similkameen and Okanagan rivers carve through sandy benches and ancient glacial deposits. For years, Rajen worked as a winemaker at Desert Hills Estate Winery, learning the rhythms of the valley and the conventions of its industry. But in 2016, he launched Ursa Major as a side project — a personal outlet for experimentation, organic conversion, and the kind of winemaking that follows intuition rather than spreadsheets. The name came from two sources: the Ursa Major constellation that wheels overhead through the clear northern nights, and a black bear that would appear every harvest to eat its fill of grapes — a wild, ungovernable force that seemed the perfect mascot for a winery determined to resist the valley's obsession with "ultra-premium" conformity.

The project grew organically, both in the vineyard and in the cellar. Rajen began converting family vineyards to organic farming, implementing compost regimes and cover crops, and experimenting with wild fermentation, carbonic maceration, and whole-cluster ferments. The first big vintage — 2019 — produced 'Accustomed to the Dark', a Gamay Noir from the very vineyard Rajen was born on, and it was during that harvest that he met Bree, who would become his wife and the brains behind the viticulture program. Their courtship involved tasting each other's ferments, bringing imitation crab meat sandwiches for night-shift lunch, and spilling explosive bottles of pét-nat across an office desk. That spirit — chaotic, romantic, unfiltered — became the DNA of the brand. Ursa Major was never meant to be a polished corporate label; it was meant to be an extension of Rajen's personality, a way to tell stories about exile, love, misunderstanding, and the stubborn beauty of farming in an environment that does not make it easy.

Then came the devastation. Two back-to-back extreme cold-snap winters killed 100% of the vines on the Similkameen farm — a total decimation that would have ended a lesser project. But Rajen and Bree chose to rebuild from the dirt up, replanting in spring 2024 with hybrid varieties (Marquette and Seyval Blanc) and better-suited vinifera, alongside apple, plum, and peach trees, table grapes, and organic vegetables. The loss forced a reckoning with the Okanagan's climate future — and Ursa Major emerged from it with an even clearer mission: farm what flourishes here, not what the marketing brochures demand. The winery has no production facility of its own; Rajen rents space in different cellars, moving between tanks and barrels with the same adaptability that defines his farming. Every vintage is a chapter in a linear autobiography, told through handwritten labels, poetic names, and playlists that accompany the bottles. This is winemaking as memoir, as resistance, and as a love letter to the Similkameen's wild, ungovernable soul.

Ursa Major's cellar philosophy is a direct extension of its farming: listen to the vessel, follow the natural rhythms, and do not force it. Rajen has no production facility of his own; he moves between rented cellars, fermenting in stainless steel, neutral barrel, and whatever vessels the vintage demands. The wines are fermented with wild yeasts, usually through pied de cuve — a starter culture built from indigenous yeasts harvested from Ursa Major's own vineyards, ensuring that every fermentation carries the microbial fingerprint of the Similkameen and Okanagan soils. Sulfur is used sparingly: 15 to 35 ppm after primary and secondary fermentations are complete, and no additional sulfur at bottling. The wines are unfined and unfiltered, bottled with their sediment and their soul intact. This is not negligence; it is a deliberate choice to let the wine speak without a translator.

The techniques vary with the grape and the story Rajen wants to tell. Carbonic maceration appears frequently — whole clusters ferment under a blanket of CO₂, producing wines of juicy freshness and low tannin that reflect the playful side of the project. Whole-cluster ferments are foot-tread daily, extracting spice and structure from the stems. Direct press methods preserve the purity of whites and rosés. And co-fermentation — such as the Merlot-Gewurztraminer field blend — creates unexpected harmonies that no textbook would predict. The 2022 'CRUEL AND INDIFFERENT RIESLING' is a case study in adaptive ingenuity: harvested in the snow at only 16° Brix, the fermentation was arrested by a freak -30°C cold snap that froze the tank solid, causing the wine to expand and burst like a giant icicle. Rajen and Bree chipped the frozen mass back into the tank with sanitized shovels, and the resulting wine — 8% ABV, 36 g/L residual sugar, precariously balanced — is a testament to the chaos and creativity that defines Ursa Major's cellar.

What ties these disparate techniques together is personality. Every bottle is an extension of Rajen's inner life — a summary of whatever he is going through at the time, rendered in grape, yeast, and time. The handwritten labels are not a design choice but a moral one: they signal that this wine was made by a human, not a committee. The poetic, sometimes cheeky names — 'The House is on Fire', 'Exile, Love and Misunderstandings', 'hello, my name is silly goose' — are diary entries, therapy sessions, and love letters compressed into a few words. Rajen often includes a playlist with the wine, encouraging drinkers to slow down, sit with the bottle, and experience it as more than a beverage. This is winemaking as creative practice, as personal therapy, and as a rejection of the Okanagan's obsession with prestige and polish. The hope is for the valley to return to its humble roots — where the farmer is rewarded for tending the soil, and the wine is valued for its energy and honesty rather than its price point.

Ursa Major Winery is not merely a winery; it is a proof that the Okanagan wine industry has been telling itself the wrong story — and that a better story is possible if we listen to the vines, the soil, and the climate rather than the marketing consultants. In an era when the valley is filling with glass-and-concrete "experiences" and "ultra-premium" estates that force Cabernet Sauvignon into sand and rocks, Rajen and Bree Toor demonstrate that the most profound Canadian wines come from humility, creativity, and the willingness to farm what actually belongs here. The same extreme cold that killed their vineyard has become the catalyst for a hybrid revolution — Marquette and Seyval Blanc, apples and plums, organic vegetables and table grapes — a polyculture that treats the farm as a living ecosystem rather than a grape factory. The same wild yeasts that conventional wineries fear have become Ursa Major's signature, capturing the microbial soul of the Similkameen in every bottle. And the same personal demons that Rajen might have kept hidden have become the poetic, handwritten labels that make every bottle a confession and every shipment a therapy session.

The legacy of Ursa Major is the legacy of the creative hand in Canadian viticulture. The 2016 founding is not a distant memory but a living declaration — a reminder that the best wines are made by people who put themselves into the bottle, who refuse to separate their art from their anxiety, their joy from their process. The 'Accustomed to the Dark' is not merely a Gamay; it is the story of a boy born on a vineyard who grew up to farm it organically. The 'CRUEL AND INDIFFERENT RIESLING' is not merely a sweet wine; it is a survival narrative written in ice and shovels. And the 'hello, my name is silly goose' is not merely a rosé; it is a marriage in liquid form — Rajen's ferments and Bree's blends, his chaos and her precision, his poetry and her viticulture. The 2023 vintage, with its linear autobiographical chapters, proves that Ursa Major is still evolving, still confessing, still using wine as a form of personal therapy and public art.

The future of the project is tied to the future of the Similkameen farm — to the slow maturation of hybrid vines, the growth of orchard fruit, and the gradual achievement of biodynamic certification. It is tied to the future of the Okanagan itself — to whether the valley can abandon its delusional prestige and return to the humble roots where the farmer is rewarded for tending the soil. As the replanted farm comes into production, as Marquette proves that cold-climate reds can be both delicious and sustainable, as Seyval Blanc demonstrates that hybrid whites can rival any vinifera aromatic, and as the handwritten labels continue to tell the unfiltered story of a family farming against the odds, Ursa Major remains what Rajen has always intended it to be: an extension of himself — a constellation of wild yeast, sandy soil, extreme cold, and ungovernable creativity — structured not by fashion or technology but by honesty, patience, and the eternal reminder that the best wine is sometimes the one that bursts from the tank like a giant icicle, is chipped back in with a shovel, and survives to tell the story. The story of this winery is the story of a family who looked at a vineyard and saw not a factory but a canvas — and who proved that the best Canadian bottle is sometimes the one with a handwritten label, a ridiculous name, and a soul that no focus group could ever approve.