At Osoyoos, where the Okanagan Valley meets the US border, sagebrush grows between the vines and the locals talk of Canada’s only desert: the northern tip of a dry belt that runs, basin by basin, all the way to Mexico. From here the valley runs north for some 160 kilometres along a string of lakes, on the 49th and 50th parallels, further north than any Swiss vineyard and level with Champagne and the Rheingau. Before the freeze of 2024 about 4,400 hectares of vines grew here (2022), some 86 per cent of British Columbia’s roughly 5,100 hectares, and nearly all of them need irrigation.
A desert that freezes
The engine of the valley is Okanagan Lake, 135 kilometres long and deep enough that it hardly ever freezes: it stores the summer’s heat, softens the autumn nights and lets the grapes ripen in a season that is short but intense. The climate is continental all the same, with summer days above 30 degrees and winters that can bring minus 25. Hard frosts are the price of the desert: a cold snap in December 2022 cost over half of the 2023 crop, and between 11 and 15 January 2024 the temperature stayed well below minus 20 for days and killed the buds on most vines. The 2024 vintage was all but lost; wineries were allowed to make wine from grapes bought outside the province, many of them from Washington State; close to 800 hectares of dead vines were pulled out in 2025, two thirds of them around Oliver, and most of that had been replanted by 2026.
In the glass
The grapes the region is known for, by sweetness, acidity, tannin and body.
| Grape | Sweetness | Acidity | Tannin | Body |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Merlot | dry | medium(−) to medium | medium(−) to medium(+) | medium to full |
| Pinot Noir | dry | medium(+) to high | low to medium | light to medium |
| Cabernet Franc | dry, also medium-dry | medium(+) to high | medium(−) to medium(+) | medium(−) to medium(+) |
| Cabernet Sauvignon | dry | medium to high | medium(+) to high | medium to full |
| Syrah | dry | medium to medium(+) | medium to high | medium to full |
| Pinot Gris | dry to off-dry, also sweet | medium(−) to medium | white, no tannin | medium(−) to full |
| Chardonnay | dry | medium to high | white, no tannin | medium(−) to full |
| Riesling | dry to luscious | high | white, no tannin | light to medium(+) |
Each grape’s typical range worldwide, not in this region alone, on the WSET tasting grid (Level 3, 2022): dry to luscious, low to high, light to full. The dot before each name shows the colour of a typical bottle. Outlined: a sweet style beside the dry wines.
After the pull-out
Vines have grown here since 1859, when the Oblate mission at Kelowna planted them, but until the 1980s the valley made mostly hybrids such as Maréchal Foch. The turn came with the 1988 free-trade agreement with the United States: a government programme paid growers in 1988 and 1989 to pull out their hybrid and labrusca vines, roughly two thirds of the valley’s vineyard, and what was replanted was Vitis vinifera. In 2002 the Osoyoos Indian Band, which had been growing grapes since 1968, opened Nk’Mip Cellars in the desert above Osoyoos, regarded as the first Indigenous-owned winery in North America. Since 2015 the valley has been drawing finer lines: the Golden Mile Bench west of Oliver was the first official sub-region, and eleven of these sub-GIs now exist, from Lake Country in the north to the Golden Mile Slopes in the south; a wine that names one must take 95 per cent of its grapes from it.
Sense of scale
4,400 ha Okanagan Valley has about 31 % of the Swiss vineyard.
One square is all of Switzerland: about 14,350 hectares of vines.
Vineyards compared
Vineyard area in hectares, rounded, as the articles give it. Regions without a reliable figure are left out.
A cool northern edge
Merlot and Pinot Noir are the most planted reds, with Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah behind them; Pinot Gris and Chardonnay lead the whites, ahead of Riesling and Gewürztraminer. Icewine is made here too; Canada’s first was pressed by Walter Hainle at Peachland in the 1970s, though Ontario’s Niagara Peninsula makes far more of it today. In the glass the Okanagan is the New World with a cool northern edge: ripe fruit, fresh acidity. Pinot Gris and Riesling suit lake fish and Asian dishes at 8 to 10 degrees; Merlot and Syrah go with grilled beef or lamb at 16 to 18.