KELOWNA, B.C. – Orchardist Keith Holman hadn’t planned on becoming a winery owner when he bought a fruit stand in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley.
The third-generation farmer also hadn’t planned on being an orchardist, even though he ended up as one of the biggest in the Okanagan.
He studied marine biology at the University of British Columbia, but he and his wife, Lynn, soon discovered they missed the land and the lake more than they longed for the sea.
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“We came back, but there were no jobs except in the fruit industry. I bought a 12-acre farm in the late 1970s, which eventually grew to 160 acres. We grew all kinds of fruit. It was tough times to be in the fruit industry, as it still is today.”
Holman acquired his attachment to the land from his grandfather.
“I remember driving around with him and he’d say, ‘see this farm here, he just sold it for this; that was a heck of a price.’ Three or four years later, that farm came up for sale again and it was always for more money.”
When Holman turned 50, he figured he should either retire or expand. So he bought Spiller’s Corner in Naramata, which had a fruit stand, a house and an acre orchard.
“We bought Spiller’s Corner because of the fruit stand, one of the oldest in the Okanagan and the oldest on the Bench. I wanted to experience the customer, which you never get to do when you’re just a farmer.”
He turned the house into a bed and breakfast and started a winery, using fruit from the orchard.
“The fruit industry has not come into its own as far as agritourism is concerned, which is one of the reasons why we did the fruit winery – to show that fruit can be used for wine or have a cidery or fruit winery.
“Every fruit orchard could have a distillery or a fruit winery and a B&B if they choose to augment their incomes. You have to put value-added with agritourism to remain successful as a farmer. People will come because they love the on-farm fruit wines.”
Holman enjoyed the contact with customers so much that he decided to continue creating and buying. He now owns seven wineries and a distillery: Spiller Estate Winery, Mistral, Lang Vineyards, Soaring Eagle, Stonehill, Zero Balance, K Mountain Vineyards and Spirit West Distillery.
After his first three wineries, he found himself in the same position he was in when he bought Spiller’s: retire or grow. The decision was made when he heard that Gunther Lang was selling his winery. Six months later, he owned Lang’s and changed the name of his company to Holman-Lang.
“It fast tracked all of our wineries behind it. The engine was Lang, but the others could be hooked onto it. We could run all the wineries under the same kind of direction.”
He kept Lang’s method of growing three tons of red grapes per acre and four tons of white. Holman said the practice is costly but produces superior wine.
He also hired winemaker Bernard Schirrmeister.
In the first year, Schirrmeister took Lang’s to a two-star level at the Austrian Wine Challenge and the next year brought Soaring Eagle, Mistral and Stonehill up to that world-class level.
“It was a good feather in our cap, showing we were on the right path, doing the right things,” Holman said.
As he was expanding, Holman also knew he needed a new business model.
“We wanted to create a palate education so if people come to our wineries, they’re going to experience a different style of wines and a different palate experience.”
That seems to have worked because the people he poured wine for in the morning at Stonehill he saw again in the afternoon at Soaring Eagle, which he created from a run-down estate a German remittance man spent $7 million creating in the 1960s.
Holman also learned to hire the right people and then get out of the way and let them do their job – such as Debbie Arychuk at Lang’s.
“I tell people that I am the face of Lang,” Arychuk said with a laugh as she poured a Riesling that sells out as soon as it hits the shelf, much like the Marechal Foch and Canadian Maple.
Holman is betting North Americans are starting to embrace the European philosophy of dining.
“That’s what’s going on now, that’s why wine consumption is up. It’s a food, wine is a food.”
And when the consumer also embraces the idea of starting the meal with a digestif and ending it with an aperitif, Holman will have the aged ports, brandies, cognacs and fortified wines ready for them.
In a flash of insight about six years ago, he bought a still, which he “kept in mothballs, until a guy walked through my door looking for a job as a winemaker. Turned out Laurent Lafuente was also a master blender and wanted to make boutique wines.”
Holman started Spirit West Distillery, and thinks cottage distilleries are at the same point wineries were in the early 1990s when Lang helped craft the cottage wine industry.
“We have some big moves planned. I have a huge appetite as far as the future in the wine industry is concerned. I can do anything I want to do, but you have to have a vision.”
