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Tyson Stills
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Winecrush
Wine Crush products on display at Feasts of Fields.
For Bill Broddy, it all started while riding his bike shortly after moving to the Okanagan Valley in 2015. Broddy was out for a bike ride on the back roads of his new hometown, musing about his hobby of creating sourdough bread, when he discovered some wild grapes. The wheels of his brain began turning as fast as those of his bike. Little did he know his lightbulb idea to use the grapes as a yeast source for bread would lead to a burgeoning gourmet food operation.
Broddy contacted Tyson Still and asked if he knew anything about baking. Still responded with a resounding no, but wanted to find out more about what Broddy was up to, and when he heard Broddy’s somewhat crazy idea, the two decided to create a new company called Winecrush.
The wild yeast living on the skins of the grapes proved to be a fine source for an organic “mother” for the fermented sourdough bread (Italian nonnas have been working with biga – the grape sourdough starter – for generations) but success in the bakery didn’t come instantly for the entrepreneurial pair.
“We tried many, many times to figure out this bread, then we finally got it down and everything was working out,” Still explains. “I also went to a bakery in the South Okanagan and had a class with a baker about the special tricks behind every aspect of sourdough making. It didn’t stop there.”
From that bread making experience evolved a full food product line. Still notes the original concepts came about in November 2015, but the business really got its feet under it in January 2016.
Now, two years in, Winecrush is experiencing great success and partnerships by making use of the leftovers from Okanagan wineries. After the bread and grape yeast experiment, Broddy and Still began collecting marc (grapes after the juice has been extracted for wine) and processing it for use in fine food products.
“I have always called it crush, just because it’s a big pile of crushed grapes,” Still says of the leftover product that comes from wineries to their Summerland-based operation for dehydrating. “We have a company that picks up our grape seed and skin for us. Then it’s dehydrated and milled into our fine powder before it’s infused into food.”
As Still explains, there is an endless supply of Winecrush’s key ingredient in the Okanagan. Plus, there is plenty of life left in the grape after being pressed. He claims there is 70 to 75 per cent of the grape’s nutrients still in the marc after pressing, and for every three bottles of wine there is one bottle of “nutrient-packed leftovers.”
The marc is something Still sees as being so flavourful and nutritious; so good, he’ll often take a handful and chew on it until the flavour is gone.
“From the oil in the seeds to all the antioxidants and natural plant compounds called oligomeric proanthocyanidins complexes (OPCs) and procyanidin dimers,” he explains. “Bill and I are both very passionate about fine foods and we took it to the next level because we soon learned you can add Winecrush to everything including meat, cheese and Winecrisps.”
Still describes the Winecrush line as products “truly for everyone,” adding “I don’t think it should be just the people that care about wine that care about Winecrush.”
Winecrush creates delicious foods that include the dehydrated marc like Pinot Chorizo, Cabernet Salami, Pinot Gris Turkey sausage, Gamay goat cheese, Mericheese, Sulree Red Cheddar, Hot Surlee mustard, Red Surlee mustard, Merlot Winecrisps and Gewürztraminer Sourdough Winecrisps. Plus there is a range of the Winecrush powders (Pinot Nois, Pinot Gris, Merlot and Malbec) customers can use in their own recipes. Still even posts a number of his favourite recipes on winecrush.ca to share.
With the passion for good food that Broddy and Still share, it was necessary to bring in partners to create items that met their high standards.
“We have also built some tremendous relationships with our contract suppliers for our meat and cheese,” Still says, noting Helmut’s Sausage Kitchen makes all of the meat products, Sulree Red Cheddar is made at Castle Cheese while Mericheese and Gamay Goat cheese is made at Happy Days Dairy Farm.
Mustards and Winecrisps are made in-house at Winecrush.
“It really took a lot of developing and testing with every single one of our products,” notes Still. “There is a lot of science behind every product we develop and we stuck to what we knew best.”
Recipes and product development are a team process with Still at the helm of creating.
“It’s definitely a group effort,” he says. “But the initial development of our products has been done with my recipes.”
Still dreams up his recipes from his passion for home cooking, which he has enjoyed his entire life.
“I’m always pushing boundaries with my cooking,” he notes. “It really is my happy place. I love cooking for people.”
One of Still’s new creations starts with the oak barrel full of 78 pounds of hot peppers that he’s been aging for about five months in his special blend of spices, red wine lees paste and in-house red wine vinegar. This combination will become hot sauce sometime in May 2018.
“I’m working on packaging for the hot sauce,” explains Still. “I’m looking for a smaller version of a wine bottle.”
When ready, the hot sauce will join the other Winecrush products for sale in Okanagan Valley wineries, Save On Foods, Urban Fare and fine wine shops throughout BC The gourmet food items are found at these locations in Winecrush self-serve point of purchase stations (also known as picnic stations), which includes a mini-fridge with the Winecrush tiger logo and may be paired with shelving filled with mustards, Winecrush powder and Winecrisps.
“We even have one of our stations down at Fireball Brewery in Oliver, BC, because who doesn’t love meat and cheese with a crisp cracker?” Still says. “We had wineries signed up for our picnic station last year and it was a huge hit amongst the wineries involved. Our goal is to add another 30 more this year from Vernon to Osoyoos.”
Another way Winecrush gets out into the Okanagan is through catering for corporate events and weddings. Still’s brother Drew often helps out at events.
“We have portable wood-fire ovens that we do all our cooking out of,” Still explains. “It gives our clients a very unique experience having dinner come out of a fire. You have flavours you never had before. If I could cook everyday over a fire, I would.”
Still and Broddy see Winecrush growing at a consistent pace in the coming years with a long term goal of leaping to multiple licensed Winecrush operations around the world in the various wine regions.
“As Winecrush grows, we are definitely going to need more grape seed and skin,” notes Still. “There are so many [wineries] that have supported us since the start. Thank you everyone for the support throughout our first couple of years. The wine industry is one of the best communities to be part of.”
Wine grapes are seeing an extended life, sometimes even being paired with the wine they started, thanks to the ideas of Broddy and Still and their innovative gourmet food products.