Gavin Miller and Shana Miller
Gavin Miller and Shana Miller of Upper Bench Winery & Creamery.
The day that led Gavin Miller to a career as one of Canada’s top winemakers arrived almost literally like a ‘sign’ from above.
“I’d emigrated to Canada in 1997 from the UK and soon got a job in the sign industry, having been a sales manager for a graphics company back in the UK,” Miller recalls. “But the Okanagan Valley wasn’t particularly healthy economically in the 1990s and the company had to close down.”
It was a devastating thing to happen so soon after arriving in Canada for a new life, but the layoff led Miller in an entirely new direction, purely by chance.
“My last client was actually Hillside Winery (in Naramata, near Penticton, BC), so I went to see this fella to tell him we couldn’t make their signs anymore,” Miller says. “Then the contractor there said, well, that means you haven’t got a job, right? So, then he said, are you able to give me a hand, and I said yes, so I started the next morning.
“I started working at Hillside doing carpentry work, and gradually built that into working with the actual winemaking,” he added. “I always had an interest in wine, and I really lucked out with the people I’d met.”
But those were still early days for the BC wine industry, and few wineries in those years stayed open all year, so like most people, Miller was laid off in the winter months.
“I eventually got laid off from Hillside, so I went to school in Oliver to study viticulture, with the idea of becoming a salesman, because that’s what I’d done all my life and I thought of becoming an agent for a winery,” he explained.
Miller studied during that year with Bill Eggert of Fairview Cellars in Oliver, and Miller says that experience turned his life in a new direction.
“Bill was a very passionate man in many ways, and I guess his passion for wine rubbed off on me during the three or four months I spent learning to grow grapes, and I learned a lot from it. Halfway through the course (sales) was not what I wanted to do any more. I wanted to grow grapes and make wine myself.”
But the transition to a career in winemaking was far from easy. “I spent a very challenging and low-paid four years learning how to become a winemaker,” Miller recalls. “I had a great opportunity, because the wine industry was in its infancy then, and I was lucky enough to be taken on as the assistant winemaker by Red Rooster and then Poplar Grove, and then eventually moved on to Painted Rock and was a winemaker there for four years.
In fact, Miller had his hands in several South Okanagan wineries, including Lake Breeze and Hawthorne Vineyard (now See Ya Later Ranch). While he worked at Poplar Grove, Miller also worked with several wineries, working with a wide range of varietals.
“We made a lot of wine for other people back then as a sort of custom crush,” Miller explains. “For example, we made what I believe was Laughing Stock’s second vintage, we worked with Joie Farm and with Montague Cellars, and then in 2007 John Skinner came and asked us to make their first vintage at Painted Rock, so that year I made wines for both Poplar Grove and Painted Rock, and we ran two separate crews.”
But Miller’s dream was to become a head winemaker, while his wife’s passion was making high-end artisanal cheese. Shana Miller was born in Nova Scotia and lived in the Eastern Townships of Quebec before arriving in Pentiction in 1995, where two things happened; she met and married Gavin, and she learned to make cheese from the original cheesemaker at Poplar Grove, Sandra Chalmers.
And then fate played another part in their story, giving them both the chance they wanted.
“This place, Upper Bench, was in receivership at the time, one of eight wineries that were overstretched and in receivership,” Miller remembers. “The short version of the story was we had very good partners, and so we went down to Vancouver, put a bid in, and won it by just a fraction.
“Then we spent the next year renovating the winery and the house so we could live in it, bringing the vineyards back up to scratch, and since my wife makes cheese, we built a creamery on the end of the building, and then we opened in May of 2012.”
Miller says, while he had to struggle through the early days, he loves just about everything about being a winemaker.
“For me it’s about doing something that you love to do, it’s about the quality of life, and it’s to be proud of something that you produce and that makes people happy,” Miller says. “I’ve noticed you don’t often see people unhappy when they’re in buying wine, and if I can spread a little happiness through what I do, that makes my life even better.
“Honestly, “it’s been a great ride.”■
