Photo by Martin's Lane Winery
Barrel Cellar
If Mission Hill Family Estate is the Okanagan’s grand cathedral of wine, then Anthony Von Mandl’s newest creation, Martin’s Lane Winery, is a temple dedicated to Pinot Noir and Riesling.
Unlike the Mission Hill Family Estate across the lake in West Kelowna, Martin’s Lane does not feature a wide range of wine varietals, and is not generally open to the public.
Instead, the winery and its winemaker Shane Munn are obsessively dedicated to a single task; turning out some of the best Pinot Noir and Riesling in the world.
Martin’s Lane Winery opened this year (although it’s still surrounded by construction at nearby Cedar Creek) and features only seven wines, all of them ultra premium in quality and price. Four of them are Riesling, each made entirely from grapes sourced from a single vineyard, and ranging in price from $55 to $75.
But the real star of this show is the Pinot Noir. There are three varieties of Pinot Noir on offer at Martin’s Lane, and like the Riesling each is sourced from a single vineyard and range in price from $100 a bottle for the Simes Vineyard and Naramata Ranch Vineyard, up to $150 for a Pinot Noir sourced from the Fritzi’s Vineyard.
Munn, who hails from New Zealand but has worked in wineries in France, italy and the US, says the combination of a dedicated winery for Pinot Noir and Riesling combined with the specific vineyards are what attracted him to the project.
“I really believe the diversity of the Okanagan Valley makes it one of the most exciting wine regions in the world,” Munn says. “This project is a dream. The vineyards, the location, the winery and the vision … the most exciting project in the world of wine that I know of.”
Unlike Mission Hill Family Estate, which is packed with visitors every day from Spring through Fall, Martin’s Lane Winery is not open to the general public, leading many to wonder what exactly is inside this somewhat mysterious architectural wonder.
For this issue we sat down with winemaker Shane Munn and learned how the Martin’s Lane team designed the entire structure for the single purpose of producing the best Pinot Noir and Riesling possible.
“Anthony (von Mandl) is a very ambitious guy, and it shows in the fact that we have collectively designed and constructed this building from the ground up for just these two varietals,” Munn says. “They are both very delicate wines that can see their flavour profiles altered significantly just going through crush. We’ve taken a much more gentle approach to the way we treat the grapes throughout the entire winemaking process.”
Photo by Nic Lehoux
Martin’s Lane
Martin’s Lane Winery overlooks Okanagan Lake in Kelowna.
Looking at the winery from top to bottom reveals just how single-mindedly the team under Munn has taken the task of producing a world-beating Pinot Noir.
The winery itself slopes down the hill at an angle, and there are six levels that all flow into each other. One reason for this is that the designers managed to create a scenario where all the processes involved in producing the wine are powered by gravity, not by pumps. No yeast or bacteria has been used in the making of any wine at Martin’s Lane, and the Pinots are all unfiltered.
“This is literally the perfect building for making these wines with no compromise of any kind,” Munn says. “We don’t have a single pump in the entire building, other than one that’s used to clean out the tanks. It’s a more gentle approach for a notoriously fickle wine varietal.”
Pinot Noir in particular is known as a ‘difficult’ wine; difficult to grow and difficult to produce a really superlative wine, but when it’s made with care and quality the reward is a superlatively subtle wine that appeals to the true oenophile.
“Anthony always had a dream that Pinot could really put the Okanagan Valley on the map, and what we’ve done here is to take that varietal in a more complex direction, with no compromise at any stage,” Munn says. “Elegance is a word often attached to Pinot Noir and I think that is what we have produced here. While it is a lighter wine, it will also age exceptionally well; just because something is elegant, light and ethereal doesn’t mean it can't age well.”
The six levels of the winery each fulfill a different function in the winemaking process. Entering into the winery from the top, the first level provides space for the crush pad, and the resulting fruit flows downward through fermentation, into barrel, and finally into bottle, using gravity alone to move it through each level and stage of production.
At Level 1 the fruit is received, sorted, goes through crush, and then falls gently into the fermenters on Level 2. Level 3 is home to traditional concrete vessels or tanks used for Pinot Noir that naturally regulate fermentation. The Pinot settles here briefly, before being transferred to the barrel rooms below.
Level 4 is dedicated to Riesling. Direct from the Press, free run riesling juice flows beneath the winery and fills the fermentation tanks by gravity alone.
Wines that are being barreled go to the barrel rooms below the winery, where they spend 17 months in French oak with an ultra fine grain for a more subtle taste. There is also a small amount of Austrian oak with a slightly different flavour profile.
Level 5 is the final resting place for the wines prior to bottling. Wines harmonize here for up to one month before going on to the bottling line on Level 6.
The winery is currently processing about 65 tons of grapes per year and producing about 3,000 cases a year; a small and very exclusive run of ultra premium wines that are primarily sold directly to the consumer through the Martin’s Lane wine club, while about five per cent is sold to premiere restaurant accounts.