Gene Covert
Gene Covert of Covert Farms was an early adopter of Zinfandel in the Okanagan Valley.
On a dare by a friend at UBC, Gene Covert planted two acres of Zinfandel in 2007-8 with a line-up of other varieties in Coyote vineyard, a 30 acre block on a plateau directly south of McIntyre Bluff. Covert Farm’s 600 acre property which also includes fruits, vegetables and rare varieties of tomatoes, achieved organic certification in 2010. It was Gene’s grandfather, California farmer George Covert, who purchased the farm in 1959 after moving to the Okanagan.
“Planted on sandy, gravelly, glacio-fluvial soil, our Zinfandel block is as exposed as you can get,” Covert says. “There is no stagnant air; the vineyard location gets a lot of wind.”
To make sure the grapes ripen properly, Covert drops enough fruit, going to single bunch treatment, to concentrate flavours. At 15-16 brix, “we selectively pick unripe bunches and, instead of dropping them on the ground, the fruit goes into our methode ancestrale program,” Covert says. A traditional, less controlled process for making sparkling wine, a second fermentation of the blush coloured wine takes place with the addition of yeast in a capped bottle and no disgorgement.
“The remainder of the grapes are harvested at 26-27 brix in late October or early November at 2½ to 3 tons per acre. Instead of sorting, the bunch average is taken. With some raisins and some pink mixed with ripe berries, you get a crazy complexity of flavours.”
Covert Farms 2017 Methode Ancestrale Sparkling Zinfandel is not a cookie cutter wine by any stretch. Sediment and yeasty, fresh bread aromas are features of this fizzy beast. Light in alcohol and colour, bone dry on the intensely fresh, fruity palate, flavours suggest cranberry, yeast, granny smith apple and mineral.
Covert Farms 2015 Grande Reserve Zinfandel benefitted from a hot year and traditional winemaking regime. It struts its stuff with intensely rich, concentrated prune, cherry and blackberry fruit and notes of dark chocolate, coffee bean, paprika and vanilla supported by ripe, spicy, chewy tannins.