Michael Botner
Wild Goose
The Kruger family, along with some notable friends like Bill Barisoff celebrate the winery’s expansion.After many years of working out of the tasting room built in 1994, Wild Goose Winery celebrated the grand opening of an impressive, new 1,800 sq. ft. tasting room and winery expansion on August 18 with special guests, friends and family.
Modern, spacious and inviting, the cellar door opens up on a 1,000 sq. ft. patio that sits over Stoney Slopes Vineyard. Upstairs, the facility includes a function room for VIP tastings, meetings, lunches and private events, a small kitchen, and offices; while downstairs it features a grand barrel room and winemaker’s lab.
Launched in 1990 by Adolf Kruger as a retirement project, Wild Goose was the first winery in Okanagan Falls. From that time it grew into an 11,000 case a year operation by 2011, and anticipates 13,000 cases in sales for 2012.
“Wild Goose is the only one of the original farmgate wineries which is still family owned,” says Roland Kruger. In the late 1990s, Adolf handed over the reins to his sons, with Hagan taking over winemaking duties, while Roland took on marketing and sales. Still active behind the scenes, Adolf’s grand opening speech at the celebration for the expansion gave a rousing account of the early days of the winery. Hagan, Harry McWatters, MP Dan Albas and MPP Bill Barisoff added their own words of wisdom leading up to the ribbon cutting, which was followed by a pig roast.
