our winemaking
Patience & Precision
Our winemaking is driven by careful attention and exacting care, listening to nature and guiding each grape to its fullest expression, from vine to bottle.
Meet our winemaker
Ryan McKibbon leads the winemaking team at Black Hills, bringing over 14 years of experience across Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa. A hands-on winemaker with a deep appreciation for site-driven wines, Ryan has worked with renowned Pinot Noir producers Felton Road (NZ) and Crystallum (SA) before returning to Canada to focus on the South Okanagan. Since joining Black Hills in 2022, he has played a key role in crafting expressive, precise wines that reflect the region’s unique growing environment.
It begins in the vineyard
Since 2020, we have practiced organic farming. But that’s just the starting point. We incorporate regenerative viticulture practices, striving to give more to the land than we take. Our vineyard team obsesses over every vine as well as the surrounding native flora and fauna. By working with nature and promoting biodiversity, we strive towards a self-sustaining ecosystem. Farming with precision and using leading technology allows us to get the most from our exceptional terroir.
Meticulously crafted
We patiently nurture the potential of our fruit in the cellar, waiting for the right moment to take action based on taste alone. Our approach is based on traditional, time-honoured winemaking techniques that favour patience over efficiency. Picking decisions are made after relentlessly walking vineyard rows through harvest, tasting berry after berry. The fruit is then hand-harvested and slowly fermented using native yeasts to build complexity and best express our vineyards.
Rewarding patience
From there, it’s all about time. Each wine has its own tailored maturation process to ensure the fruit is the focal point. Our preference is large-format vessels like concrete and foudres alongside nuanced, lightly-toasted oak barrels. We then spend months working on blends – tasting, trialing, and iterating – to capture the best from each individual barrel.