Little Farm Winery - Rhys Pender & Alishan Driediger
Little Farm is devoted to making minimal intervention wines that express the unique terroir and growing conditions of the Similkameen Valley in southern British Columbia, Canada. Focusing on Riesling and Chardonnay from our certified Organic Mulberry Tree Vineyard the winemaking has always sought to showcase the calcium carbonate rich siliceous soils that give an intense salty minerality to the wines.
The four-acre Mulberry Tree vineyard was planted in 2009 to 50/50 Riesling and Chardonnay and has been farmed organically since the start, certified Organic in 2014. Three clones of Chardonnay and six clones of Riesling are planted. Natural cover crops are used to encourage beneficial species and weed control is done mechanically and by hand. Typically, only sulfur sprays are required to prevent against powdery mildew (oidium) in the vineyard.
The Similkameen is known for organic farming with its warm, dry and sunny conditions giving low humidity and with cold winters and very hot, long days in the summer is the ideal conditions for organic farming. The warmth and long hours of sun make for ripe grapes while cool nights and the calcium carbonate soil preserve fresh acidity and create a low pH ideal for low intervention winemaking.
All the wines are naturally fermented and started with a Pied de Cuve, which is also the name of our tier of wines that are made naturally with no additions, subtractions, fining or filtration other than a small amount of sulfur at bottling. We start the Pied de Cuve about two weeks before general harvest and add it to the first main press load.
We are a low tech winery, hand harvesting before foot-treading the grapes and then bucketing them by hand into our small basket press for gentle pressing. Our focus is on Riesling and Chardonnay. The Pied de Cuve Riesling is fermented to dryness and aged on the lees in neutral barrels for around 8-10 months before being bottled unfined and unfiltered. The Pied de Cuve Chardonnay is also fermented and aged on the lees in neutral barrels. We make an Orange skin contact wine from Riesling that spends about 12-16 days on the skins. Occassionally we purchase or trade for some red grapes and make light, juicy, fresh unoaked reds. We also make a Riesling and a Chardonnay that we put through a light filtration prior to bottling.