In the early 1990s, Donald Munro, a professor of forestry at the University of British Columbia, and his wife Carol purchased a four-acre plot of land in the heart of the Naramata Bench. In 1997 and 1998 they began planting Pinot Noir vines to Professor Munro’s exacting specifications. All of the vines, from Dijon clone 115, were own-rooted. Initially, the grapes were sold to Kettle Valley Winery, and a few bottles from that era still exist today.

The property was purchased by the Allander family in 2002. Initially, they continued to sell the grape production but, in 2004, they decided to bottle their own wine. In 2008, they began to make Chardonnay wines, and added a second label–The Waltz–from purchased grapes.

The property changed hands again in 2018, when it was purchased by an investor group led by Doug Barzelay and Nathan Todd. Doug recounts his first exposure to Foxtrot: “In 2011, while Nathan and I were on a business trip to Vancouver, a friend and prominent Burgundy collector served several outstanding Burgundies, and one bottle whose identity he concealed. It had an elegance and complexity that reminded me of Chambolle-Musigny, but a distinctive terroir character I couldn’t place. When he revealed that it was a bottle of 2006 Foxtrot Pinot Noir, it changed in an instant my view of the potential of New World pinot”

Foxtrot makes wines in the belief that a wine should be an expression of its place, of the particular soils and microclimate from which it comes, the vines and grapes that give it life, and the weather conditions that shape it, all animated by the sensibility of the individuals who make it. Great wine is not replicable from place to place nor the same from year to year.

Thus, Foxtrot does not aim to ape wines from Burgundy. Instead, the team has embarked on a journey to discover how to make wines of depth and refinement that reflect the soils and conditions of the Okanagan.

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Foxtrot - The Waltz Pinot Noir

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