Robert Bell's
Wines of Canada
Since 1992
Growers' Wines Ltd.
Growers' Wines Ltd.: In 1923 farmers on the Saanich Peninsula on Vancouver Island who were growing loganberries established this winery on Quadra Street in downtown Victoria to produce sweet, port-like loganberry wines. (The berry was developed by an Oregon horticulturist named Logan who crossed raspberry and wild blackberry.) The five founders of the winery were William Bickford, Philip Holloway, Neil Lamont, Clarence Oldfield and Harry Tanner and their first two brands were Logana, made entirely with loganberries, and Vin Supreme, a blend of loganberries and blueberries.
The winery owed its initial success to Herbert Anscomb, an accountant who ran the Victoria Phoenix Brewing Company before investing in Growers', which he managed from 1927 to 1955. By 1936 he had consolidated all the loganberry wine brands under Growers', having purchased first Richmond Wine Co. and then Victoria Wineries (British Columbia) Ltd. The latter -- called Brentwood Products Ltd. when it opened in 1927, changing its name two years later -- had ex-jockey Stephen Slinger as its winemaker and sold its wines primarily under the Slinger brand. These brands remained in the portfolio of Growers' and its successor wineries for more than fifty years.
The British-born Anscomb juggled business with a long political career: he was reeve of Oak Bay, then mayor of Victoria and sat from 1936 to 1952 as a Conservative in the British Columbia legislature. As the province's minister of finance from 1945 until 1952, he introduced the province's first sales tax, three per cent, in 1948. As a cabinet minister, Anscomb ensured that his winery's products enjoyed secure listings in government liquor stores. Anscomb's political links with the government in Ottawa also enabled Growers' to get a distillery license in 1936, then the only Canadian winery with that privilege. The alcohol was used to fortify wines and to make some of the first wine-based cocktails. One example: 45 Per, made with rum and loganberry brandy.
In 1930 the first grape contracts -- the agreed price was $100 a ton -- were signed by Hughes with Victoria Wineries Ltd. The credit for contracting the first grapes usually goes to Growers' Wines Ltd. because it acquired Victoria Wineries at this time
After pioneer grape grower J.W. Hughes accepted a ten-year contract from Anscomb, Growers' began buying wine grapes in the Okanagan valley in 1932, shipping them by rail and boat to Victoria for processing, where the wines were matured in the eighty large oak casks that Anscomb bought from the Christian Brothers winery in California during the American Prohibition. By 1959, when Growers' was buying about 1,000 tons of grapes annually, the winery began crushing the grapes in the Okanagan (on the vineyard operated by Frank Schmidt) and shipping the must to Victoria in 500-gallon glass-lined vats. A contemporary newspaper account noted: ''A crusher has been installed in the heart of the Okanagan vineyard at Lakeside, and the pulp is each day pumped into tanks mounted on trucks for fast shipment to Victoria. Each truck carries 3,000 gallons and the journey is made overnight so that the temperature of the juice will remain low.'' Crushing near the vineyards obviously improved the wines. It rained during the bounteous 1969 harvest and the wet grapes certainly would have begun to spoil had they been shipped to Victoria for crushing, as had been done for so many years.
Dr Eugene Rittich : Hungary-born winemaker for Growers' Wines Ltd. from 1935 to 1957, Rittich (with his brother) authored the first book on Okanagan viticulture, entitled: European Grape Growing In Cooler Districts Where Winter Protection is Necessary. It was published in 1934 by Burgess Publishing Co. of Minneapolis.
Dr. John Bowen, One of the developers of the cider-making process for Growers' apple cider, Bowen was born in Vancouver and, after getting a master's in microbiology from the University of British Columbia in 1937, spent three years as a bacteriologist for the Fraser Valley Milk Producers' Co-operative. After three years in the air force, he joined Growers' Wines Ltd. in Victoria as an understudy to winemaker Dr. Eugene Rittich who was thinking of retiring. But because Rittich, a year later, was no closer to retiring, Bowen moved to Ottawa and the federal department of agriculture for two years until, in 1948, he won a transfer to the research station at Summerland. It was here in the 1950s that he and Summerland's director, F. A. Atkinson, developed at fruit grower request the method for making cider from the Okanagan's abundant sweet eating apples.
Anscomb sold Growers' in 1955; it was first purchased by a syndicate of Vancouver businessmen that included Coleman Hall (better known later for his investments in the Vancouver Canucks professional hockey team) and a retired banker, Francis Lumb. Late in 1959 Vancouver stationer Ernest C. Warner took over, to the evident delight of general manager Brian Roberts, who wrote to grower Frank Schmidt: ''We have a new controlling interest in the Company in the person of Mr. Ernest C. Warner, who is an exceptionally capable, vigorous and successful businessman. Mr. Lumb remains President, and the Company carries on in the same way, except that we have a very much more aggressive outlook and will make every possible effort to expand and develop.'' A Growers' advertisement in the Kelowna Courier in May 1962 signaled the new outlook: ''If you are interested in growing grapes for wine production Growers' Wine Company of Victoria will give long term contracts and if necessary financial assistance.'' Between 1962 and 1965 Growers' gave long-term (seven-to-ten year contracts) to thirteen growers, including R.J. and Bill Bennett, sons of W.A.C. Bennett and owners of a ranch north of Kelowna. The Bennetts never became significant growers.
Brian H Roberts, . (1914-1994): A Johannesburg-born chartered accountant, Roberts was a rising executive with Western Wine, Brandy and Spirit Co. of Worcester in Cape Province, South Africa, when he and his family, repelled by apartheid, emigrated to Canada in 1955. After nine months as an accountant in Calgary, he joined Growers' Wines Ltd Victoria in 1956 and was its general manager and ultimately president and chairman until he left in 1976 to become general manager of the Wine Council of British Columbia until retiring in 1981.
Roberts was able to expand the winery into new markets from coast to coast: in 1964, after $300,000 was spent on the Victoria winery, Growers' began bottling its popular cider there. Subsequently, the company opened a subsidiary, Castle Wines, in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, to supply the Prairie markets. But for Roberts, the Growers' winery might have moved from its old Victoria plant on Quadra Street long before it did in 1978. In the mid-1960s, the company undertook a study of the economics of phasing out the Victoria plant in favor of a winery closer to the vineyards in the Okanagan. Roberts reported to the annual meeting in 1968: ''Our own experts and experts brought in by the parent company, Imperial Tobacco, have convinced us that any savings in such a change would be wiped out by having to rebuild on the mainland at present construction and financing costs.''
Warner wanted wineries in every province and by 1964 Growers' was completing an Edmonton winery and announced plans for one in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. "The opening of all-weather roads over the Rockies and the improvement of trucking facilities makes it possible for us to deliver grapes to Edmonton at comparative costs to Victoria and Vancouver," Roberts said in 1964. Roberts, the glue that held Growers' together through the tumultuous decades after Anscomb, was general manager and later president from 1956 to 1976. Imperial Tobacco bought Growers' in 1965, changing the name to Ste-Michelle after a popular wine brand controlled by Castle Wines Ltd., a Growers' subsidiary in Saskatchewan. When the cigarette company's brief diversification into wines ended, Jordan Wines Ltd. of Ontario bought Growers' in 1973, merging it with Villa Wines, Jordan's subsidiary in New Westminister (originally called West Coast Wines Ltd. when incorporated in 1960). In 1976 Jordan & Ste-Michelle Cellars Ltd. was adopted as the winery's national name. The Victoria winery was closed in 1977, replaced by a new $7 million winery in Surrey, with a storage capacity for four million gallons and room to be tripled. However, after the market for domestic wineries stalled in the 1980s, Jordan & Ste-Michelle was acquired by T.G. Bright & Co. who closed and dismantled the Surrey winery in 1990.
In 1993 Cartier and Inniskillin merge with T.G. Bright to form Vincor. Vincor was in turn purchased by Constellation Brands in 2006 in a not-so-friendly sale, The Ontario Teachers’ acquires Canada’s largest wine business from Constellation Brands October 17, 2016 . They now operate under the name Arterra Wines Canada
The Growers' name survives as a popular brand of cider. It is owned by Arterra Wines Canada . In 1962 Growers' took over the production and marketing of apple cider that had been developed by scientist Dr. John Bowen for Sun-Rype in Kelowna.
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