The Barrel Room
Join WineGuyTy as he roams the planet in search of the stories behind the exceptional bottles in your local shops, your cellar & the wine list at your favorite resto.
The Barrel Room
Richard da Silva - Proprietor & Vigneron | Da Silva Winery | Naramata BC
Richard da Silva is a terroir-driven Vigneron-Winemaker who clearly does things his way. Sometimes controversial, occasionally unconventional, but always with care and a deep understanding of his many vineyards and terroirs scattered throughout a few established GI's that he commandeers with his wife Twylla and winery team.
His family roots go way back to the mid '50's when they emigrated from Portugal and settled in the South Okanagan to become fruit growers & purveyors. With his family's traditions in place and a foundation in those exigencies, he eventually made his way to wine and is now one of the most respected GRAPE growers--vignerons--in both Naramata and the entire Okanagan valley.
Part of his world encompasses a great Mexican + Portuguese influenced tapas style on-site kitchen-restaurant "The Kitchen" with longtime friend and chef Abul Adame and theirs is the longest partnership of its kind in BC spanning well north of a decade.
We broached many subjects from skiing to favorite restaurant dishes and of course wines including a tasting of his proprietary field blends on a great sunny Okanagan afternoon just prior to harvest 2025.
Enjoy the conversation but more, seek out da Silva wines on restaurant lists and in wine boutiques around the province. Or consider joining the wine club! You're always in for a treat and you'll be rewarded with some of the most expressive and rare wines locally made + available throughout BC.
375 Upper Bench Road North
Penticton, BC V2A 8T2
IG: @dasilvawines
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Hi, I'm Wine Guy Ty. Welcome to the Barrel Room. Today, my guest is Richard Da Silva. He's the proprietor, along with wife Twyla, and a vigneron at his eponymous vineyards and winery, Da Silva Winery. And it's the upper bench area of Naramata in sunny Okanagan, D.C. Hi, Richard. Hello, Ty. How are you? Good. Before we get into it, I need to thank listeners and subscribers. It's been a minute since I've been able to upload a new episode. So I say a big thanks for your continued support and your patience. And it's good to be back. And I also want to make mention of my last interview with Felipe Ferreira from Quinta da Forge in Douro, Portugal. He has over 30 autochthonous indigenous varietals planted and over a decade at the helm there. So grapes that you're probably familiar with. With traditional footstock. Stomping in the Ligares. So if that sounds of interest to you, head on over and have a listen. So you were, you just got back from Apex? ..You were in Apex this morning. What was that all about?
Richard da Silva:Doing some non-wine related activities. So we're just up, my wife and I, as kind of one of our sole sports. Skiing is our first. Cycling is second. And trail running is pretty close to cycling. So we were up there today doing some trail running. So doing some training. Yeah, so it was a fantastic way to go do a Sunday morning and it was fantastic up at the local ski hill. How long did it take to get up there? We're very fortunate here that the ski hill for us is under 30 minute drive from here so it's such a, one of the great benefits of living where we live everything here is 30 minutes away so including skiing so yeah it was a fantastic drive up there, it was beautiful up there today and sunny and cool kind of alpine fields to it, and it's just so fortunate to be here.
WineGuyTy:Yeah, I've never been up there myself. I've been to some of the local mountains, but not Apex, but that sounds fun.
Richard da Silva:I always say it's the little brother of Red Mountain. If you've ever skied Red Mountain in Rosland, it certainly has a higher proportion of black runs to blue, but it's a fantastic small family hill. It'll never kind of blow up like some of the other bigger resorts. It's always going to be kind of a family vibe, and we really love that. That's what we really enjoy about it. It's local and small town vibe up there.
WineGuyTy:Cool.
WineGuyTy:Proprietor and vigneron is what your card says. That's interesting. Vigneron, the French term for grape grower rather than winemaker. Why is that distinction important to you?
Richard da Silva:I think it encompasses typically, I think, I would say people see it as the winemaking process as two things. viticulture and vineyard, grape growing, farming, and then winemaking as two separate disciplines. And certainly they do interact with each other and there's crossover, but most places in, let's say in BC, for example, those are distinct different roles. Smaller producers like myself, and the vineyard is not, I wouldn't think it's unique to just myself, though I distinctly want to use that name because I'm not just a winemaker nothing against that but I think it's to me it's not as important as really being connected to the land which is the great growing and being a farmer first and so the vineyard was the the term that I've always kind of resonated with and describes I think probably more holistically what I do here which is really spend probably three quarters of my energy on the vineyard and the other 25% on the winemaking even though you know winemaking most people think that's important I actually think it is a 75-25 split. It's far more important to me to spend that energy. drilling into my vineyards and making sure what's going on in the field because it starts there. A passion for
WineGuyTy:crafting wines of place is your motto here. So, you're Armada, but you're Portuguese-Canadian. How is this place different than other areas? I mean, you've got vineyards kind of all across here and maybe some down in Oliver. Let's start there, too. Your family immigrated here, what, in 1955?
WineGuyTy:Yeah, so yeah, my family moved here in 1955 from the Archipelago Islands of the Azores in Portugal. So right in the middle of between Lisbon and Miami kind of idea. It's a group of islands, volcanic islands. They were one of the first six couples here in that era. And eventually, by the early 1970s, I had 12 aunts + uncles and four grandparents all living in Oliver. And so they initially did move to Naramata, but the family moved all to Oliver, a couple to a Swiss as well. And consequently, that's where I was born, in Oliver. So, yeah, deep roots here, I think. So a history of farming in the South Okanagan. You know, that connection obviously is really strong. Where, when, or at what point did you take an interest in wine and decide to become a vigneron in your own right?
Richard da Silva:I think we take it for granted. I mean, when you grow up as those of your... You know, if you're listeners that are, you know, Latin descent, if they're French or Spanish, Portuguese or Italian, Bacchian or even Greek, wine is really intrinsically part of everyday life. So it was never kind of weird. It was never this kind of thing that was on a pedestal. So it was just always there. You always had grapes and you always made wine in the season. And in the summertime, you'd make other kind of alcoholic beverages and, you know, spirits. And it was just kind of there as part of religion, part of..
WineGuyTy:So when you, I man when you're growing up, you're surrounded by people... doing all this stuff and I assume at some point, I mean, you get your hands and feet dirty yourself and help out.
Richard da Silva:I think it kicked into gear after I left high school though because wine in the Portuguese sense is just part of your culture so it's not kind of revered in any way in that sense. It was being introduced by a really close friend of mine whose father was probably one of the most prolific wine collectors in the Pacific Northwest where that switched gears for me. I was very fortunate and very young age, and we're talking about like 1920, to be introduced to some of the most iconic wines of the world, Haut-Briand, Lafite, Rothschild, and his dad would have these dinners. First growths? First growths, they were personal friends of the Dombey family, and really familiar with the California wine scene, for example, in the early 80s when those guys were just hitting their stride, so icons like Ridge and a number of other icons it became what we know today as these...
WineGuyTy:It's amazing to be able to cut your teeth on those legendary wines, especially in the new world here, Ridge. I mean, it's just top, top, top story in wines.
Richard da Silva:Yeah, it was really bizarre. I mean, I never understood until much later how, oh, today we're going to sit down and do a five-year vertical of Mouton Rothschild or Chateau Lafite or Chateau Equim or something like that. It was just kind of like, oh, okay, cool. It was just kind of like... Sounds good. Sounds all right.
WineGuyTy:Yeah, yeah. But the context happens afterwards. That's funny because I was in Bordeaux about 30 years ago and I only had time to visit one winery. And I looked, which was the closest to the city where my partner at the time, myself, were staying right in the heart of the city. And it was Chateau Haut Brion! So, of course, I called up the winery and it might have been a weekend or a Sunday like today. And, you know, they said, yeah, well, come on by. And so... we go and you know the grand gates and come in and the whole red carpet treatment and it was I still remember that now and going in the cellar and actually tapping some barrels and so on but getting into the wine business a dozen years ago I think back at that moment if I hadn't known then what I know now but maybe I would have been more measured in my experience of that but and I wouldn't have been as, as free.
Richard da Silva:Yeah absolutely i think like for me it was obviously we what that went from, like, say, homemade wines, let's say, growing up in your culture to my version of a good wine was those, like, silver oaks when they first were coming out or, you know, Chateau Montelena and these kind of guys from California. And it was like, oh, okay, well, this is a very good wine and not realizing, obviously, that These would come down later on as being some of the most iconic wines of the new world and the old world. But it certainly set the bar as far as my palate went. And he had started, my friend had started up an agency representing boutique wines in BC. And it was interesting because I really got to see the good, the bad, the ugly of wine. Amazing examples from both our own region, from around the world. And that really kind of zoned in. realizing that I had fairly decent palate. Yeah. Which is important.
WineGuyTy:Of
Richard da Silva:course, yeah. And then realizing that, oh, hey, wait a minute, I have this background of growing. And though we did grapes, a portion of our holdings were also in grapes, the majority was in soft fruits. And what most people don't understand is that, when I mean soft fruits, you're talking cherries and peaches and those kind of things. Those fruits are far more challenging to grow than grapes are. Their inputs, their manicuring is at a whole other level compared to a wine. I mean, think about a peach or a cherry. It's basically not only its taste, but it's on its visual appearance. So your tending of a peach tree that is very susceptible to pests and disease and all that kind of stuff, your final value of that product is based on its visual quality, as well as its taste. Whereas grapes..
WineGuyTy:That's a good point of differentiation, actually, when you think about it. I know where you're going with this, with grapes. Because they need to struggle, really. It's almost the opposite of of that kind of irrigation and the fruit needing to be finessed for its visual appeal, for its primary kind of desirability.
Richard da Silva:Grapes, you end up crushing them and stomping on them and making fruit. You're not measuring them by how good they look. It's going to be the result of wine someday. I mean, there is obviously good-looking fruit will make better wine, but I mean, there's not a direct value on the appearance of it. It's more of like just the conditions the grape is growing in its and it's a harvest but yeah I think the that work ethic in soft fruits was far more intense than in grape growing and it certainly set me the foundation of inputs farming from a technical perspective yeah that set the foundation to go okay I like wine I didn't really want to go back to soft I mean I grew up doing that and it was just like this is brutal but grapes hmm this is like it's not as hard and I can combine these two passions kind of thing with the wine wine and the fruit and having really in-depth knowledge of the fruit side of things you know I had to you know obviously had to go to another step to learn the winemaking part of it but I found that far easier in my opinion to me because I'm self-taught than the throwing side of things like and and maybe that's just me personally but yeah it was it was an interesting transition to go from that realization that well we can do these wines here like I was tasting wines some of the initial small boutique wineries out of BC that were were comparing to some of the iconic wines I was tasting from elsewhere. I'm like, wait a minute, maybe we can do some of this here. So yeah, that's kind of where it started.
WineGuyTy:You're a terroir-driven vigneron- winemaker and put clear emphasis on sites and vineyards of which your family, as you've just sort of described, several scattered all around the region. You put latitude and longitude on your bottles to indicate specific provenance. What have you learned about certain sites and What have you discovered? You've been at this for decades now.
Richard da Silva:I think, I mean, in context of where we are today, I think it's become even more important. I think, you know, place is fundamentally one of the four core values that I give to wine. History is very important. I think it frames context. place is the other thing and that's kind of what differentiates there's a value given to that and there's a certain tangibility to to the final product to a certain place and it's the one thing that no one else can copy they can't copy my site you can make another wine with a similar varieties or similar style you'll never have my wine because you don't have my dirt and so to me and also i think there was a deep connection to place because I understood even back then, maybe not consciously, that at some point that was going to become important. My family lived through some very drastic changes in the BC tree fruit industry that wiped our family out. And we understood that we had to protect that. And so how do you do that? It's by defining that place and putting walls around it. And you look at, fast forward to today, that is true. I mean, it is what keeps the wolves at bay from dumping into our background. My family got annihilated in the early 80s. Some lost their farms to the dumping of tree fruits into the BC fruit industry or market from Washington state. It was devastating. I saw that play out in my community. It was irreversible. Some of them never crawl out of that again. And so that instilled in me that there was something defining place. Why that was, I didn't know at the beginning to how important that was going to become until much later.
WineGuyTy:Well, it's something that is established around the world, and we equate certain legendary wines with their terroir, with their provenance. But in B.C., it's still a fairly nascent industry, even though we've got more than 300 wineries across British Columbia. I still find it fascinating when people are still experimenting with various varietals, grapes, and not really kind of honing in on the terroir and figuring, like, dialing it in the way that you put so much importance onto that. There's a few others that do that well, I think, but it really fascinates me.
Richard da Silva:Yeah, I think, I would I would say, though, in my extensive travels to other wine regions of the world, one of the things I do like the fact that I am allowed to experiment. My customer is there on this exploratory trip. There isn't, like, these rigid rules. And I've talked to fellow producers, colleagues of mine from the old world, that feel there is no creativity in what they do. It's been legislated by generations of laws, and all their work is to continue the tradition of that law. And carry it forward. And I have seen, I was in the Mosul, and it was very poignant and touching to me. I saw a gentleman, probably in his mid-60s, you know, most of us love Riesling. The Mosul is like the Holy Grail. And we had an amazing discussion. Spoke very bad English, but we managed to speak the language, but I was talking about how I was kaleidoscope of varieties and what we're doing. But it was just, you know, and I didn't claim to still, we're still figuring it out. And to see him break down and cry and to say that we don't have that passion here. We see it from the new world, this history of Mosul Rieslings, for example. But from a producer there, they don't have that kind of, that sense of pioneer or discovery and art and saying, hey, I'm going to I want to try something, you know? And I remember one time, this is kind of interesting, I was like... wow, you know, I really love the aromatics of the Rheingau and the mouthfeel of the Mosul. It was just like I dropped a bomb in the room. I thought it never happened. But to me, I was like, that would make an amazing Riesling. Because I love that nose on those wines from that region. And I love that almost effervescent-y type minerality that you get in Mosul Rieslings. I mean, that would just be like, those two combined would just be like magical. And I was just, here I'm allowed to do that. I think ultimately when I talk about terroir is to to say hey this is where it's coming from it's a guarantee this is coming from here I'm not saying that I know exactly what's going to be going here because that's going to take time these winter events that we just went through for example those show those those maybe you know maybe weaknesses in our armor around that kind of knowledge but I love the creativity and I mean I think where BC has to evolve is we don't want to be scatterbrained but I think there's something to be said about being able to to kind of celebrate the diversity and the good the bad and the ugly it's a jury now obviously we want less bad and so you don't want to have that going on but you know I look at the you know our the only regulations we have the BCVQA and taking like when at the inception of BC's wine industry going from taking a European French kind of model and and plopping the box into into a new world wine region that had no history I understand why because there was no There's no precedent. There's no precedent. But moving forward, I mean, I don't know. I'm just like, hey, man, if you want to grow some cool hybrid or do something, does it make a tasty wine? Does the consumer like it? Does it have a story? Is it of a place?
WineGuyTy:Yeah.
Richard da Silva:I think that's cool. I mean, I don't want to be constrained and shackled to some archaic system that basically says, sorry, you can be an individual. You must follow these rules. because some self-interested group at the time had some kind of say in it.
WineGuyTy:Yes. So wine law is indeed important stuff. And we have to understand the ramifications of all of that. But Naramata, obviously, that is a great perspective and point of view. We're in a place where you can have some fun and do these things compared to the old world.
Richard da Silva:Yeah I would pre-preface that i think that ultimately at the end of the day you know by virtue of our industry we're in the premium wine game we have to this is very small lots these are very small acreages where most of my blocks are one acre two acre lots and so at the end of the day it'd be easy to very quickly find out what can you grow that is world-class? That can be, that your counterparts across the world can drink that wine. Well, that is a great example of ABC wine. And so even though, yeah, the Naramata Bench is interesting, you can grow almost anything. That doesn't mean, say, you should. I mean, at the end of the day, I think there's, we do want to focus, I think at some point, on some key varieties that can, that shine as a very great example of what the Naramata Bench can produce compared to our colleagues elsewhere in the world. And so that is, I think, going to happen over time because the consumer will not, if you're growing some obscure Zinfandel on a small site on the Net-a-Met bench, you can't ripen it. The consumer is not going to be willing to pay the price for that compared to a Zinfandel from somewhere else in the world that's far better suited for that.
WineGuyTy:Well, that's a good segue for this next little bit. It is hot. It's hot today out here sitting on this patio at the restaurant We're going to talk about that in just a few minutes, but we're in a semi-arid area at the northern tip of the Great Basin Desert, and many people don't know, if they don't know anything about our wine country here in the Okanagan, it is a desert. Fun fact for listeners, there are more growing degree days, GDDs, here than Napa Valley, California, but there has been extreme weather events in recent years, fires, of course, two significant frosts that have decimated The interesting thing about that topic
Richard da Silva:for someone like myself is when you start talking about the arc of time that my family has been involved growing in the Okanagan, These events were not rare. In fact, the winter kill that we've seen the last couple of years happened cyclically all the time. And so the year after my family moved here in 1956, in 1956, there was a massive winter kill, far worse than what we saw here last year. It wiped out everything. A lot of people don't, for example, know that Ashcroft Spences Bridge had actually a almost as sizable fruit growing region there as they did in the Okanagan. And in 56, and to this day, if you're driving through that region, you can still see former, like, shadow ghosts of those trees, like apricot trees, in kind of rows that are just growing wild from the trunks that were left behind. And in 56, it annihilated everybody. Now, the Okanagan had the infrastructure to rebuild again. They didn't have the same luxury there. And then it happened again in 68 and 69 to our family, and those that were growing here, not just to my family, of course, happened to us in 78 which i remember and i remember as a kid a cherry tree in our front yard at our farm in oliver where the split in the trunk was so deep that you could put your hand inside the crack from how cold it got and now those that know cherry trees it's a hardwood and so you then look in 1985 it happened And then again, it's sort of touched a bit in 1991, but since then it's been pretty much never got there again. And so you have a whole industry here that from a... winemaking and viticulture perspective that don't have that history of why they weren't growing vinifera prior to the 90s right and so climate change however you want to frame that has probably net net benefited the Okanagan more than it has not despite the events despite the events because you would you would have had every 10 years if you look at that like 78 85 68 those are 10-12 year events you would just be getting into full production in your vineyard and you'd be redoing it again. And so I think the, and I'm not a proponent for climate change, that's not the discussion, but I'm saying having that advantage of a family that's farmed here for so long, this perspective there of the events that we've seen here. Now certainly the intensity of heat and some of these other events has definitely, I don't remember often seeing temperatures in the mid 40s, for example, growing up. But Yeah, I'm sure there's things that are changing what we're doing.
WineGuyTy:Does it get up to mid-40s? Or did it get up to mid-40s this year?
Richard da Silva:No, this year has been fairly mild. It's been actually wetter, which has been fantastic. And I hope that means it's going to be a great ski season. But the... The thing is that, yeah, those mid-40 temperatures, though maybe familiar in Spain or in Greece and some of these other regions, in certain regions of southern Italy, we just haven't faced those consecutively here in the Okanagan to the degree we have lately. But I would say that... you know, yeah, I think we just have to, as a, as a, as an industry build resilience. That means having inventory, building in proper varieties that can. More winter hardy and. They're both extremes on that side of things. Yeah. But funny enough, in my replant, I didn't change any of the varieties I planted. What I had there before was the same varieties I put back in because I already had that kind of, you know, foreknowledge of, of, of that. And so. I'm willing to roll that dice because I've already known in the back of my mind that there was that risk there already, if that makes sense.
WineGuyTy:So let's talk about wines. We're talking about grapes. You have a broad variety of things that you do here. So I was looking on the website, Isabella Sparkler, Vino Branco, which is the filled blend, Fumé Blanc, Sauvblanc, I guess, Chardonnay, Viognier, Vino Tinto, the other filled blend, Pinot Noir, Cabernet, Frank, have soft Melbeck, lots of vinifera going on there. And then you've got the Legato series, which are the best barrels of a vintage. The Nobrezzo 19, some vintages of Merlot, the most widely grown red varietal up in these parts. Used to be. Used to be. It's changing, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. 18, 19, and 20 Pinot Noir shards. And you have brought out here, we're going to taste the two fill blends, I guess. Tell us. Talk about those.
Richard da Silva:Yeah, I think the thing I like about the, I just got this wine out of ice here, the vino bronco. So to me, it's, I've always, you know, pragmatic in the sense of when it comes to winemaking and growing. To me, it's like how, you know, I have these different, and so if you look at the, you know, if you were, without context of my story, and you looked at the varietals you just listed, you're saying, what's going on? You know, like, why all these varieties? But I have, you know, family and colleagues that I've been working with for decades now that have small sites from basically Summerland to the U.S. border. And so if you are talking about wine of a place and you're working with these different little growers, that means they're going to have different varieties than what I'm going to be growing here in Narmada. And so what you see in those wines is that kaleidoscope of small little vineyards that are peppered throughout the South Okanagan and really focus on what those little sites are grow best. And when it comes to the field blends, what it is, it's kind of more, it's like vineyard blends, but co-fermented together. It's a Portuguese tradition as well. Yeah, no, it's a, I mean, being in, I mean, it is becoming more prevalent today, but certainly growing up, nobody really talked about varieties there. I mean, it was kind of, it was almost kind of, it was forced on them by the new world fascination of varietal. Portuguese are very pragmatic. They'd be like I don't know. It grows really well over there. It's got reds, whites. They're tasty. They survive. They make good wine. And that's literally the thought process. It wasn't like this kind of... super kind of contrived, over-thought-out process that just pragmatically...
WineGuyTy:That's what Felipe was kind of conveying to me. I think he was sort of taken aback by my obsession of these Portuguese grape varietals. And he just like, yeah, we've got all these things and, you know, whatever grows here, whatever grows there. But, you know, put it in the glass and see if you like it or not. And it's delicious stuff!
Richard da Silva:I can see where some of them would be a little, probably almost irritated sometimes when you talk about like that especially older school producers because they're like i don't i don't know do you like the wine it's kind of like yeah and um so the the impetus for this wine or the inspiration for this wine is basically dry table whites that i grew up with and and it's not meant to be over complicated uh the wine has a sense of tannin in it because i don't it has a bit of leaf stems and this and that to go into it just like you went in some of these older you know blends from from the old world and And it's all cold fermented. And so you get this kind of really cool, kind of rustic quality to it that's magical with food. And I think we have to... Yeah, it tastes really... Like I would never... Kind of styled, particularly. I would have never grown up with wine outside the context of food. That's certainly not something that was... You would see other beverages, but you'd always see... And it wasn't planned. It would be either dry white or dry red food. And nobody ever sat there and pontificated about the white or the wine. It was just like, oh, it's a good-tasting wine. It goes good with the food. And that was the extent of that. And so my inspiration for these two wines is literally that. I just want to make a really great white wine that just... compliments almost any dish even some red meat dishes and having a bit of that tannin in there kind of does that and it's not overly fruity in that sense it has fruit but it's more earthy in some ways you know what i mean and you don't see very much now because a lot of people are really motivated to create very aromatic tropical nose white wines it's kind of like a very kind of in vogue never grew up with those kind of wines. I think the, you know, in Portugal, I mean, some of the wines are almost a bit reductive sometimes in a way, and not necessarily in a negative way. Could you use the term reductive? You kind of think, oh, well, it's just this kind of more subtle fruit composition. It's just kind of more, it's more of a texture and weight versus fruit. And then by contrast, the red. Yeah, the vino tinto. Yeah, the vino tinto is interesting. It does have, you know, it's a blend, and I've been really trying to not answer questions on the blend. I get, it does have, and I have on the back, it's got some Syrah, Cap Franc, Cap Sauv, a little bit of, actually even a little bit of Foch in there too, which is kind of, which is
WineGuyTy:the original grape of this area, right? The story of Marichal Foch goes back way, way back before the Becker project. I think the, funny enough about that variety, in a small, I
Speaker 01:actually like it. I know, I know it's very polarizing and i have um friends here too that sort of roll their eyes and they say well it's not vinifera and i think like well i mean have you had the Foch from quail's gate have you had Foch from Mocojo before they took it out and planted Malbec and and i said it's it's like there's something different about
Richard da Silva:it it is actually a registered vinifera it is registered yes but i think the end of the day though is that i think the the reason is is that like with everything else that was probably made is no one ever put attention into making probably well-crafted, not everyone, but most well-crafted varieties with Fosch in it, for example. And I think that's, it's a very interesting grape to work with, but because it's such a small amount, as a tinte d'or almost in it, it adds this kind of meatiness to the wine that's kind of cool.
WineGuyTy:Yeah, it's got a bit of a meaty nose. It's a very fragrant nose.
Richard da Silva:Love that. Yeah, so it's probably less than 15% of it in there, right? But it's enough to kind of add this kind of super dynamic tension because fauche also has a little bit higher acidity which is versus like say serrano the cap sovereign merlot which is a bit softer what i like about that small piece of the fauche is just adds this kind of spine to the wine that's i've i've been doing that for a while now i've been pleasantly surprised at how well it it makes the wine last and and continue to hold that spine certainly i don't know if it would be the case if it was like all fauche or 75% fauche for example but I think the grape is a bit left of center for me to do a predominant Foch type wine out of it. But it's an interesting, in the context of like, you know, back to that Portuguese inspiration, that's what made those wines magical. All of these different varieties were, I always say the field blend, again, if you look at the pragmatic reason why that happened was because at the end of the day, it was their way of creating vintage consistency. every year certain varieties would shine over other varieties but because you're harvesting them all from there and making a wine the high and lows would be fairly shallow on that graph versus if you're just picking a certain variety that would one year would do really well from that site the next year doesn't be poorly you're high low whereas if you're combining everything but because if you have like say 20 varieties one year some varieties would be than others, but because they're all being blended together, you get this consistency. Sure.
WineGuyTy:So in some ways, that reminds me of... House style Champagne but they're doing it in barrel you know they're creating their vintages and then they're keeping all of these things separate and then they're using them year over year for each vintage to create that house style which is essentially doing the same
Richard da Silva:thing exactly yeah fantastic i think um you know i think for me it's it's you know what's interesting and i have had some winemakers go like that's crazy because i'll start some of these varieties will come in say middle end of september i won't get some of the late varieties until the first week of November. And so I just continue adding to the vat. Oh, like topping the juice. So crushing it. Oh, crushing and then just adding it right into the... So the original piece may have been there already a month fermenting. But I just keep adding. And it's this fascinating... And I do the same thing with the whites. Yeah. So we'll... The only difference with the whites versus the reds is that I'll add a step in there where I'll rack off the gross leaves. And then, say, 24 hours. And then inject that wine in to the ongoing ferment. And so at the end of the season, there may be a month and a half difference between when the first variety came in, the last variety was added. But you get this super cool integration of the wine that's never quite the same when you blend after the farm. So in other words, singular components, after harvest, blend them in. These wines have literally... incubated together. You know what I mean?
WineGuyTy:There's a guy years ago I haven't seen in Marketplace here from California that I recall, Hughes, who had these filled blends. #487 comes to mind. I think I bought many bottles of that. And it was just so unique compared to the muscular cab sobs and everything coming out of there. And I think he probably had exactly the same idea as you.
Richard da Silva:For us, it's just kind of like, I think sometimes we tend to overthink things. I think that's been probably the biggest evolution of me as a winemaker is to I really I'm not I don't really like the term low intervention for example I think it's a bit ridiculous in my opinion I might annoy some people but everything we do as a bitter you know from a vineyard to winemaking everything is intervention what I plant how I grow it when I harvest it how I water it all that's intervention so I feel that that's not a very proper term I think what I it's probably meant as over-manipulated wine versus low intervention because I intervene a lot I'm very very very like you know, I'm very, from the vineyard to when it goes in the bottle, I am involved. Hands on, not hands off. Yeah. You know, because I always say wine's final destination wants to be vinegar. I'm trying to avoid that.
WineGuyTy:Exactly, yeah.
Richard da Silva:And so at the end of the day, what ends up happening is, what I have done though, is confidence over time has been able to just kind of like go, hey, you know what, trust the process. And be less, you know, micromanaging stuff in some ways, right? And I think that comes with just time, knowing you're working for years and years with the same plot of dirt. That is sometimes a disadvantage with some of my colleagues where the vineyard sourcing is always constantly changing to some degree. Those that have the luxury of working with the same vineyard over a span of time, you get this stable kind of understanding. It's these variables that you now kind of just are a lot more relaxed about.
WineGuyTy:So we're here in the restaurant, and you've created a pretty unique menu with Chef Abdul Adame. And the dishes are very Portuguese-influenced. So it's Portuguese Mex tapas is the term you guys use, I guess, for the restaurant. Bacalhau croquette and charales, which are these fried smelts, which I was thinking about that when I looked at the menu. It reminds me of hickory sticks when you're a kid. You know, those little... Those little fry things.
Richard da Silva:Yeah, those smelts, they were a childhood favorite of mine growing up. We made those all the time when we were able to get those little smelts in. Yeah, interesting fact for the kitchen. It's kind of this weird, you know, it was never the intention. I think a lot of people, when we start these kind of things, you want to be like fine dining or Michelin type or whatever the idea is. You know, I think, you know, sort of like with wine, I always say wine's a P2 dish for arrogance. Same with foods. Same with food sometimes. Well, this...
WineGuyTy:Yeah.
Richard da Silva:I think the food thing was we just kind of like just made it farm, like stuff like, not farm, but kind of family style, stuff that he grew up with, I grew up with, that many people that didn't come from those cultures just weren't exposed to. And funny enough, I've had so many Portuguese come in and go like, oh, like Bolinhas Bacalhau, which is the, you know, the little croquettes that you're talking about. We can't say Bolinhas Bacalhau because people can't pronounce it, so it's like we've had to kind of make some creative decisions on the naming.
WineGuyTy:For sure, yeah.
Richard da Silva:But we're, it's just kind of become a thing, and in fact now, And we're now the longest running winery chef collaboration in BC.
WineGuyTy:Like over a dozen years or something?
Speaker 00:Yeah. I always bug my good friend Jeff down at MIRADORO. Our ownership hasn't changed. So like for me, it's like Abul and I have been here since, they started thinking about six months early. I love those guys, what they're doing down there. By the way, it's one of my favorite restaurants down there. Where
WineGuyTy:is that? Tin Horn Creek?
Richard da Silva:Tin Horn Winery. They do an amazing job over there. And Jeff is a legend down there. But we always kind of bug him a little bit because now we are definitely since 2012, Chef Abul and I have been working together since then, which is... usually unheard of. And we're only open for six months of the year. Typically, a place for dinners can be booked a week in advance or more, which is fascinating. I mean, it boggles him and I just kind of like, wow. We just never set out with that. Certainly when people come here, it's got this very kind of rustic, like if you were in Spain or in the Basque region or Portugal, this kind of very rustic, outdoory, woodsy kind of...
WineGuyTy:That's the part for me when I think about listeners and podcast like if you could sit here yourself with us in this moment and we're looking over the vineyards you've got these Adirondack chairs out there where people can take a little picnic or a glass of wine and we're basically on a patio a level up from your crush pad and your crusher.
Richard da Silva:Watching my tanks and stuff yeah the view is amazing I mean it's just weird like we take it for granted and certainly some of the things you know like there's a lot of places, I think, with this, you know, spend a lot of time in really fancy architecture and polish and all of this. But I think the magic of what works here, there isn't that polish in a sense. It's kind of very, you know, I had a distinct vision in my mind. The home that, it was a home before. The initial core of the winery was one of the original picker shacks here from the turn of the century, 1909, somewhere in that range. Hand-built. And I always envisioned, even my own family said, look, when we, when We build this place out. I want to portray literally my dad working at the sawmill, bringing wood home, scraps of wood, and every Friday or every day after work, a few scraps, and just slowly adding to the place in a very rustic way with wood that was just scavenged for free. And everything from the flooring to the wood, I have some people come here and they feel it's kind of this, this peace comes over them because there's not this kind of like high-end fashion kind of driven, you know, marble and very exotic materials it's this kind of it's like we're home that is why i wanted the place to to to kind of portray i didn't know that eventually would be kind of evolve into this it's just you know my wife and i were sole owners and we out of necessity that's how we built it because that's that that was those are our resources and so i think it's worked it has worked
WineGuyTy:And it looks it's lovely where else you know would you want to be then a kind of a covered patio like this with a a little bit of shade and some fans overlooking the vineyard on a gorgeous, sunny summer afternoon in the Okanagan on the upper
Richard da Silva:bench. Yeah, we're blessed. And I think the partnership between, you know, the working relationship between Chef Abul and myself, and funny enough, our story, he was one of the very first restaurants to carry my wine when I very first started. And that was back in 06, I believe it was. And so it's been a long journey. I mean, usually you don't see people working together like that for that length of time. of time. And I think even my team members here, we really pride ourselves in having team members that have been here for a fairly long time. That's
WineGuyTy:A testament to your very personal family values.
Richard da Silva:Yeah, I think it's a team effort. I think certainly we have our interesting family dynamics in here at times. But I think there's always this kind of underlying that, hey, we're all just trying to make it work. And it's a very challenging industry. I think for us, I always say that one of the distinguishing things that you might feel when you walk in here is that this winery is not a vanity project this winery we're sustenance farmers all my growers that i work with family members and other you know farm growers that i work with they're all sustenance farmers in other words it's their only livelihood it's not a oh well i i had a dream i wanted to do this or that it was like it is the means that they've they send their children to school that they feed their family and pay their mortgages it is their source of income in most cases their only source of income and in here you sense that this is not like, you know, I thought it was cool or something like that. My wife and I are livelihood. And I'm not saying that that's unique to our other colleagues in the industry, but I think in the ever-evolving wine world, you see more and more of these vanity projects come out that certainly are super cool. I really enjoy someone celebrating success and building some of the wineries that we've been able to see grow up around us here. I'm very jealous sometimes. Actually, I'd love to have someone that equipment even one of those tanks would probably pay for!
WineGuyTy:There's a lot of money up in these parts and people are paying attention and you know driving up on the bench road to get here today too I just nipped in very quickly to the new Evolve sellers there and remarkable investment and fascinating kind of change for both time and Evolve but you know that's just one other new thing going on right here
Richard da Silva:Yeah I think for for us, I certainly think it brings all sorts of different, you know, people into the region. And eventually someone will stumble into our little place. I mean, we're kind of tucked into a side road here. Definitely wouldn't be a first destination place off the top of your head because we don't have that kind of marketing presence. But when people come in, it's just like, you know, today we just had a new wine club member sign up. Members at Predator Ridge are just like, they're like, dude, like this is like, there's a sense of arm, of family. There's a sense of belonging that they feel from the staff and from what we're doing here. And I guess that's a bit of our magic sauce, I think, at the end of the day. I think we just need to just be, tell your story, hopefully enjoy the wines. This is what we're here to, you know, to make. But I think what's in the bottle is sometimes tertiary sometimes to the overall, the soul of the place. I think that's something that I've had, you know, a good friend of mine, an industry person in the media side of things said to me one day said yeah you know what it's just there's a sense of soul i think to me that's probably probably the best compliment other than my wines won a bunch of awards or medals or any of that kind of stuff that to me means more because it's it's the engine that drives us and motivates us every day yeah and to be recognized for that is more meaningful than getting accolades i'm not saying i don't like getting accolades or it's not important but ultimately at the end of the day i would remember that i remember that more in the evening goes
WineGuyTy:Beyond that
Richard da Silva:For sure yeah
WineGuyTy:So we're kind of in the middle of Verizon. Yep. Harvest is coming very soon. What are your thoughts and anticipations for this 2025 vintage year?
Speaker 00:I always try to refrain from making any kind of predictions. You know what?
WineGuyTy:That's wise.
Richard da Silva:I have so many colleagues that, you know, like, oh, the vintage of the century or this, make all sorts of...
WineGuyTy:Before you bring in the berries, probably not a good idea.
Richard da Silva:I'm just like, until it's in a... It's in a tank. But that being said, I think the year, it's going to showcase those who are really good growers. That may be actually almost sometimes cliche because it should always show really good growers. There's been some interesting things with some of the vineyards. Some of the vineyards have been overcropping or hanging a lot of weight. I'm not saying they're going to keep the fruit. There's been a lot of variability. And what I do like in a year like this year where it's not super hot.
WineGuyTy:You're talking about your own vineyards specifically?
Richard da Silva:My own vineyards. but I'm talking about as an observation of the industry around me, the vineyards around me as well. And so, including my own. But because it hasn't been extreme heat or extreme cold or really all that rainy, though some people got caught back footed a little bit with some of the rain and moisture and not being prepared to deal with some of their pest management practices. These are the kind of years, like 2019, that had the potential to show some fantastic stuff given the right circumstances to show itself and the reason I say that is because you're not dealing with a lot of heat you're not dealing with some kind of adverse and a little bit of the some of the vines growing a little bit so what happens physiologically to a plant is that when you have these winter kills there's kind of this natural reaction for the plant to kick things into high gear actually overcompensate for not having fruit the year before and so I haven't been as quick to drop a lot of fruit as some of my colleagues have been because one of the things is is when you have years like this where the fruit wants to produce sugar they've been ripening actually quicker even given the conditions it hasn't been super hot year because there's so much energy there pent up energy that that wasn't being used last year and having a little bit of extra crop allows me to retain and balance that out with some acidity and so i kind of bucked the trends on that kind of stuff like to me i'm i'm not making it it's not my numbers thing it's more of a not to be kind of whatever but it's sort of almost like a feelings and Intuitive. Yeah, I'm just looking at it like, I could drop this. This looks a bit, you know, like Viognier, for example, this year. Notoriously drops out of acid, can really become flabby quite quickly. If I would have dropped fruit in our Viognier right over here next door, the potential for that would have been, we're dealing now with a situation where that fruit was going to have lots of alcohol, lots of sugar, but really, unless you were absolutely timed to just write, this way I can let it hang, get more phenolic ripeness, get a bit more depth, so it'll preserve the acidity because I'm leaving that fruit on a little bit more than typically would be done by some of my other counterparts. It's that kind of intuition. It's not always the case, but that's an example of where this harvest will really bring out, I think, those around that understand that. Where are they going to find the balance? Instead of just making a textbook call, using their intuition, like you said, to kind of make that. And I think that's where this year will be shining. So I as a consumer I'd be keeping an eye on some of the I don't think it's going to happen for everyone unfortunately but there's and again like I said until it's in my tank or in my barrel who knows maybe I'm out to lunch you know I think hopefully not but I've one thing about this industry has always taught me that you have to be humble you have to be willing to kind of like you know be able to pivot because the time you know the day you think you know it is a day when shit hits the fan and I'm like you know and for me I've learned that lesson the hard way so i i'm being reserved a bit i think it's going to be it's a clean year fantastic moderate temperature no extremes
Speaker 01:hopefully that carries through september when are you gonna um when you're thinking of bringing in the first grapes
Richard da Silva:then probably the next couple of weeks
WineGuyTy:yeah are you all set down in the uh crush pad?
Richard da Silva:No! No i'm not even remotely ready yet so uh it's uh you know it's part of being a Vigneron and to be a small business owner, there's so many different hats to wear that you're always constantly playing catch up. I think in the next week, we'll be pretty much caught up. We've got bottling to do. We've got this to do and that to do. It should have been bottled a month or two ago, but our glass is tied up in a ship somewhere and we're just like, ugh. So it's a small business juggle that we all...
WineGuyTy:I'm sure you have some good help and seller hands and people in the area I know kind of rally in this moment and you team up
Richard da Silva:and you get it done. Yeah, there's some amazing, there's been amazing colleagues in our neighborhood. You know, I can't say enough, like the team over at Popular Grove have been amazing, not just to myself, to others in the industry. The hollers are fantastic. I think that we, it's great to see that. I think if anything I would like to see the industry do is as we mature and become more self-confident is the magic is being able to find reaching across and working together to to to collectively win um and i think that it's it's happening far more today than it did a generation ago and i think that's probably one of the things i'm super excited to see the future of bc wine.
WineGuyTy:Team work makes the dream work mantra right there
Richard da Silva:Right absolutely yeah for the whole industry.
WineGuyTy:Well we've been at this Richard, for about an hour now. We've covered a lot of ground. I think it would be great to come back and get in the cellar and get into the vineyards, but as you state, you've got lots of work on deck and things to prepare for. I know the restaurant's closed today, but you'll be back in business tomorrow, back here, and I'm sure there'll still be loads of people coming in before Labor Day weekend to get those last moments in and tastings and visits?
Richard da Silva:Yeah, we're super grateful for the support BC and Canadian consumers have given to our wines. I'm a big advocate of BC and supporting even our friends in Niagara, Canadian wines. I would encourage your customers to keep exploring this. Some just amazing wines across the country and to open up those borders because it's, you know, I'm constantly being amazed at the quality of stuff I'm seeing from across the country, not just here in my own neighborhood. And the stories like mine that are waiting to be told. And I think for so many consumers, if you're in Canada, reach out. Go travel here or travel to the island, Vancouver Island or the Fraser Valley. Try wineries or Niagara or Prince Edward County or back east, Nova Scotia. So many cool little stories and wines that each have their own thing. And it's right here in our own backyard.
WineGuyTy:Yeah, that's true. I've yet to... get across to other provinces. I was in Niagara many, many years ago, but in the same thing, in Market here, we don't see Nova Scotia wines at all. I've had a few bangers actually, at some tastings in the past. I know they grow Ortega over there predominantly for white, and it's delicious.
Richard da Silva:I'm telling you, I think it's one of the biggest shames that I feel is such a... If I leave this with your listeners, I think in this current environment of how alcohol is distributed across the country. We don't get to see the best parts. I've been very fortunate and been honored to be guest speaking now for a number of years, two or three years now in Niagara. Working with my colleagues in Niagara and they come out here to do panels and taste absolutely mind-blowing wines like Cab Franc, Cab Sauve. You would never think about that. Like you just wouldn't think of it from Niagara. Pinot Noir Chardonnays are just mind-blowingly good. Riesling too. Rieslings and it's just been like why don't we see these wines why are consumers seeing these wines and fantastic personalities you know legends like brian schmidt his family vineland and lou and his family over at palmview and so many others are just like so many fascinating dynamic individuals that have passion at a whole other level as well and making just amazingly world-class wines are just like why don't we see those like why didn't i ever taste it i remember like three years ago going to niagara and i had a preconceived notion of what i was going to be tasting And I was just already just negative. I was humbled. One of the few times where I left speech just in a couple of days, where I walked out of the room, I was like, that was not expected. And I would say that for your consumer or your listener that only believes you can make great cabs off in California or anything like that around the world, no, man. You have to look for it and do that. But that journey of discovery is half the fun.
WineGuyTy:Yeah, I will do my bit to get the word out and tell people to enjoy these stories and enjoy these wines and get out there and explore as Canadian wine industry is vast. It's not just here in British Columbia. So that said, for listeners, where can they find your wines aside from joining the wine club? I'm going to put all the links in the description box, of course.
Richard da Silva:Yeah, I mean, there's certainly a small selection of stores, boutique stores throughout the province that carry everything wine. Okay. Summit Savon, for example, and smaller retailers. Most of our wines are in wine lists at restaurants. So the majority of our wines that most of our consumers find, because we don't have a huge production, obviously, you know, that's where I'd say probably 70% of our outside wines are in restaurant lists. Great. And so, but they can always look at our website. We are going to have an updated list of where their local stores, they can find our wines.
WineGuyTy:Mm-hmm.
Richard da Silva:And yeah, we can always reach out to myself or my... Our website is at
WineGuyTy:DaSilvaWinery.com?
Speaker 01:DaSilvaVineyards.com
Richard da Silva:Correct, yeah. And as for Twylla, I'm notoriously bad at getting to my emails. But my wife, Twylla, my much better half, she's on it and she definitely would love to help guide you if you have any questions.
WineGuyTy:Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Richard. You've been on the docket for so long and finally to get up here. to the winery and sit with you on the patio here at the restaurant and have this moment has been a sincere pleasure. So very much appreciate it. And the wines are delicious too! Cheers to you.
Richard da Silva:Cheers! And thank you.