1140 27th Ave. S.
Creston, BC
Creston’s second winery, Baillie-Grohman is just across the road from Skimmerhorn, the winery that inspired Calgarians Bob Johnson and Petra Flaa to sell their Creston cherry orchard and develop a vineyard. Johnson is a reservoir engineer with a major oil industry consulting firm, while Flaa, who now manages the vineyard, formerly managed an information technology group. In the vineyard, planted since 2006, they grow pinot noir, pinot gris, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, schönburger and 250 kerner vines (for icewine). Like Skimmerhorn, they turned to New Zealand for a winemaker for the debut 2009 vintage, recruiting Dan Barker, the proprietor of a Hawkes’ Bay winery called Moana Park. He was Winemaker of the Year in New Zealand in 2003. For their winery’s name, Johnson and Flaa dug into Creston’s history to find William Baillie-Grohman, a pioneer who arrived in the Creston Valley in 1882 to hunt, and spent the next 30 years trying to divert rivers, reclaim land and attract settlers.