Napa North: Golf & Wine in Canada's Okanagan Valley
Most of the golf course development has centered around bustling Kelowna, on the eastern shore of Okanagan Lake, a theatrically steep-banked 68-mile-long waterway linking the city with the smaller communities of Penticton to the south and Vernon to the north. Kelowna offers miles of waterfront parklands, a downtown casino and a thriving arts community in a six-block area of former fruit-packing warehouses.
Just across from Kelowna’s small international airport is The Okanagan Golf Club, offering two 18-hole layouts that tumble through ponderosa pine forests. Canadian architect Les Furber built dramatic elevation changes and multi-tiered fairways into the club’s Quail Course, while Jack Nicklaus’s Golden Bear Design produced a mix of links-style and traditional parkland holes with the Bear Course.
Two other standouts among the 15 or more courses in the Kelowna area are Gallagher’s Canyon Golf and Country Club, a Furber hillside design offering panoramic views of the valley below, and The Harvest Golf Club, which another leading Canadian architect, Graham Cooke, routed through working orchards and vineyards on a bluff overlooking Okanagan Lake.
Thanks to its high latitude, the valley enjoys 18 hours of sunshine daily in peak summer. Golfers generally book tee times in the early morning or evening, spending the remainder of the long day doing tastings at wineries where the informal and often eccentric atmosphere is reminiscent of Napa 30 years ago. The award-winning Summerhill Pyramid Winery, for instance, ages its organically grown bottlings in a four-story replica of Egypt’s Cheops pyramid, believing the wines taste better as a result of their exposure to "sacred geometry." As with most of the Okanagan’s small wineries, the person doing the pouring is often the proprietor himself.
Far grander in scale is Mission Hill Family Estate Winery, a $40-million hilltop showpiece near Kelowna that has come to symbolize the Okanagan wine industry’s coming of age. Opened in 2001, the Spanish-influenced complex designed by renowned Seattle-based architect Tom Kundig includes a 12-story bell tower, a performing arts amphitheater, dramatically lit cellars and the outdoor Terrace restaurant, specializing in cuisine de terroir, dishes made from local ingredients.
Mission Hill’s 1994 win for best chardonnay at the International Wine and Spirits Competition in London is still the most prestigious award ever received by a B.C. winery.
Since then, the four varietals that have won valley winemakers the greatest recognition are pinot noir, merlot, chardonnay and gewürztraminer. Another local specialty is icewine, an aromatic and decadently sweet concoction made from grapes left to freeze on the vine before being harvested.
Though winery tours and tastings are year-round attractions, many oenophiles visit during the Okanagan Spring Wine Festival, or during the even more popular Okanagan Fall Wine Festival, September 29 to October 8, which attracts upwards of 155,000 visitors.
More than 65 large and small vineyards are now scattered throughout the valley. Still a bargain by international standards, high-end vacation properties sell for $450,000 and up; prime wine growing land—a rapidly diminishing and feverishly sought-after commodity—goes for about $100,000 an acre.
Easily the most heralded new development in the valley is The Rise, a $1-billion condominium and resort project perched above Okanagan Lake near Vernon. In addition to a private beach club and a Fred Couples-designed golf course, the project, scheduled to open in stages over the next several years, features an on-site estate winery capable of producing 35,000 cases of premium Okanagan wine annually.
The Rise is just one of several new resort-style developments poised to challenge Predator Ridge, the valley’s top draw for golfers since opening in 1991. Predator Ridge’s 1,200 acres of clear lakes, fast-rushing streams and wheatgrass meadows includes a central lodge, 50 two- and three-bedroom luxury cottages, as well as 27 superb golf holes designed by Les Furber (21 holes) and Jack Nicklaus’s company (six holes). Viewed at sunset from the clubhouse dining room’s outdoor deck, the contrast of the emerald fairways against the crimson hills is surreally lovely; a giant stage set painted by the golfing gods.
"Have you ever seen a more beautiful golf course?" asks the septuagenarian teaching pro Harvey, who enjoys a cult-like following among golfers in these mountains. From dawn until the northern twilight, novices and low-handicappers alike eagerly line up for swing insights known as the "Zen of Len" from the unassuming guru who twice represented Canada internationally during a career that took him to club jobs in his native Winnipeg, Regina and as far south as Phoenix, Ariz.
But like Sergio Garcia, the well-traveled Harvey was smitten with the Okanagan from his first visit. "I’ve found my own slice of golf heaven," says the old pro, whose wandering days are past. "They’ll bury me in this red earth, because I’m not moving."
