Organic Sensibility

Wine is said to be poetry for the senses, but for Karnail Singh Sidhu, the poetry doesn’t stop there.

Sidhu is the managing director of Kalala Organic Estate Winery, which is just north of Westbank in West Kelowna. For him, organic wine isn’t a trend but a lifestyle. His belief in the virtue of organic wine is evident everywhere — from his personal philosophy to his website. The words are all about the wine’s purity and Sidhu’s love for the earth. It’s fashioned like true, poetic romanticism.

Case in point: His website, kalalawines.ca, says, “Our philosophy is to let the terroir [geographical] and varietal [variety of grape] characteristics to be fully expressed… We produce wines of great balance and quality.”

And Sidhu parlays similar rhetorical sentiment: “I can leave millions and millions of dollars for my kids, but if they are exposed to chemicals, they have problems with the liver, with the kidney — and all those millions are nothing.”

The name Kalala itself is based off of Indian legend about a miracle village built in the pursuit of perfect harmony.

And just like his lore and wine, Sidhu has a refreshingly unique story to tell about his winery’s history. It’s not the usual story of affluence and hobby, but one of rich tradition in his Indian family — totally preceding the organic trend. 

His father was an organic farmer who never allowed DDT (a common synthetic pesticide) on his crops, even when it was Indian law. Sidhu provided us with one of his father’s own mantras: “Their laws exist only until they touch my door. Inside of the door is my law.” He was an original Mother Nature rebel.

From there, Sidhu was raised to respect the naturalness of the earth. Arriving in Canada in 1993, he started a family in the Okanagan Valley as well as his business in wine-related agriculture, and finally became a winemaker in 2008. And it’s at this time that his website unfailingly mentions, like a concluding verse to proverb, the winery as the “culmination of his experiences and the pursuit of harmony.” 

The artistry of the situation is undeniable, but this art does not go without accolade. Kalala has taken home a number of awards, and most notably, just this March, its 2007 Chardonnay won gold at the Chardonnay du Monde wine competition in France. That’s right: This modest, little winery boasts one of the best Chardonnays in the world.

A week previous, a 2008 Riesling had won gold at the New World International Wine Competition in California. Six other bottles have won medals including a Pinot Gris that won Kelowna’s People’s Choice Awards just months after the winery opened. The only thing holding the winery back from more is the expense of submitting wines to competitions.

All these awards and the organic trend are turning heads towards Kalala. But for Sidhu, it’s no surprise; these masterpieces are the products of millennia of work and it’s no wonder that they’re among the best.

No need to be apprehensive! Organic wines suffer little setback in the taste department. The standout difference (beyond lack of pesticides) between organic and conventional wines is that organic wines add no or little sulfur dioxide. That affects the wine’s aging potential, but is not detrimental to the original flavour whatsoever.

“When people ask me, ‘Organic is new?’ I say, ‘No, it’s old, it’s a thousand, thousand-year-old technology we’re using. It’s just a new trend,’” he says.

The real trend is the upward swing in Sidhu’s winery’s popularity. Age-old tradition is begetting modern success in absolute bushels, and while Kalala is still a definite up-and-comer, the future is only looking friendlier.

So expect more from Kalala. This is poetry in (forward) motion. •

Kalala is open daily until Oct. 31, and Wednesday to Sunday from November to March. They can be visited online at kalalawines.ca.

Photos courtesy of Kalala Organic Estate Winery