Photo: Brendon Gehringer: third generation in the winery
Gehringer Brothers Winery is marking its 40th anniversary with the release of wines from the 2025 vintage, one of the finest in the Okanagan.
Even rarer than the winery’s longevity is that it is still operated by the founding Gehringer family.
That was not a sure thing when I wrote the second edition of The Wineries of British Columbia in 2009. Walter Gehringer, one of the second generation team of brothers, told me that if his son, Brendon, did not want to continue in the business, the brothers would sell the winery and retire. I continued:
“Surely, he’s not really serious, since he and Gordon run a business started for them by their own parents. The Gehringer family bought this vineyard property in 1981 specifically to create the winery for the brothers. Walter, born in Oliver in 1955, had graduated in 1978 from the wine school at Geisenheim in Germany (the first Canadian graduate) and was honing his craft at the Andrés in Port Moody. Gordon, four years younger, was just completing studies at Weinsberg, another German wine school. Their father, Helmut, said he would run the vineyard for a couple of years until the boys took over. “He never left,” Walter says.
“Helmut came to the Okanagan from Germany in 1952, becoming a car dealer. His brother, Karl, soon followed him and ran the resort at Cathedral Lakes. When Gordon and Walter went to Germany to become winemakers, Helmut and Karl undertook a seven-year study of the climate in the south Okanagan before the 1981 purchase of the south half of what is now the 26-hectare (65-acre) Gehringer property. The north half, now called the Dry Rock Vineyard, was acquired in 1995. The property is on a plateau on the Golden Mile side of the Okanagan Valley, south of Oliver.
“On the original parcel, hybrid grapes were replaced with premium German whites, including Riesling, Auxerrois, Ehrenfelser, Gewürztraminer and Schönburger, in part because they believed these to be winter-hardy. Winters were colder in the 1980s. They routinely covered young vines with sawdust as protection against the winter cold – and even that was not enough to safeguard their first planting of Pinot Gris. “Nobody has to bury a vineyard in its first year anymore,” Walter says now. “The winters are warmer.”
“When the winery first opened, the brothers followed an unabashedly German winemaking style, complete with baroquely scripted labels. Off-dry whites suited the tastes of British Columbia consumers. As tastes changed in the 1990s, the winery responded with drier wines, including dry reds when Dry Rock’s vines began producing. Because they perceived that the climate was warming, the Gehringers planted entirely different grape varieties in Dry Rock, including Chardonnay, which they had spurned initially because it is not a German wine grape. They also planted Sauvignon Blanc, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon – all mainstays of French winemaking. It was “a definite change in direction from where we initially were, allowing us to round out our winemaking style, rather than just making Germanic whites,” Walter says. “We’ve evolved to make wines for certain wine styles, so that I can pretty well boast a wine for anybody’s palate.”
In that book, I speculated correctly that Brendon would stay in the family business. While his father and his uncle Gordon had both received their winemaker training in Germany, Brendon elected to go to Australia for his schooling. That led to a lengthy stay there before he returned to the family business in the summer of 2023.
“I was prepared to go to Germany,” he says. “My German is good enough for me to get by. But there were a number of newer winemakers coming to the valley that are of Australian background or Australian-trained. The discussion was that if I went to Germany, I would learn something similar to what we already know. Going to Australia would give us a different perspective.” And that is what is turning out. Brendon aims to get the winery’s first barrel program started by the 2028 vintage.
Brendon enrolled in Adelaide University’s wine program in 2008. After university, he worked for a year or so at a small sparkling wine producer. Then he did a vintage with a large export-oriented winery in McLaren Vale. “It was not a place where I would have enjoyed working for a long term but it was a neat experience to see how larger wineries operate,” Brendon says.
From there he moved to Kellermeister Wines in the Barossa Valley late in 2014, working with owner Mark Pearse. The winery is smaller than Gehringer Brothers, producing about 8,000 cases a year.
“It was a good job there, working for a smaller producer that was making some really good wine,” Brendon says. “Because it was a small facility, it was between me as the assistant winemaker, and the owner, Mark Pearse, who was senior winemaker. We essentially ran most of the show. It was good experience to see the full process from grapes to bottle and be personally involved in the whole aspect. I had grown up in a small winery where we had that same hands-on approach from grapes to bottle. I fitted in there quite well.”
However, there always was the pull of the family winery in the Okanagan even though Brendon had married an Australian woman and they had started a family. “It had gotten to the point where Claire and I were figuring out what our next plan should be,” Brendon recalls. “I enjoyed my job at Kellermeister but we had this opportunity to move back to Canada and the family business.” He worked for the winery online for several years until they moved to the Okanagan in 2003.
As these 2025 whites show, Brendon is as good a winemaker as his award-winning father. “Here’s to 40 more of continuing craft, making wines grounded in place and guided by legacy,” the winery proclaims.
Gehringer Bros. Classic Riesling 2025 ($17.99). The fruit was fermented with selected yeast to develop the easy-going, aromatic style favoured by the winery. The wine has aromas and flavours of citrus and ripe pear. The finish is off-dry but very well balanced. 90.
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