Babies Dogs and Naramata Bench Neighbours

By: Anthony Gismondi

A new era at Howling Bluff.

Babies Dogs and Naramata Bench Neighbours

Announcing

Dogs and babies are one way to characterize a welcomed merger, which is happening at Howling Bluff.

Luke and Jennifer Smith, after much family consultation, have chosen to partner with Blair and Faith Gillingham, a nearby Naramata Bench family, to keep Howling Bluff going into the future. Best of all, everyone gets to live the bench life as well. Congratulations to everyone.

See the release below,

Penticton, BC:

Luke and Jennifer Smith announce a new partnership with Blair and Faith Gillingham, another Penticton family, at Howling Bluff Estate Winery on the Naramata Bench.

With over 20 years of winemaking experience globally and the last several vintages making award-winning wines on the Naramata Bench, Blair now assumes the role of winemaker at Howling Bluff. This will allow Luke to take on a larger role of turning the winery into a net-zero farm and winery, and radically reducing use of fossil fuels at Howling Bluff.

"It was time to bring some young energy to the winery, and I'm excited about Blair's talent and his experience with cool climate wines here in Canada, Europe, and the Southern Hemisphere," says Howling Bluff founder Luke Smith.

"The first task is to concentrate on the 2022 harvest-at-hand and to continue making great Howling Bluff wines with well-established vines," says Gillingham. "I'm also looking forward to bringing the two decades of experience that I've cultivated from my wine expeditions around the globe. The plan is to continually evolve the wines in keeping with our dreams of pushing the quality forward in this world-class wine region."

Written By: ag

Anthony Gismondi

Anthony Gismondi is a Canadian wine journalist and one of North America's most influential voices in wine. For over 30 years, he has been the wine columnist for The Vancouver Sun. The twice-weekly column is distributed across Canada through the Postmedia Network to millions of readers. In addition, Anthony hosts the BC Food & Wine Radio Show, broadcast in 25 markets across B.C. and available as a podcast on major platforms. He launched Gismondionwine.com in 1997, attracting one million monthly users from 114 countries. It continues to be a valuable resource full of tasting notes, intelligent wine stories and videos for the trade and consumers. Conversations with wine personalities are available on his YouTube Channel.