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Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1514012
13 BC BU S I N E S S .C A F E B R U A R Y 2 0 24 The province is home to some 33 sailing and yacht clubs Jim Pattison's Nova Spirit, a familiar sight in Vancouver's Coal Harbour, as compared to Roman Abramovich's Eclipse, the largest of some 65 "superyachts" owned by Russian oligarchs and subject to Western sanctions since Russia's invasion of Ukraine: Eclipse Length: 533 feet Value: US$438 million Nova Spirit Length: 150 feet Value: US$25 million B U S I N E S S C L I M AT E RED NOTICE Can the Okanagan wine industry survive climate change? by Jennifer Van Evra Jennifer Van Evra is an award-winning Vancouver journalist, broadcaster and UBC writing instructor. David Paterson knew the cold snap was coming. It was mid-December, a time when Kelowna temperatures typi- cally average around 2 degrees during the day and minus-4 at night. But heading into the 2022 holiday season, newscast- ers began sounding the alarm that temperatures were set to plummet. There was little the Tantalus Resort Lodge general manager and winemaker could do except wait and hope the freeze wouldn't be as bad as predicted. "That's the time you hope the weatherman is wrong," he says. Meteorologists were indeed wrong, but not in the way winemakers had hoped: temperatures fell even further than predicted, dipping to a frigid minus-30 degrees in some areas. "It was a real sinking feel- ing," says Paterson. "You look at all this hard work we've put in to grow these vines and regenerate the soil and do all the right farming practices— but this is a factor we have zero control over." The freeze devastated the Okanagan wine industry. Ac- cording to a June 2023 report by Vancouver-based consul- tancy Cascadia Strategies, an estimated 54 percent of the grape crop was lost, with some growers losing their entire harvest. Forty-five percent of vines suffered long-term dam- age and 29 percent will need replanting. The report pegged financial losses at $133 million. Then, in August, drought and unprecedented forest fires decimated the area, putting a sudden end to the tourist sea- son. As a result, winemakers who had hoped to cushion the loss of their 2023 vintage with robust sales of their 2022 offer- ings were left high and dry. But B.C.'s wine industry isn't alone: a November 2023 report by the International Organization of Vine and Wine predicted that, as a result of climate change, this year's global wine production will be at its lowest in 60 years. Miles Prodan, president and CEO of Wine Growers British Columbia, says grape tonnages have been drop- ping for years in B.C., but in 2022, that decline turned into SOURCES: STATISTICS CANADA, BC STATS, BC WOMEN'S HOSPITAL + HEALTH CENTRE, WHISTLER BLACKCOMB Number who are named Olivia, the top female name: 1,804 Number who are named Noah, the top male name: 2,198 There were 351,679 babies born in Canada in 2022, a 5% decrease from 2021 Approximately 7,000 babies are delivered yearly at BC Women's Hospital + Health Centre in Vancouver, which has the province's busiest maternity ward Despite federal and provincial government targets of $10-a-day childcare by 2026, the average expenditure by parents of pre-school children in B.C. was $38 a day in 2022 ($802 a month). The national figure was lower, at $31 a day ($649 a month) G o F i g u r e Illu s t r a t i o n s : N o u n P r oj e c t ; J e n n i f e r Va n E v r a p o r t r ai t : W e n d y D disaster. "We get freeze events in the Central Okanagan and we do make ice wine. But ice wine is made at minus-8, not minus-30," he says. "Minus-30 is just lethal." Crop insurance covers some losses, says Prodan, but none of the replanting costs, revenue loss from the wine that won't get made or tourism dollars that went up in smoke. To rebuild, wineries have to borrow at sky-high interest rates, just as their revenues sink and consumers cut back on alcohol and discretionary purchases. Because the wine market is extremely price sensitive, producers—many of them small, highly leveraged operations—can't hike prices to cover their losses.