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BY THE WAY 46 W E S T W O R L D | F A L L 2 0 1 4 T he late-day sun warms a patio overlooking the South Saskat- chewan River at Riverlot Orchards Winery, three kilometres west of the small rural village of St. Louis. Irina and Eric Kotelko began crafting fruit wines here in 2010, making their rst batches available to the public a year later. ey opened their bistro-styled restaurant, with the riverside patio, in the summer of 2014. While fruit is commonly associated with sweet dessert wines, the Kotelkos enjoy producing medium and drier wines better suited to meal pairings. eir fruit wines include blue honeysuckle, raspberry, crabapple, rhubarb, wild black cherry and a forti ed honeysuckle. Irina, originally a schoolteacher from the eastern European country of Belarus, is particularly fond of her cottage winery's 2010 carmine jewel cherry wine. "It's a more smooth wine – most of them are medium dry, but 2010 is more smooth, and 2011 has more cherry avour in it," she says. " ere are also two [wild] cherry wines, one dry and one sweet." e blue honeysuckle, which produces a clear, ruby red wine, is unique to Riverlot Orchards. Row upon row, the low bushes that produce the honeysuckle berries line the Kotelkos' 2.8-hectare orchard. W Riverlot Orchards Winery is open for tastings ursday through Sunday, from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m., from Victoria Day weekend until anksgiving – or later, depending on the weather. You can also nd Irina at the farmers' market in Prince Albert. Wine and Dine story and photos by Darrell Noakes (above) Irina Kotelko holds her blue honeysuckle berries; (here) the cottage winery sits above the South Saskatchewan River.