Since arriving at CedarCreek Estate Winery in the Okanagan, winemaker Tom DiBello’s artistry has propelled CedarCreek to ‘winery of the year’ in the 2002 Canadian Wine Awards.

He is showing particular mastery of Pinot Noir. CedarCreek’s Platinum Reserve Pinot Noir 2002 scored 91 points and was best of class at the 2004 Canadian Wine Awards. The wine also won an award of excellence in the British Columbia Lieutenant Governor’s annual competition to identify British Columbia’s premier wines.

Born in New York City in 1957, the son of an aerospace sales executive, DiBello grew up in California’s Newport Beach, where he took up windsurfing, a passion to this day. In his first three years in junior college, he vacillated between medicine and business. In 1979, on his way to investigate northern California’s colleges, he took a break and toured the Firestone winery. As an adolescent, he had visited wineries with his father, a home winemaker. “That smell came back,” DiBello recalls.

One of the colleges on his itinerary was the University of California at Davis. “When I went to Davis, I looked at their winemaking program,” he says. “I found out you could actually major in this and get a job. I always thought it was a big family thing that was passed on. I didn’t know there was that kind of demand.” He took a degree in fermentation science and enology. “I feel very lucky that I fell into this because I just love it.”

He graduated in 1983 and started working at Warren Winiarski’s Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. Four years later, he went to Cape Mentelle in Western Australia for six months of winemaking – and surfing. Returning to California, he sold wine for two years and then made wine at a succession of wineries from California to Virginia. He was working in Washington State for Washington Hills Winery when CedarCreek recruited him.

CedarCreek, based near Kelowna, is a boutique producer of about 25,000 cases a year, of which Pinot Noir comprises 4,000 cases. The grapes are grown in CedarCreek’s two north Okanagan vineyards – the one at the winery on the east side of Okanagan Lake and the Greata Ranch vineyard at Peachland, on the west side of the lake.

Pinot Noir is an important variety in British Columbia. At 560 acres out of a total vineyard area of 5,400 acres, it is the third most widely planted grape, after Merlot and Chardonnay.