When Pat and Doug Bell first announced plans to open a winery in Prince George — a winter city nearly 500 kilometres north of the Okanagan Valley, the heart of B.C.’s wine country — they were met with a healthy amount of skepticism.
“They suggested that I should seek psychiatric help,” is how Pat Bell, a former MLA for the region, described the reaction to his new business venture ahead of its opening in 2015. His son Doug said it was unclear whether it was “a vision or a delusion.”
But a decade later, the Bells have a raised a glass to their one millionth bottle, a major milestone they marked with a small ceremony on the banks of the Nechako River where they’ve been operating the Northern Lights Estate Winery for the past decade.
On hand was Jeff Guignard, president and CEO of Wine Growers British Columbia, who praised the winery for its “sheer grit” in pioneering what he says is the northernmost winery in the province, and one of the northernmost in the entire world.
“You don’t think of northern communities like this having wineries,” he said. “These guys have fought for everything that they’ve earned.”
To accommodate for the cooler climate, Northern Lights focuses on fruits other than grapes for its wines, creating blends using everything from rhubarb to crab apples to saskatoon berries. It is recognized as the largest fruit winery in the province and distributes throughout B.C., Alberta and Yukon, buoyed by a handful of national awards.
But Doug Bell says as much as he appreciates the recognition, his focus remains on providing a place and product for people in the city to gather and celebrate special events around.
“I wanted it to be a point of pride for the north,” he told CBC Daybreak North host Carolina De Ryk. “A place you could bring your friends and family and really say, ‘Hey, that’s my winery. That’s Prince George’s winery, [and] put Prince George and northern B.C. on the map.”
