Wade Bauck knows what you do when life deals you lemons. In his case, though, it was cranberries. The year was 1999, and the price for them plunged deeper than the flooded six acres of berry bog on a 17 acre Fort Langley property he and his wife Erinn bought a year earlier and spent $2 million developing.

Instead of just making their own juice, they fermented it.

Thus the Fort Wine Company began. This year, they’ll make 20,000 cases of table and dessert wine from blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and basically “any fruit that grows in BC,” Bauck said. That included winemaker Derrick Power’s experimental demijohn of black currant wine, and another batch he’ll ferment from 5,000 pounds of Aldergrove-grown kiwis.

The Baucks will also likely plant the mandatory two acres of grapes that would let them make conventional wine from their own and Okanagan-sourced fruit.

About one third of their annual output involves cranberries, and they’ve scored a hit with the white variety. It’s actually the same berry as the red, but it is harvested during the few days in August, before the fruit’s colour has changed, and when the sugar and acid content meet wine requirements.

Bauck’s own vocational hue changes between running the agricultural operation and skippering the high-tech Seaspan Hawk tugboat off Roberts Bank.

Learning that “effort doesn’t necessarily mean results, you have to be smart,” Bauck called 2003 the “disciplinary year”. That meant clamping down on overhead costs and having Delf Group agent Jennifer Delf’s Next Beverage division extend his company’s sales reach across the Prairies and into Ontario. He’s also like others to emulate Jim Thompson and son Drew’s nearby Riverside Restaurant, that moves plenty of Fort Wine products on its 150 seat waterfront patio.

The Baucks were delighted recently, when a classic Harley Davidson biker reluctantly followed his girlfriend into the winery store.

“I only drink beer,” the rider rumbled, declining a tasting glass of peach/apricot. But his companion insisted, Erinn said. “And now he’s in all the time to buy wine.”

I tried the white cranberry with a slice of the Thompson’s blackened halibut. Both were delicious.