Retirement is not an option for Donald Triggs, a key player in the blossoming of Canada’s modern wine industry and co-owner of soon-to-be launched Culmina Family Estate Winery.
A native of rural Manitoba, representing the sixth generation on the family farm, Don left the nest to complete a degree in agriculture from the University of Manitoba and an MBA at Western. He started his career in Ontario doing sales and marketing with Colgate Palmolive. In 1972 he moved to John Labatt’s wine division where his experience ranged from fixing troubled sectors of winery operations to running large wine producers in Canada and abroad.
In the hope of staying in Canada with his family, Don joined Fisions PLC based in Vancouver, taking their troubled North American horticultural division from money loser to industry leader. With the 1989 North American Free Trade Agreement around the corner, Don risked everything. He joined forces with Alan Jackson and former Labatt colleagues who pooled their life savings to buy the brewer’s wine division.
Renamed Vincor International with Don as CEO, it grew to become the biggest wine enterprise in Canada and seventh largest in the world. When Constellation Brands US acquired Vincor in 2006, Don resigned and set out to build Culmina with wife Elaine as partner and daughter Sara as sales and marketing manager.
Don has lured Bordeaux-trained Pascal Madevon (formerly winemaker at Osoyoos Larose) to the promising scenario at Culmina.
Read more of the original stories celebrated in our 30th-anniversary issue.
The Best Medicine – Dr. Mike Ertel
The revolving door swishes open with the arrival of sick or injured people and clicks closed as hundreds of treated patients depart. This is the daily dance of the emergency department and for Dr. Mike Ertel, it’s more tango than waltz. Dr. Mike has donned some...
Selah Outdoor Explorations
I’m deep in the woods, in the dark, with my three young children trudging through huge drifts of snow as we search for a way back home. A strange man emerges from the bushes and stops us in our tracks. In a twisted Scottish accent he describes the gory details of a...
Doug Cox – Preserving History
Doug Cox says it’s a hobby that has gotten completely out of hand.
Although his books recounting area history have been local bestsellers for decades, as a child he wasn’t particularly interested in reading or writing. He was, however, blessed with a natural curiosity.
Hockey Fans – Les Misérables
Most hockey fans believe that the NHL lockout has been a necessary epic struggle, not unlike the game itself and not dissimilar from the French historical novel by Victor Hugo, Les Misérables. Pitting mere mortal millionaire hockey players against the aristocratic billionaire owners should make for a blockbuster musical.
Best of the Okanagan Special Winners Section
You voted them the best. Now they’re thanking you. The businesses featured in this section would like to show their appreciation to Okanagan Life readers for voting them among 2012’s Best of the Okanagan. They consider it a great honour to be recognized by you. We...
Global Citizenship
When Roger Perry returned home a few days before Christmas and saw the pile of gifts for his grandchildren under the tree, he felt utter despair. “The children we saw had so little and we had so much,” he says. On a fact-finding mission in Ethiopia, Roger, who is the...
0 Comments