Donald Triggs | Culmina Estate Winery

[downloads ids="6013" columns="1" columns="1" excerpt="no"][downloads category="current-issue" columns="1"]

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.

A Way With Words

June 2011

Role models, mentors and resources for Okanagan wordsmiths

The Okanagan is home to both established and aspiring authors producing fiction, non-fiction, poetry, humour and children’s titles.

Sit Long, Talk Much, Laugh Often

May 2011

…nearby there is a bohemian restaurant which is filling up on an unassuming weekday evening, with some of the Okanagan’s best and brightest minds. The group hosting tonight’s reoccurring event is the Okanagan Institute, …creative professionals who…talk about really cool stuff.

Java Story No Jive

May 2011

Seventy-five per cent of the beans used by Shuswap Coffee Company are grown by women in the poorest regions of the coffee growing world. But as impoverished as these growers are, they are giving back to women right here in the Valley.

Caravan Farm Theatre: Leading Lady

May 2011

To young actor Courtenay Dobbie, Caravan Farm Theatre seemed a mirage: Clydesdale cast-mates and stages sprung from fields for sold-out crowds. But eight years after her first show, she’s holding the reins. For two months during the summer of 2003, Courtenay Dobbie woke in her nylon yellow tent, her eyes swimming in the blue sky above the screen. Her ears replayed the echo of applause coasting through trees—the 24-year-old was playing the lead in Caravan Farm Theatre’s