Coming together in BC’s Similkameen Valley

Spencer Massie & Les LeQuelenec

In 2005, a small group of professional, international business people, with a passion for wine, food and travel, fell in love with the Similkameen Valley and decided to become grape-growers and winemakers. The closely connected team of Spencer Massie and Bonnie Henry, Les LeQuelenec and Sue Lee, Peter and Andria Lee, and Gustav Kramer, acquired a four-hectare (10-acre) orchard on the Similkameen Valley’s Upper Bench Road on the winter solstice of that year. Clos du Soleil was then launched with the help of Lawrence and Sharon Herder, who helped find the vineyard and manage early operations, planting it with red and white Bordeaux varietals. With a love of everything classic French and family roots going back to Normandy and South Africa’s Cape, it was easy for the partners to get excited about a Bordeaux style wine.

We are developing wines that have that old world elegance, but with a bit of a new world edge say managing directors Les and Spencer, after all, we are Canadian and our vineyard is in BC.

In 2009 Ann Sperling, renowned Canadian winemaker and a former high school classmate of Spencer, joined as viticulturist and winemaker, and in June 2010 Jean-Felix Boulais and his partner, Melissa Fontaine, joined us as resident vineyard managers.

The name Clos du Soleil refers to rocks, sun, and soil, from the mountain that forms a tall natural stone wall at the back of the vineyard, the cobbled terroir, and the long days of sun which pour in on the Similkameen Bench, one of BC’s most unique and promising microclimates.