La Stella Winery (Executive Winemaker, Viticulturist, Managing Partner)

Le Vieux Pin (Executive Winemaker, Viticulturist, Managing Partner)

A highly respected and well-known winemaker in the Okanagan Valley, the French-born and educated Severine Pinte told us that relocating to the Okanagan was a great move for her and allowed her to blossom as a winemaker. Severine is now the Executive Winemaker, Viticulturist, and Managing Partner for Enotecca Winery and Resorts.

Severine’s father was quite interested in wine and often took the family out for barrel tasting, but it was at school that she discovered viticulture and enology and changed her plans of becoming a pilot. She attended the Ecole Nationale Superieure Agronomique de Montpellier and completed her Masters in Viticulture and Oenology as well as her National Enology Diploma there in 1998. She worked for a number of years in the wine industry, “learning from the bottom up” about every task in a winery, from winemaking to vineyard management, which has proved to be very useful. She also learned how male-dominated the industry was at that time. “Compared to France, it is so much easier here.”

In 2010, Severine and her family moved to the South Okanagan area where she accepted the lead winemaking position at Enotecca, a parent company that owns two sister wineries, La Stella in Osoyoos and Le Vieux Pin in Oliver. She became managing partner in 2015, and Executive winemaker/viticulturist in 2023. The grapes for her wines are sourced from nine properties spread throughout the valley, with those for Le Vieux Pin tending to be from the more northerly and cooler region and those for La Stella from further south. All nine vineyards are quite different, making the role of winemaker both interesting and challenging.

Severine has a stellar record of crafting notable wines at both wineries and is also active in the British Columbia (BC) wine community as a mentor and educator. She has chaired the Sustainable Winegrowing Group for BC since her election to that position in 2020 and also serves on the BC Wine Grape Council Board of Directors. La Stella winery, Le Vieux Pin winery, and all nine vineyards earned sustainable certification in 2021. Among her many recognitions is a 2023 award from the French government, which just named Severine to one of its highest honors in the field of agriculture, the prestigious “French Knight Medal Order of Agricultural Merit.” A further honor was her receiving the 2024 Wine Growers British Columbia Leadership Excellence Award.