What's in a name?

Plenty, if you're B.C.'s principal grape growing region.

Over the last six months, the South Okanagan Wineries Association (SOWA) has been on the quest for a new identity. While organizations often rebrand, SOWA's reasons are more complex.

The challenge faced by the group, which includes 21 wineries -- from giants like Vincor to small family-owned enterprises such as Castoro De Oro (formerly Golden Beaver) -- was to find a real point of distinction (though maybe without being too precise).

With 53 per cent of B.C. acreage under vine, the south grows the majority of grapes that go into B.C. wines, regardless of whether they're made in Summerland or Saanich. That's a fact not readily apparent on labels, which except in a couple of unofficial cases state only "Okanagan Valley."

In jurisdictional terms, the South Okanagan starts at Peachland and includes Penticton. However, many in the grape-growing community have long felt the real divide to be McIntyre Bluff. The soaring cliff face just north of Oliver is a natural weather barrier that marks a point where harvest times between the south and some parts of the central valley can differ by as much as two or more weeks.

From a wine tourism point of view, SOWA's new brand makes perfect sense. It's also deliberately more specific than the recently discarded "Desert Wine Country."

"We're proud to be here . . . and everyone has a sense of something very special. But we weren't exactly sure of where 'here' is; or rather we haven't done a very good job of telling consumers about it," says SOWA president Tim Martiniuk.

He introduced the new brand logo -- a red on yellow sunburst of bottles with the slogan "uncork the sun" and "Oliver Osoyoos Wine Country" prominently stated.

Oliver Osoyoos Wine Country encompasses the area "from the bluff to the border," says Martiniuk. It also effectively defines "a sense of place" that's more appropriate for the province's "pioneering region in grape growing and winemaking."

It's a region of benches, that Martiniuk identifies as the "East Benches, (Black Sage); Osoyoos Lake Benches and West Benches (Golden Mile)."

They are, says Martiniuk, "three very distinct areas in terms of the micro-climates they contain, the sun exposure they get and the temperatures they experience."

By redefining and branding the "south" firmly as Oliver and Osoyoos, the association has effectively laid the groundwork for the next stage: dividing the south valley into sub-appellations, based on the benches that Martiniuk identifies.

However, while commercial branding, and the tourism dollars it yields, has proved popular in recent years (see Naramata Bench), the more contentious process of identifying and formalizing sub-appellations -- that actually tell the consumer about specific grape origin and terroir and identify it on the label -- continues to be bogged down.

Even though area-specific names such as "South Okanagan," "Black Sage" and "Golden Mile" are increasingly bandied about unofficially, if British Columbia truly wants to be taken seriously in the wine world, it will have to move on sub-appellations sooner rather than later. And not just in the Okanagan.

Witness the evolution that's taken place in Washington and Oregon, with whom B.C. competes both inside the bottle and out.

"Uncork the sun" does have a nice ring to it. But designing the logo may prove to be the easy part.