WATCH: How fruit shaped the Okanagan

• The Okanagan Wine and Orchard Museum has reopened after two years, with some improvements
• Museum showcases how Okanagan wine went from just okay to world renowned.
• Visitors able to learn more about the industries that paved the way to make Kelowna what it is today

Two histories that grew the Okanagan started simply because there was too much fruit.

That’s how Linda Digby, the executive director of the Kelowna Museums, describes the orchards and wineries in the valley.

“These are the industries that shaped the Okanagan we know today,” she told Kelowna10. “The agriculture industries were key in the story of this development of the transformation of the area, for better or worse.”

The Okanagan Wine and Orchard Museum brings these stories together after being closed for two years due to the pandemic. Although it has officially reopened for the public, improvements are on the way which will make the experience even more interactive.

She said the two industries came together when local growers were looking for a byproduct for their fruit.

“The very first commercial wine created in the Okanagan was made because local apple growers had a problem: too much fruit,” Digby explained. “It was not possible to stay in business growing apples unless you found a byproduct industry for apples.”

Thus, the first commercial winery in the Okanagan made wine from apples. That winery is known today as Sandhill Wines.

Digby said the location of the museum is also an important piece in the development of Kelowna.

“The Laurel Packinghouse, where the museum is housed, would have been humming with packing lines, and rows and rows of workers busy sorting and loading fruit,” she explained. “The cultural district of downtown was in fact the industrial district and it was full of packinghouses, canneries, the first winery, the first tobacco shop. It was all about the agricultural industry.”

Today, the museum hosts workshops and plays a key role in education. Large machines sit idle in the building that was once bustling with activity, and people now learn how they used to peel apples or take the pits out of cherries.

Digby said the region started as an opportunity to become an orchard farmer or a grower, and later on, to have a winery. She said that has continued to draw settlers to the Okanagan from all over.

But the industry was founded on stolen land.

“The Okanagan was already a rich and bountiful landscape, the syilx people lived here sustainably for thousands of years.” Digby said. “They knew the natural fruits and how to use the land, water and all of life to sustain them and live in harmony with.”

The museum is open three days a week inside the Laurel Packinghouse on Ellis Street.