One of Cortes Island’s best loved businesses is a U-Brew tucked away in an old seafood plant, off the beaten track on Hansen Road. Founder and sole proprietor Doug Brown started the business 25 years ago after moving to Cortes from the Fraser Valley.

Currents interviewed Doug in mid-March 2024. Our extensive interview covers many topics including: how Doug got started in wine-making, what inspired him to start a U-Brew on Cortes, how wine is made, why wine is now a more practical product for him to offer than beer, what challenges he has met along the way, what he loves about his work, his feelings about community and customer service, and his thoughts about the future of this iconic Cortes Island business.

The interview has been produced as five radio segments of between 13 and 16 minutes, each one covering one or two topics. This text version presents some highlights; but we recommend that interested readers take the time to enjoy the podcasts in their entirety.

Well, I’ve been here for 27 years. And I originally wasn’t planning to move here. I was just kind of nosing around through the province, looking for a place that I would eventually retire to.

When I got to Cortes, there was a storm going on and the ferry wasn’t running; so I had to stay overnight on Quadra. And then I thought the next morning, I might as well just go back home. But then I thought, Well, you know, I’ve come all this way. A friend of mine recommended I come up and check out Quadra and Cortes. So I decided, Okay, I’ll do it.

And so I got on the ferry, the first ferry that was running, and I got off the ferry… and by the time I got about a hundred yards, I was in love with the place. I couldn’t believe how fast it happened.

So I spent two hours between ferries driving around, falling more and more in love with Cortes, and then went back home and thought, I’m not prepared for this, you know, I am not ready to retire.

I have a business and all this kind of complicated stuff. But boy, I just couldn’t sleep, you know. So, so I did it. I sold the business and just moved here.

Prior to retiring, Doug had been a bookseller and publisher; but he also had a lifelong interest in wine making. His wine making career actually started very early:

So I’ve been making wine since I was a kid. I mean, not myself, but helped my dad and never stopped. […] He used to buy Welch’s grape juice from the supermarket, and bread yeast. It was horrible! And that’s probably what motivated me to continue. Because as soon as I was old enough to leave home, I thought, I can do better than this. So I got proper wine juice and proper equipment, proper supplies, proper ingredients, and Yeah, I just kept on going.

Arriving on Cortes, Doug found that there was some interest in home wine making, but not quite to his standards:

So I’ve been making wine for over 65 years. So there’s nothing much that I can’t handle — it’s kind of fun that way. And when I got here, I decided that it would be nice to start a wine club to help other people make their own wine. Well, I was pretty horrified about what people were doing, and how they were doing it, and what their final product was.

And I tried to fix it, but the apathy was just… overwhelming. So I kind of gave it up, people just stopped coming. So then I had an idea of teaching a class at Linnaea — they still had the gardening students at that time. And I talked to Liz and she said, “Oh, sure.”

So I set up a wine class. And I started out with 13 people. But at the six week point, I was it. They had all dropped out. So I just gave up on the whole idea of trying to have a class. And I decided that I would start a UBrew. My past has been in the book business. I have business experience and of course I have wine experience.

I wasn’t sure how it would go. I I was financially comfortable having sold my business, and I thought, “Well, even if it doesn’t make any money, It’ll be fun to do, and it’ll give me a role, so to speak, on the island. And it all worked that way, and so people got really excited — at the beginning I was just overwhelmed, because people were pretty excited to see me here.

So it’s been 25 years. And… Things are changing, but the business is… everybody is happy with it, and there’s good support.

Although Doug has made all kinds of alcoholic beverages at Good Libations, from kit wines to craft beers to sake and mead, his favourite kind of wine making involves local fruit.

Well, I love helping people make wine from their own fruit. Getting the boxes of juice — like Merlot and Chardonnay — isn’t very soul-satisfying. But making making wine from people’s own fruit is really fun — especially if I get something really unique. Like I have a customer who brings in their frozen kiwis every year. I had a customer who made beet wine, and I have people that bring in quinces.

I have people that bring in a mixture of stuff, and because I’ve been doing it for so long. I don’t need recipes. I can just look at what they’ve got and know what to do. And it’s really fun that way. Just knowing, having that degree of self confidence…

And often too, I can rescue wine that people have made at their home. They say, “Oh my God, look at this.” Like it happens every year with the apple cider. Quite a few people try to make their own apple cider. And I do get a number of people that are panic-stricken because something’s gone wrong. And often I can fix it for them.

Doug really enjoys the personal relationship with customers, and helping them get their preferred beverage exactly right.

The main thing is that people know they’re going to get a wine that’s what they want. Everything is custom made here.

People start the wine and then they say, well, I want it sweet. Or I want it dry. I want this, I want that. And they get exactly what they want, which people are really pleased about. When they buy wine at the store, especially fruit wines, they’re often overly sweet; and not many people — there are people — but not many people like wines that sweet; so I can help them to make dry wines too.

I mean, I can advise people on whatever they want to have. I have people who like very, very sweet wine, and that’s fine. I have a customer who puts Coca Cola in their wine. I’m fine with that too. I’m non judgmental. I mean, the idea is to enjoy your wine.

And whatever that means, there’s no rules, no opinions from me, no snobbishness… whatever.

After 25 years, Doug still takes pride and pleasure in his work.

It’s an art, really. Yeah — alchemy. I call it. I just can’t imagine doing anything else.

But time catches up with us all, and Doug is trying to figure out how to keep Good Libations going when he’s no longer able to run it single-handed.

Well, I’m, I’m really working on getting this to be a community business, a co op. And I would just donate it to the community and continue to work here and keep it running. So… some kind of co op here? but I don’t want the typical co-op vision, it would drive me crazy having a Board of Directors.

Doug envisions some kind of co-op or club continuing to run the business, pooling fruit from people’s gardens and farms to make the local fruit wines that have become his signature product. He’s discussing various possibilities actively at this time, hoping that Good Libations will continue to be a community institution and his legacy to Cortes Island.

The full interview will be broadcast Monday through Friday March 25-29, and covers many more interesting details about the history of Good Libations and its premises, including a description of the actual wine making process and reflections on freight costs and regulatory burden, local food security, the history of apple orchards on Cortes, and much more.

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Podcasts

[All images taken with permission from the Good Libations web site, except for the final “alchemy lab” illustration by Midjourney and the feature image which was provided by Doug Brown.]