(MV) - The neighbors were upset. The people of Kelowna, a pastoral community in British Columbia’s southern interior, are a notoriously God-fearing lot. So, when the recently relocated New York real-estate-developer-turned-vintner Stephen Cipes erected the eponymous edifice of his Summerhill Pyramid Winery in 1992, folks thought the Devil himself had come to town. “This is the Bible Belt,” explains Stephen’s son Gabe who leads the biodynamic operations of the vineyard, which overlooks Lake Okanagan. “Kelowna has changed a lot but it was fairly isolated and close-minded at the time. I would find swastikas on my desk in school. They totally thought we were worshiping Satan up here.”

There’s no demon in these wines, though. Summerhill relies not on the machinations of Old Scratch, but on the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, the anthroposophical philosopher who created the biodynamic method of holistic agriculture in 1924. The technique requires adherence to an astrological calendar and centers around nine “preparations” used to charge compost with mystical properties to support plant growth—all without the use of pesticides or chemical fertilizers. These preparations include flowers fermented inside various bits of animal viscera, and manure from a lactating cow mashed into a horn and left to age underground.

While easy to immediately dismiss this approach as standard-issue hippie piffle—or outright meddling with dark forces—it’s worth noting that Summerhill’s wines, especially the sparkling, are consistently ranked in the global top 20, and it is the only Canadian producer with that distinction. Who needs Satan when you’ve got those kind of accolades?