Ontario: Moving in the Right Direction

Posted August 12th, 2009 08:08 by John Szabo

Something must be going on. If you haven’t checked it out, now would be a good time. According to the St. Catharines Standard, VQA sales (100% locally produced wines) are outpacing imports at the LCBO by a wide margin. “From April 1 to July 11, 2009, dollar sales of VQA wines were up 25.6 per cent, while imported wines increased by one per cent compared to the same period in 2008.” In addition to producing good wine, Ontario has developed into a hot tourist destination, now attracting an estimated 1 million visitors annually. Travelers to the province’s 4 official grape growing regions are sampling wines and local cuisine, as well as engaging in many cultural and sporting activities. It has taken 30 years, but a critical mass of quality-driven wineries, restaurants, accommodations and other tourist draws has finally been reached. Beyond the regions themselves, discerning Ontario sommeliers are getting on board with VQA Ontario wines: this year the Wine Council of Ontario recognized 120 restaurants with their “Award of Excellence”, earned by establishments with a strong focus on local wines. 32 restaurants received Gold status, which means that at least 75% of the list is VQA, up from last year’s 27 Gold recipients. Things are looking good for the Ontario Wine Industry.

Quality and The Art of the Blend

Ontario continues to take qualitative steps forward. At the top level, wine quality is now on par with much of what the best cool climate regions of the world have to offer. Aromatic whites such as riesling and sauvignon blanc, as well as chardonnay, and delicate reds like cabernet franc, pinot noir and gamay are the province’s strongest suits in the varietal category. Yet some of the most exciting wines to emerge lately in my view are blends, both white and red. It seems utterly sensible to create consistent quality wines using a flexible assemblage of different grapes to draw the best out of each unpredictable growing season. The wide variety of grapes grown in Ontario cannot possibly all perform equally well in each vintage; successes and failures are the reality of growing grapes in a capricious climate. (If you haven’t noticed, the 2009 summer, or rather lack thereof, is proof positive of this fact. It’s shaping up to be a tough year for late ripening grapes, especially the reds.) Only the top sites vineyard sites, which have been identified over the last couple of decades, can be relied upon for consistent quality with specific grapes. And there is still much work to be done on matching sites and grapes.

Stratus has based their entire winemaking philosophy on the art of blending, and most long-established wineries such as Henry of Pelham and Hillebrand (Trius), have been making blends from the beginning. Yet now, more and more wineries are getting into the game and moving beyond traditional Meritage blends (Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet, Merlot) and coming up with innovative and unusual mixtures of complementary varieties. The aim is largely to make consistent quality, well priced wines. Of note are Malivoire’s new ‘Red” and “White”, Vincor’s “Open” range including a riesling-gewürztraminer, Inniskillin’s “Brae Blanc Reserve” and Henry of Pelham’s “Sibling Rivalry” red and white, all non-traditional blends that are now included on the LCBO’s General List.

Higher-end proprietary blends are also on the rise (i.e. Stratus, Peninsula Ridge’s Equinox) but many of these new wines will help to dispel the criticism most often leveled at local wines: that they are too expensive. The above general list wines, plus other successful blends like Flat Rock Cellar’s Twisted, Creekside’s Laura’s Blend and Undercurrent Muscat d’Alsace-Sauvignon Blanc, Fielding’s Conception Red and White, 13th Street’s Et Ceteras white, Stratus’ Wildass red and white and Calamus’ white blend are all under $20 a bottle and represent good value for money.

Sub-Appellation and Single Vineyard Wines

Running parallel to this trend is the growing number of sub-appellation and vineyard-designated wines. It’s almost like a right-of-passage for a newly established wine region to demarcate ever-finer appellations and sub-appellations, right down to individual vineyard sites that year after year are distinguished for their consistent character. All the new world regions without exception are doing it. Ontario is still new to the game, but the climatic and topographic differences identified in the Niagara Peninsula when 10 sub-appellations were established two years ago are certainly starting to show in the wines. Witness the consistently lush, ripe fruit of St. David’s Bench and Four Mile Creek, the vibrant acidity and herbal character of cooler Lincoln Lakeshore, Niagara Lakeshore and Vinemount Ridge, and the pronounced minerality of the Escarpment appellations, Beamsville Bench, Twenty Mile Bench and Short Hills Bench.

Prince Edward County is still too young to forge ahead with official sub-appellations, but already there are clear differences between various zones of the region. It is just a matter of time I suspect before they, too, will request sub-appellation distinction. With just one winery on Pelee Island, I doubt we’ll ever see sub-appellations established there, and I have yet to hear much official talk about subdividing Lake Erie North shore.

Single Vineyard Wines

The cynical side of me looks suspiciously at single vineyard-designated wines, especially those from sites with no history or track record. Let’s face it: every plot of land has a name or can be given one. It doesn’t mean that the fruit that comes from that parcel is special in any way. There are good terroirs just as there are bad terroirs, with or without a name. Putting the name of the vineyard on a label does add perceived value in the minds of most consumers, so at its worst the practice is a clever marketing scheme to get you to pay more. It doesn’t mean that the wine is any better. Indeed there is an argument that the fruit from several parcels will add more complexity to a wine than one single site.

On the other hand, there are certainly some vineyards, especially in the Niagara Peninsula, that have consistently been shown to produce superior, or at least distinctive grapes year after year: Vineland’s St. Urban, Le Clos Jordanne’s single sites including Le Grand Clos, The Wismer Vineyard (but buyer beware: Rick Wismer owns and farms a huge amount of land in various locations and not all of it is great, yet technically wines produced from his land can still be called “Wismer Vineyard”), Château des Charmes’ Paul Bosc Estate Vineyard, Tawse Winery’s Carly’s Block, Malivoire’s Moira and Courtney Vineyards, Hidden Bench’s Rosomel Vineyard, JT’s Delaine Vineyard, Inniskillin’s Montague and Hillebrand’s Oliveira Vineyard, to name but a handful. Then there are the great sites that don’t get named on the label, such as the source of Cave Spring’s CSV Riesling and Chardonnay (mostly from the Cave Spring Vineyard), or Henry of Pelham’s Speck Family Reserve wines.

In any case I am happy to see this trend continue, as it offers winemakers the opportunity to focus on terroir and learn about the potential of each site and grape combination. In the end the top vineyards will rise to the top, even if unofficially, based on quality and price. It would be premature to say the least at this stage in Ontario’s development to begin to officially classify vineyards in any sort of cru system. Maybe in around 30 years or so we can talk. For the moment, most of the top producers have at least a couple of monovarietal wines from specific sites that are interesting to taste side-by-side and begin to get a handle on the terroir of Niagara. Don’t miss the range of vineyard-designated Pinots at Le Clos Jordanne and Tawse, for example, or the vineyard designated range at Hidden Bench.

Going Green

Another welcome trend is the green movement. Southbrook recently released Canada’s first Demeter-certified biodynamic wine (the excellent 2008 Cabernet Rosé), while Tawse, Malivoire, Featherstone and Le Clos Jordanne continue to move in that direction. It takes a great deal of courage in our humid and challenging climate to take this road; once you’re on there’s no turning back. But whether or not you believe in cosmic life forces and energy cycles, the hard and indisputable reality is that anyone who puts so much effort into their vineyard and winemaking, and who pays such close attention to everything that is happening around their vineyards and winery, will almost invariably end up making something more honest and unique and of better quality than someone with the eyes closed, “nuclear strike” approach to winegrowing. I needn’t even mention the aspect of social responsibility to drive the point home.

When visiting Niagara, be sure to stop in at Featherstone, Tawse and Southbrook to meet the lambs in the vineyards, charged with thinning canopies and cover crops. It may seem a little whimsical, but the cute little guys are actually effective, and it does add to the pastoral beauty of the Niagara region. And did I mention that the (organic) lambs are pretty tasty too?

Organic and sustainable methods of farming are also moving into the mainstream. Frogpond Farms, Hidden Bench, Malivoire, Ravine, Lailey, Pearl-Morissette (yet to release their first wine) and likely several more I have missed are farming all or partially organically, and there are another 25 or so wineries who have signed up for the Wine Council of Ontario’s “sustainable Winemaking Ontario” program, a proactive environmental initiative to help wineries identify and adopt Best Practice environmental stewardship. Kudos to the industry for undertaking such an initiative.