New World Flavour – Ontario, Canada

Often little known beyond Canadian (or even provincial) borders), the wine and vintners of Ontario play by their own rules

Growing up in Niagara I never drank wine. Only after two years in France did I come to appreciate it. This is a common pattern for Canadians; we look past what is near to what is far. Though Canadian wine is still a young phenomenon in the land of beer, with serious wineries only emerging in the 1970s, pioneering winemakers are experimenting with unique but challenging environments and building new traditions.

Two of Canada’s major wine regions lie along the shores of Lake Ontario, a short drive from Toronto, making them the perfect destinations for a weekend escape. The Niagara Peninsula and Prince Edward County, a patchwork of vineyards, farmland and colonial towns, are now home to over 150 wineries, along with the attendant restaurants, artisans and boutique hotels.

Tracing Ancient Footsteps

Geology marked the Niagara Peninsula for grapes. The glacial Lake Iroquois, a precursor to Lake Ontario, deposited the necessary fertile soil and red clay, while an ancient sea laid down the limestone sediment for the Niagara Escarpment, trapping the warm air currents from the lake. Follow Regional Road 81, which winds its way through the peninsula, and you’ll be tracing the former Lake Iroquois shoreline, while passing some of the area’s leading wineries.

In Vineland we stopped for delicious thin-crust pizza at Redstone Winery. Rene Van Ede, the Australian winemaker there, told us he was shocked when he first arrived ten years ago and discovered that the cold temperatures could kill vines and that late frosts were deadly, with wineries resorting to windmills, helicopters and hay fires to warm the air. At neighbouring Back 10 Cellars Andrew Brooks even had the local pastor bless the vineyard. It couldn’t hurt. He and his wife Christina are dreamers. Quitting their restaurant jobs, they bought this ten acre derelict vineyard after looking in Italy and British Columbia and laboured tirelessly until their first vintage ten years later. Riesling, the workhorse of Niagara, is made into an off-dry sparkler and the Chardonnay, to give it a twist, is aged in Canadian oak which results in a unique marmalade/coconut cream pie flavour. Sometimes the harsh climate helps, said Brooks. “When a vine suffers it’s forced to make interesting fruit.” But there’s a limit to such suffering, with frosts sometimes wiping out whole vineyards.

At 16 Mile Cellar in Jordan head winemaker Regan Kapach works in a more hands-off style, but it’s risky, especially for a new winery. Instead of dictating a wine you have to react to its development, or simply trust. Sometimes it fails. “How do you make a million dollars owning a winery?” Kapach joked. “Start with ten.” So she experiments on a small scale, like her unfiltered, sulphate-free Chardonnay, which she left in a barrel undisturbed – except for a pat and a song – for 15 months. There was worry and there was hope, and winemakers are used to doing both. The result: ripe fruit balanced by tart acidity and a finish that slides down your throat like a core sample of the dolomitic limestone from which it grew.

The 81 ends at the Niagara Parkway, which meanders along the river. Here you can stop for a hike down into the Niagara Gorge or climb Brock’s Monument in Queenston Heights, a memorial to the general who defended against the invading Americans during the War of 1812. Niagara-on-the-Lake, the wine region’s capital, is a colonial dreamland with its shop- lined mam street and grand Victorian houses. The town is home to the renowned Shaw Festival Theatre, which is dedicated to the works of George Bernard Shaw and his contemporaries.

Land of Plenty

Driving throughout Niagara you pass orchards interspersed with vines. Being one of the country’s largest agricultural regions, road-side stands are a kaleidoscope of fruit and vegetables, the summer’s progression marked by strawberries, cherries, corn, peaches, apricots and plums before the autumn crop of squash and apples. This abundance is preserved in the jams and fruit pies you find at 13th Street Winery’s bakery and in the pear eau-de-vie and cherry gin of Dillon’s Distillery. In Niagara-on-the-Lake, the fruit is made into silk- smooth gelato at II Gelato di Carlotta while Oast House Brewers uses everything from peaches to roasted chestnuts in their beer.

Backhouse restaurant is the region’s most ambitious spot when it comes to local food. Chef Ryan Crawford and co-proprietor Beverley Hotchkiss searched the country for a spot to set up shop, returning to Niagara because it was the only place that could satisfy Crawford’s love of cooking, growing and wine. Their hyper-local ‘cool climate cuisine’ involves whole animal butchery and made-from-scratch cheese, butter and bread (prepared using a 17-year-old sourdough starter named Roxanne). Their farm is minutes away and in the winter they use pickles, preserves and a cold storage or, if they’re lucky, some carrots might grow. Winemakers make exclusive casks for their wine- on-tap programme and the wine menu focusses on what Ontario does well – giving its terroir a rightful place among the globe’s best.

On Island Time

Because of the Murray Canal, Prince Edward County is technically an island. Located almost halfway between Toronto and Montreal, it feels far apart from the urban grind, with the slow rhythms of country living and small town intimacies. The County is the newest wine appellation in Ontario, with vines only planted at the turn of the millennium. The varying topography creates a mesoclimate at each vineyard, allowing you to visit 20 different wineries and taste 20 different Chardonnays. But making wine here requires one to be a little stubborn and a little mad. Since the winters get so cold, and temperatures of-25°C can kill vines, they must ‘hill up’ the vines in autumn, burying them under earth and hoping they’ve survived when dug up by hand in spring.

We stopped first at Hinterland Wine Company where Jonas Newman and Vicki Samaras craft bubbles, and only bubbles, in a converted dairy barn. Why bubbles? Because that was what the land told them to do. The cool climate and well-draining limestone bedrock are perfect for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, the two principal building blocks of Champagne. But unlike France’s Champagne, they’re unhampered by convention and experiment with various methods including ancestral and the traditional double fermentation, which produces their Champagne-like Blanc de Blancs.

Loyal to the Past

Prince Edward County was first settled by Loyalists seeking refuge after the American Revolution. Cutting across the island, the Loyalist Parkway passes iconic red barns and runs through the three mam tov/ns of Wellington, Bloomfield and Picton. They’re lined with artisan shops and stately homes from the booming ‘barley days’ when the region grew rich from shipping the grain to American brewers. To see a lovingly renovated Second Empire home check out 66 Gilead Distillery.

Another architectural highlight is the Drake Devonshire Inn, which occupies a restored 1800s iron foundry. With their eye for art and design, the Drake hosts exhibitions, artists-in-residence and festivals.

A meal here is worth the splurge and afterwards you can lounge on the beach in a Muskoka chair as the sun sets. Not to be outdone, Angéline’s in Bloomfield has a variety of rustic – meets-modern rooms including a reconstructed 1860s log cabin.

Writing New Lore

Burgundy, which is what the County is most often compared to, has been making wine for 1,500 years, give or take. Through trial and error they figured out what works best. This is tradition. But the new world provides an escape from these expectations and, for winemakers, the unknown land allows them to forge new methods. This is what led Frédéric Picard to the area and what has kept him at Huff Estates Winery for 15 years. Transplanted from France, he enjoys the challenges and freedom of this still illusive land. “I can do things differently here, otherwise I’d have stayed in Burgundy.” Picard’s experimentation created a distinct traditional sparkling wine, which has the lightest of bubbles and is slightly oxidised, like leaving an apple a little too long on the counter to ripen. It was a memorable wine, one I still think of, and we enjoyed a glass of it with locally-made charcuterie on the patio.
On the main road into Picton you’ll find Canadian Vinegar Cellars at Black Prince Winery, where Pete Bradford is a man enamoured with wood. He’s one of Canada’s only master coopers and though he still builds and repairs barrels – in his shop he was experimenting with 500-year-old Douglas-fir for a fermenting barrel – his new passion is vinegar. He obsesses over every aspect of the process. Using a 1964 mother brought in from Italy, he’s ageing a ten-year-old balsamic – maybe the only such one in Canada – in 115-year-old Oloroso sherry barrels, which he saved from the junkyard. Believing there was still life in them, he spent 100 hours restoring each one, even using the old technique of slipping cattail leaves between staves to plug leaks. ‘Instead of telling a barrel when it’s ready, it tells you when it’s ready’’

There’s something of the monk in Glenn Symons. He works mostly alone at Lighthall Vineyards, secluded on a nowhere road, perfecting his wine and cheese A home vintner for 25 years, he bought the vineyard in 2008., attracted by the soil’s potential and its unwritten story He has rigorous standards and won’t sell a wine that disappoints him. Cases of an unsatisfactory rose have been in storage; waiting to be distilled to fortify a late harvest Vidal he produces. We chatted in his small production kitchen while he scooped fresh sheep milk curds into moulds. I asked him if there was a wine or cheese that he wanted to make that he hadn’t yet attempted. No, he said. He knows what he wants. Like others in the County, he has a self-confidence that comes from having found his place in the world. The job then, vintage after vintage, is listening to this place and singing it to others. That’s what wine can do.