Wines of Nova Scotia
Terroir (Originally published in Lifestyle Nova Scotia magazine, Fall 2004)
In many parts of the world, growing up on a vineyard is an ordinary experience. In Nova Scotia, however, it is a relatively recent phenomenon. For my own three children, nothing could be more natural than playing amid the vinerows in our vineyard on the east bank of the LaHave River. My eldest child, Griffin is already an encyclopedia of viticultural knowledge. When my youngest daughter was born in May of 2004, my wife and I told Griffin that her name was going to Karmen. He thought about this for a few minutes and said “Maybe we should call her Carménère”. Carménère is of course the ancient Bordeaux grape variety that is now the darling of the Chilean wine industry. I told Griffin that he probablyhad the best knowledge of obscure grape varieties of any kid in his daycare. On another occasion we were buying groceries and he asked if the grapes on display were Pinot Noir. Alas, they were only Thompson Seedless.
I am a big fan of a concept called terroir . This is a French term which refers to the taste imparted to a wine from the soil and the particular growing conditions of a given vineyard. You could call it the signature of the land. After all, a grapevine is merely a conduit by which sunshine and soil are converted into wine. The origins of terroir can perhaps be traced back to ancient Burgundy where Cistercian monks purportedly tasted the soil, and finding it sweet, decided to plant vines there. The sweetness, of course is not sugar but limestone. The vaguely sweet taste of limestone gives us the phrase ‘to sweeten the soil' when gardeners talk of adding lime to the soil to raise pH. Not many people taste the soil any more, with the notable exception of my 18 month old daughter, Robin. She loves eating dirt. I don't eat soil very often myself, but smelling soil is another matter. I smell the soil in my own vineyard at every opportunity, even when it's socially inappropriate.
The effect of terroir on the taste of a wine was reaffirmed for me once more several months ago. I was in the cellar at Petite Riviere Vineyards tasting barrel samples of red wines from the excellent 2003 vintage. Two adjacent barrels were dramatically different even though they contained the same grape varieties. The difference was that the grapes came from two different vineyards, only 500 metres apart, but with very different soils and thus different terroirs . The concept of terroir has only begun to be explored in Nova Scotia but it is clear that wines from different parts of our province have different flavour profiles. As for the taste of the soils themselves, you will have to ask Robin.
The birth of my youngest daughter, Karmen, occurred on the same spring day that our Chardonnay vines leafed out. Ancient inhabitants of Europe observed an interesting phenomenon in their cellars each spring. At the same time the vines began to leaf out, the wine would begin refermenting in the cellar. Folklore stated that the wine was responding to the rising sap by trying to return to its birthplace in the vineyard. (In reality, fermentation had been halted by cold temperatures in the cellars over the winter, and the same warm temperatures that caused the vines to grow again also allowed fermentation to resume - but the folk tale makes a better story). Perhaps this means that Karmen will be drawn to the vineyard when she is older. Only time will tell.
Winegrowers and winemakers (Originally published in Lifestyle Nova Scotia magazine, Fall 2003)
Every spring I take the mower deck off my old garden tractor and sharpen the blades. Each year I look at the same little spring-loaded mechanism and wonder where it attaches. Then, inevitably, I forget to disengage this mechanism and end up snapping it onto the tip of my left index finger. "Ouch, I did that last year!" I shout. Then that evening I ask my wife if I can have a new tractor. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not bitter that all of my friends have new tractors except me. "It's not the size of your tractor, it's what you do with it" I keep telling myself.
However, aside from some jobs such as mowing and spraying that are greatly simplified by a tractor, the majority of vineyard work is still labouriously performed by hand. In fact, the daily tasks of the winegrower (pruning, training, harvesting) have remained essentially the same since at least Roman times. So too has the very personal relationship between the winegrower and the vineyard. It has been said that the best thing you can put into your vineyard are footprints. In other words, it is the winegrower looking, tasting, smelling and then making decisions based on experience and sound science that determines the quality of the vintage.
The wine maker supervises the transformation of grapes to wine but she cannot add quality, only preserve (or not ruin) what the wine grower has already achieved. This is what is meant by the phrase wine is grown in the vineyard . The push for quality in the vineyard has been reflected in the increasing quality of Nova Scotia wines. According to Hans Christian Jost, owner of Jost Vineyards, "The quality of Nova Scotia grapes has risen dramatically over the past 10 years". He should know; as owner of the largest winery in Nova Scotia, he buys grapes from many different areas of the province and has watched the industry grow over the last 20 years. This increase in grape quality has resulted in dramatic increases in the quality of the higher-end Nova Scotia wines.
At my own LaHave River Vineyards, the warm days of mid summer are spent hand positioning the growing vine shoots between the trellis wires. The winter of 2002/2003 was the coldest in at least 10 years and although only about 2% of the mature vines were killed, many suffered frozen buds which resulted in some straggly looking specimens in early summer which needed extra attention for training. Luckily, I had anticipated this and left extra buds at pruning time in March, so the vines would not become unbalanced. Actually, I was delighted that the level of damage was not worse, and particularly that our chardonnay fared better than the commonly planted hybrid vine seyval blanc.
My two and a half year old son, Griffin, and I make evening rounds of the vineyard each day and leave our footprints amid the rows. The presence of weeds and mildew are noted and remedial action taken if necessary. In vigorous varieties, up to two thirds of the grape clusters are removed in mid summer, to allow the remaining grape clusters to achieve greater ripeness and flavour. This reduces the total crop harvested, but increases the quality of the grapes. When we finish our evening vineyard rounds, we often rest on the orange Adirondac chairs at the top of the vineyard hill as the sun sets over the LaHave River. Most nights Griffin picks a large bunch of grapes and while the juice runs down his chin, he peppers me with questions, "Daddy can you make a snowman from rocks?, Daddy does the baby worm grow in the mommy worm's belly? Can I have a big excavator? Can I have a small excavator?"
Copies of The Tangled Vine: WInegtowing in Nova Scotia can be obtained by contacting :
blue frog inc.
P.O. Box 89
Bridgewater, Nova Scotia
Canada B4V 2W6
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