The latest issue of Precedent hit the streets last week, and inside you’ll find my love letter to the wineries in Beamsville, Ontario. I don’t like writing anything that sounds too much like a promotional flyer for provincial tourism, but it drives me crazy that most Ontarians don’t realize that we have a little Napa Valley growing up in our own backyard, and that the short trip to the vineyards is an excellent way to combine the pleasure of the country with a bender on a patio.
The main reason the better wineries escape attention is because they are tiny cottage-industry artisans with little presence on the shelves of the LCBO. But in the world of wine, small is beautiful.
Large wineries have a commercial imperative to mass produce wines with a homogenous taste and an appeal that gravitates to the lowest common denominator. Unfortunately, this is true for some big wineries in the better known wine region centered upon Niagara-on-the-Lake. But a little west in Beamsville and Jordan, you’ll find the vineyards divided into small plots that naturally inhibit commercial expansion. The reduced scale has led the wineries to specialize in producing handcrafted wines that focus on art over output.
The recent focus on quality is paying off, and many wineries find their bottles in ferocious demand. For example, wines from Hidden Bench or Le Clos Jordanne usually vanish within hours of being released by Vintages.
But, what astounds me is how even the most popular of these small winemakers don’t want to expand even if it keeps them a little obscure. When I asked Scott Hodgekinson at Flat Rock Cellars what it will take for Ontario to make more of an international impression, he replied that local winemakers may not even want that sort of attention. Pointing to the utility shed in the middle of their vineyard that gives its name to an excellent Chardonnary, he said, “We’d have to turn the Rusty Shed into a gift shop, and who really wants that.” (See photo of Flack Rock’s vineyard above)
Similarly, at Fielding Estate or Daniel Lenko Estate Winery, there was no talk of adding vineyards to meet the growing demand. Everywhere I go, the answer is the same: keep the output low and focus on making the best wine possible. Jean-Martin Bouchard, the winemaker at Hidden Bench, already obsesses about every inch in his three small vineyards and how the dips in the land or the depth of the soil affects different varieties of grapes. After speaking with him, I imagine that heaping him with more land might give him an aneurism.
Someday we will look back on this time as a golden period in Ontario: we have top flight wineries that seem to want to stay under the radar. They have open doors, friendly wine-makers, free (or cheap) samples, and remarkably low prices (certainly relative to comparable wineries in the US or France). The only drawback is that you have to go to the winery to get some of the most exciting bottles. So join me next week when I’ll fill you in on some of the best wines that I tasted on my most recent tour of Beamsville.
Matthew Sullivan is a lawyer with the Department of Justice in Toronto. He writes a weekly blog entry here on lawandstyle.ca. The Short Cellar column appears in the print edition of Precedent. Matthew can be reached at matthew@lawandstyle.beta-site.ca