A Taste of Canada’s Terroir at the Thanksgiving Dinner Table
For every palate.
With the holiday approaching, preparations for Thanksgiving feasts are well underway, and whether the meal is traditional or a twist, the wines at the dinner table should have just as much thought. To help you pick or bring an ideal pour, we’ve compiled a list of recent wine stories featuring changemakers in wine regions across the country and curated lists of wines to try.
The New Matriarch of Niagara Wine
If Ontario’s Niagara region is a rising star in the wine world, then Kelly Mason is the gas that fuels its flame. Hot on the heels of the peninsula’s recent renaissance—led by the likes of Francois Morissette of Pearl Morissette, Jean-Laurent Groux of Stratus Vineyards, and Thomas Bachelder of almost innumerable projects—second-generation star winemakers such as Mason are starting to remake estates in their own discerning image.
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Vancouver Island Wines Are in the Spotlight
With almost 30 wineries, the southern part of the east coast of Vancouver Island is one of British Columbia’s official wine regions. It includes the Cowichan Valley, about an hour’s drive from Victoria, and in and around the Comox Valley, another two hours’ drive north. A few are closer to Victoria. There is one designated subregion: Cowichan Valley, where about half the island’s wineries, including Unsworth and Blue Grouse, are located.
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This Okanagan Valley Winery Is the Best of Both Worlds
Founded by life and business partners Pénélope and Dylan Roche in 2010, the Okanagan Valley’s Roche Wines is the result of the pair’s bold move to leave behind Bordeaux, where Pénélope’s family spent six generations building up Château Les Carmes Haut-Brion, an acclaimed winery in the acclaimed region. When the winery was sold in 2010, Pénélope and Dylan, who met while working a vintage in New Zealand, first looked elsewhere in France, including in Burgundy, where Dylan was trained, for their next project.
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A Star Emerges in a Rising Canadian Wine Region
Founded by Jocelyn and Michael Lightfoot in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Lightfoot & Wolfville Vineyards is young even in terms of the Annapolis Valley’s youthful wine industry. Planted in 2009, on land Michael’s family had been farming for three generations, the estate vineyards only began producing fruit for wine in the 2015 vintage. A decade on, Lightfoot & Wolfville is one of the Nova Scotia wine industry’s success stories, gaining acclaim from wine nerds and everyday consumers from its home province and beyond.
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Iconic Wineries of British Columbia Is Leading the Okanagan Valley Into Its Second Era
No premium Canadian wine company is as big and important as Iconic Wineries of British Columbia (known as Von Mandl Family Estates until 2018), the collection of seven wineries stewarded by the inimitable Anthony von Mandl. Since West Kelowna’s Mission Hill Family Estate, the crown jewel of the company’s portfolio in terms of both quality and consumer appeal, was founded in 1981, Iconic Wineries of British Columbia has helped propel the Okanagan Valley’s modern wine industry into the future.
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The State of Canadian Sparkling Wine Is Reason Enough to Pop a Bottle
One of the coldest wine regions in Canada, Quebec’s Eastern Townships southeast of Montreal, is producing a significant amount of sparkling wine. Eve Rainville, who, along with her husband, Marc Théberge, runs Domaine Bergeville, Quebec’s only winery devoted entirely to the production of sparkling wine, thinks it has the chance to be the region’s endemic style. “We really believe that Quebec is made for sparkling wine,” she says.
From Corporate to Artisan Winemaker
Ben Bryant, winemaker and co-owner of Naramata Bench’s 1 Mill Road winery, has seen it all. In the world of winemaking, the scale of production ranges from corporate giants to what are called garagistes, small-scale producers who make a few hundred cases of wine a year, some of them literally in a garage, others renting space in another winery or other facility.
Bryant, an Australian, was chief winemaker for Australia at Pernod Ricard, a multinational corporation that manages a vast range of wines and other alcoholic beverages, before moving to Canada to become vice-president of winemaking at Mission Hill Family Estate Winery in the Okanagan Valley. But he has now forsaken the corporate life to become a garagiste, making his 1 Mill Road wines in a wine storage facility on Naramata Bench from grapes he purchases from Okanagan Valley vineyards.
