Why is it our first Tidal Bay?

A frequent question since we released our first Tidal Bay a month ago is why did we wait so long? It was introduced 10 years ago according to the Wines of Nova Scotia website with first releases in 2010. The answer is slightly complicated and involves some history of wine standards in Nova Scotia.

First of all, Tidal Bay is a brand of the Wine Growers of Nova Scotia, a voluntary association of wineries, and a winery has to be a member to produce it. We recently rejoined the association after taking a hiatus since 2012 and that makes it possible for us to have a Tidal Bay.

So why did we leave the association? Wine standards were not being followed and it was affecting our business. Specifically, artificially carbonated wines were first produced at the same time that we released the first traditional method sparkling for the province in 2008, confusing the important milestone with misleading labels. Wine standards state that sparkling wines have to declare the production method on the label, in the case of artificially carbonated wines - “Carbonated Method”. Some wineries do declare this, providing transpareny to consumers, but most label their carbonated wines as white wine, not sparkling, and don’t declare the method. In our opinion, this is potentially damaging to our emerging region’s image for sparkling wine - but other wineries and the association did not agree with us, so after repeated attempts to educate and convince, we left.

What changed? New wine standards are coming that protect traditional method and charmat method sparkling wine, both natural fermentations to produce bubbles. We were involved in writing these tighter standards and the industry and association agree with them. And that is why we rejoined and produced our first Tidal Bay.