L'Acadie Vineyards Blog

True Cost of Organic

True Cost of Organic

 

Beauty shot of L'Acadie Blanc in bloom photobombed by bee, 2024

 

Our Gaspereau vineyard has been organic from inception -  20 years next year since planting the first organic vineyard in Nova Scotia!  Costs are substantial compared to conventional wineries but our drive comes from the heart and we wouldn't do it any other way. Here are some examples of the costs for organic wine,

Farming Practices

The organic approach is to manage a heathly living soil so that it provides for the vines. We brew plant-based grape pomace compost and horsetail teas, all from our property, to inoculate soil and protect leaves and clusters. 

Pests are monitored and biodiversity is encouraged to attract natural predators with selected cover crops between rows, herbal plots of cilantro and dill, and natural forest.

Certification Costs

We have two levels of organic certifiication - producer (vineyard) and processor (winemaking). Both have rigorous inpections and audits including mass and traceability. The organic logo on every one of our bottles is the end result and shows our customers transparency and integrity. 

Organic certification is required to be able to be certified to the Biocyclic Vegan International standard, an added level of sustainability that has costs such as sourcing organic cane sugar for sparkling tirage liqueur that has not been filtered through bone char. Their logo is on our bottles to show transparency of our vegan wine.

Environmental Stewardship

There are many pesticides available for conventional wineries that protect vines from within (systemic) and there are residues in wine and groundwater. Only naturally occuring contact inputs are allowable for organic and they can be costly.

 

The Canada Organic logo is 15 years old this year and Choose Canada Organic is celebrating. Our winemaker Bruce was on the working committee with other organic winemakers across Canada to decide on standards. Visit their site for more information.

 

 

PIWI Grape Varieties

 

PIWI refers to grape varieties that have a high level of resistance to mildew diseases, notable Powdery Mildew and Downy Mildew. The acronym is from the German term “Pilzwiderstandsfähige Reben”. Why is this term so popular right now? There is a huge interest by wine trade and industry in growing and making wine more sustainably and part of this equation is planting more disease resistant vines. More disease resistance means less sprays, and in a conventional vineyard that means less costs and less pesticide residues in your wine. But how do hybrid grape varieties and organic grape growing fit into this concept?

Hybrids 

 PIWI is a general term that includes hybrids but packaged as a hipper, more marketable term. Hybrids, a breed between European varieties and North American varieties, got a bad rap after they were planted in France as a solution to phylloxera-devasted vineyards in the late 1800’s and in Canada’s early wine days. Today, they are on approved grape variety lists for many European wine regions, British Columbia and Ontario, although somewhat marginalized, and of course celebrated in Nova Scotia and other north-eastern regions. They are gaining back popularity and we have consistently earned international awards for our L'Acadie Blanc sparklings.

Organic grape growing and PIWI

As mentioned, selecting disease resistant grape varieties are part of the sustainability equation in the sense that there are less chemical sprays. But what about an organic vineyard? This is where the dial moves and less resistant varieties can still be grown sustainably. We use the following organic strategies in our less resistant vinifera blocks of Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir: pruning for air circulation, horsetail and compost teas, sulfur and copper. There is also a philosophy that the vines can live with mildew diseases as long as we can keep the clusters disease-free, a sort of probiotic strength approach that is achieved by timing of sulfur and copper application around the flowering stage.

Planting estate Seyval Blanc

 

As many of you know, we established L'Acadie Vineyards in Gaspereau Valley in 2004 and started planting in 2005 with exclusively L'Acadie Blanc for organic sparkling wine. This decision has stood the test of time with numerous international awards for our Estate Prestige Brut from those first blocks, a classic terroir/style matching success. We later planted Leon Millot for our appassimento red program, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc. This year we planted more Seyval Blanc, adding to our interplanted Seyval vines in a L'Acadie Blanc block, to bring citrusy zing notes to our Tidal Bay blend. Read about the Nova Scotia winery appellation Tidal Bay.

Here's a little background on Seyval Blanc,

• citrus and zingy acidity - used for sparkling in England, also in Finger Lakes region of New York and Oregan.
• early ripener, good producer and suited to cool climates
• a hybrid grape, bred in France by plant breeder Bertille Seyval

 

Read more on Wikpedia, Seyval Blanc. And here's a short video watering the new vines.

 

Meet Luci and her favourite wine

Meet our wineshop supervisor Luci and her favourite wine, 2019 Rose Brut, traditional method sparkling wine..this month's staff pick! She will give you an awesome wine experience with her passion and knowledge when you visit our Gaspereau winery in the heart of Nova Scotia wine country near Wolfville. 

 Booking wine tastings and wine tours is highly recommended. 

All of our wines are vegan and organic

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by L'Acadie Vineyards (@lacadiewine)

Vineyard Update June 2024

After several years of extreme weather, 2024 is tracking to be a welcomed “normal” growing season for Nova Scotia’s Gaspereau Valley wine region. Winter temperatures were mild and did not damage buds like the polar vortex of 2023. And spring frosts were a distant memory. We certainly learned from the spring frost of 2018 though and this year left a kicker cane on each vine – an extra cane to delay budbreak and for “insurance”, and we are currently pruning them off now that frost danger is gone.

All this adds up to our estate vineyard looking esthetically pleasing and poised to give us incredible grapes for its 19th year! More wood than ever before had to be pruned off this year from the effects of polar vortex bud killing, so we bought ourselves a more powerful mulching mower to return nutrients back to rows. Chris, our vineyard supervisor, has been mechanically weeding under vines with our Clemens grape hoe and preparing end of rows for planting cilantro to attract insect predators, part of a biodiversity component of our Biocyclic Vegan certification. Horsetail tea will be harvested this week for brewing, one of our organic practices to protect vines from mildew disease.

Take a vineyard tour with vineyard supervisor, Chris. Click here 

 

Horsetail Tea preparation

Lower blocks of Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir were hit hard in winter 2023 but luckily many vines grew new trunks from the lower graft union. Not much pruning was required this year, only tying these precious canes to the fruiting wire. The vines with severe winter damage will be replanted this spring and next spring, and delivery of Pinot Noir vines from the nursery should be next week.

~ Bruce

Wine Library Releases

Library Releases

Aged wines from cool climates are ideal for exploring

 

Our wine library is extensive and delicious. We hold back bottles from every vintage and age them in ideal conditions for our own reference and for periodic library releases to wine club members and key wine accounts. Past releases include 10-year aged Estate L’Acadie to show off how these minerality-dominant dry organic wines age and develop, our cool climate consistently granting a seamless longevity statement every vintage, and 10-year aged appassimento reds with tannins and flavours of their youth developing into supple tannins with dried fruit and jammy directions, yes jammy, a descriptor usually reserved for hot climate reds. 2014 Estate L’Acadie and 2012 Passito are currently available at Peacock Wine Bar in Halifax. Traditional method sparklings tend to develop richer characters when aged on cork and we have 2007 Prestige Brut Estate planned for a release. Best way for updates is receiving our newsletter.

This year our Gaspereau winery will be releasing 2008 Alchemy from the library exclusively for wine club members. Alchemy was Nova Scotia's first appassimento Amarone-style red, a worthy style for our cool-climate region, and refers to early scientists, or alchemists, searching to transform ordinary metals into gold. We did 5 years of research with Italian researchers and Kentville Research Centre to hone our grape drying technique and our inaugural release of the 2006 vintage won gold at the All-Canadian Wine Championships, quite fitting. 2008 Alchemy is an exceptional red wine carefully aged on cork for 14 years after 2 years in barrel and boasts complex, developed flavours of black cherry, toasted oak, & licorice.

Sign up for wine clubs here

Update from the Vineyard

 

Climate change continues to impact wine regions across Canada, more recently in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley with record January lows of -28C wiping out possibilities of any crop this year. Nova Scotia had a comparatively less severe polar vortex in February 2023 and the main difference in impact is due to BC’s plantings of sensitive vinifera grape varieties compared to our region’s predominantly hybrid varieties. At least we had crop from L’Acadie Blanc and Leon Millot last year, reasonable yields from our certified organic and biocyclic vegan Gaspereau vineyard, but young vinifera Chardonnay and Pinot Noir got hit hard and vineyard practice has to be focused on renewal for future years by carefully training new trunks.

Read CBC article Cold snap causes catastrophic loss for BC's wine industry

 

Chardonnay new shoots in May 2023 after polar vortex: L'Acadie Vineyards

Happy to report that we don’t expect any winter damage this year after a fairly mild January and February. It’s still early to clink glasses together and we’ll wait until threats of late spring frosts are over – a spring frost/freeze in 2018 impacted our inventories of aged sparkling wine. The vines do not need another year of stress and we continue to inspect for signs of damaged trunks from the polar vortex.

Pruning started on Leon Millot and L’Acadie Blanc and we are leaving 3-4 fruiting canes - one as a kicker cane to delay budbreak, to be removed after spring frosts are over. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and our coveted little planting of Sauvignon Blanc will need minimal pruning as we train new shoots/trunks... and possibly get a very small crop this year. Perhaps we’ll toast with a glass of our upcoming new first release of 2021 Sauvignon Blanc traditional method sparkling!

Read a related blog, Climate change and organic farming

 

Climate change resilience and organic farming

We have long been supporters of Atlantic Canada Organic Regional Network ACORN, and they have good information on their website - a small excerpt shared below.

Climate change affects vineyards with extreme events such as severe winter damage to vines in British Columbia for the past two years, polar vortex in Nova Scotia last year with similar damage, and droughts in other wine regions of the world. Organic farming  builds resilience AND contributes to a solution, as ACORN describes so well. 

A couple notes about our organic and vegan practices:

• living soils - symbiotic fungi expand root zone influence by 2-10x for more water and nutrient availability, read more
• regenerative agriculture - cover crops between vineyard rows create biodiversity and pull carbon from the atmosphere and store it in soil, watch video about our cover crops
• livestock greenhouse gas generation - we are certified Biocyclic Vegan, no animal products from soil to glass, read more

 

 

Biocyclic Vegan and Organic. Veganic

 

You may know that all of our wines are certified organic, but did you know that we are also certified Biocyclic Vegan?

In 2021, in addition to our long-standing organic certification, we became the first certified Biocyclic Vegan farm in North America. This progressive German-based organization has developed a rigorous & holistic standard to which we hold ourselves to. The Biocyclic Vegan ideology goes beyond most vegan certifications to include biodiversity, soil vitality, regenerative agriculture & social equity. We have been farming and winemaking veganically (vegan + organic) for quite some time and in 2021 found ourselves with a growing desire to seek certification to offer consumer transparency for our eco-conscious & plant-based fans. All the stars aligned when we discovered the Biocyclic Vegan standard!!

We love what they do, we love what we do, and we wouldn’t do it any other way. When you enjoy a glass of wine from L’Acadie Vineyards, you are guaranteed a certified organic & vegan wine, from soil to glass. 🌱🥂 

📸: Alex Douglas

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Disgorging Vintage Cuvee