L'Acadie Vineyards Blog

Fungus for climate change resilience

The world of fungi is amazing. I always credit kombucha’s yeasty cloudy popularity to wine lovers’ rapid acceptance to similarly cloudy Petillant Naturel wines. And Hollywood’s portrayal of “mind-controlling” fungus in Last of Us has further vaulted fungus to rock star status, a sinister version in this case. Another fungus, a beneficial one, called mycorrhiza lives in soil and has a critical symbiotic relationship with roots to help vines access water and nutrients especially during drought and other extremes from climate change. This is a true rock star.

 

When plants made that difficult evolutionary step from a nutrient-rich marine environment to a relatively harsh soil home, they had to make an alliance with microbes in the soil to survive. Mycorrhizal fungi grows into root cells to access carbohydrates from the vine, and in exchange, root zone influence of the vine expands to 3-10 times with a complex network of fungus filaments. I call this microbial terroir. Water, nutrients and “flavours” in soil are more accessible for the vine.

 

Organic practices at our Gaspereau vineyard encourage this living soil, rather than the conventional approach of ignoring microbes and following a regime of feeding vines directly with readably accessible synthetic fertilizers. The microbes seem to know – decreasing their relationship with the roots, almost sensing that they are not needed to cycle nutrients for the vine. Same outcome with animal manures. Other practices that kill fungi are tilling excessively between vineyard rows rather than using a constant cover crop and using herbicides like glyphosate (Roundup). We make plant-based compost teas, a veganic approach, to inoculate vines with beneficial fungi – crowding out disease organisms on leaves and further enhancing soil and roots. It's why we are Biocyclic Vegan

Strengthening our microbial terroir helps our vines be more resilient to climate change. Accessibility to nutrients and water is enhanced and that's especially important with extreme weather events.

Here's an article about research in Portugal, 

The microbes that could protect grapevines from climate change

The Right Wine for the Right Whale

Introducing our 2022 Tidal Bay!

This is our third vintage of this appellation wine that eloquently showcases our province’s unique ocean-influenced terroir: we chose to highlight our estate-grown L’Acadie Blanc which displays minerality & subtle saline reminiscent of the sea, thanks to our ancient sea-bed soil. Our terroir is displayed cleanly & prominently, largely due to the fact that we are organic and foster a living soil.

We are the first organic vineyard & winery in Nova Scotia and the first Biocyclic Vegan farm & winery in North America. Our Earth-friendly practices follow through from soil to glass. The first pick for this wine in September was from vines traditionally sourced for our Prestige Brut Estate, with a deeper layer of humus-rich topsoil that brings our Tidal Bay a fresh acidity & crisp citrus flavours. A later pick in October from a different vineyard block complements the freshness with richer tropical notes such as mango.

Our wine industry, and subsequently the Tidal Bay appellation, could not exist as it does without our ocean-influence from the Bay of Fundy. This year we have decided to help restore balance in our local marine ecosystem by partnering with the Canadian Whale Institute & Campobello Whale Rescue Team to help save the severely endangered North Atlantic right whale. $1 from every bottle of Tidal Bay sold in our wineshop & on our website will be donated to the Campobello Whale Rescue Team of the Canadian Whale Institute.

 

“The Campobello Whale Rescue Team of the Canadian Whale Institute is an organization of fishers, scientists and conservationists. They have firsthand knowledge of maritime waters, fishing gear and whale behaviour. Team members are trained in the use of specialized equipment to disentangle large whales from fishing gear, and to work with weir owners to release entrapped whales. The CWRT is licensed and permitted by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) to disentangle whales in the Maritimes, Gulf of St. Lawrence & Quebec. They work in coordination with DFO, the Marine Animal Response Society (MARS), and the Réseau Québécois d’urgences pour les mammifères marins (RQUMM) in partnership with Équipe de Desempêtrement du Golfe (EDG).”

 

Pick up a bottle for the weekend & enjoy a glass of wine for a good cause! Order Tidal Bay

Prestige Brut in the news - CBC Info Morning

We chatted with Portia Clark on CBC Information Morning about our Gold medal win for Prestige Brut Estate at Decanter World Wine Awards. Listen to CBC Info Morning segment

Gold at Decanter World Wine Awards

We are proud to announce that Prestige Brut Estate 2017 was awarded Gold and 95 points at Decanter World Wine Awards in London this week. First-ever Decanter gold for Nova Scotia! It is the fourth consecutive vintage of Prestige Brut Estate to win awards at Decanter, adding to a prestigious list of international awards including early vintages winning at Effervescent du Monde in France.

Decanter:
"Canada is a cool climate region that knows a thing or two about the benefits of hybrid grape varieties, and for the first time a single varietal L’Acadie Blanc, a hybrid crossing of Cascade and Seyve-Villard, was awarded a Gold medal in its rendition as a sparkling wine for L’Acadie Vineyards, Prestige Brut 2017 from Gaspereau Valley in Nova Scotia. A noteworthy first-ever Gold for the region too."

Judges' comments:
"Pretty and attractive, with white fruit, honey melon, chalky green apple and lifted floral aromatics lead through to a palate of vibrant acidity, citrus curd and a fine, saline finish."

Bruce Ewert, winemaker, co-owner L'Acadie Vineyards:

“We bought our 30 acres of paradise in Gaspereau back in 2004 inspired by the potential for sparkling wine with its soil and location. It is very exciting to earn international awards for our organic vegan sparkling wines that are rooted over a metre deep into rocky well-drained living soils.”

This organic vegan wine is available direct from winery and website in late June. We are waiting for gold medal bottle stickers!

 

Budbreak 2023

 

On February 4, 2023 temperatures dropped to -25C in the Annapolis Valley, a polar vortex event in an otherwise mild winter. See CBC news video

We knew that our Gaspereau vineyard would be impacted and the effects are starting to show as we proceed through budbreak. We pruned lightly and left more canes for growth and are seeing a reasonable budbreak so far. The above image is Leon Millot. Even though there are shoots emerging we stll don't know how much crop we will get for 2023...and expect it to be less. Same for L'Acadie blanc.

The next image is Chardonnay that is only showing shoots at the trunk so far. Pinot noir is similar. Fingers crossed that there will be some viable buds on the upper canes. It's expected that our only goal with these two sensitive varieites will be to grow new trunks for future years and skip cropping grapes this year. 

 

Guilt free Bubbly

 

Thanks Onboard Hospitality for featuring our Gaspereau winery in a sustainability article about international sparkling wine and our organic sparkling wine and recent vegan wine certification. Read Guilt Free Bubbly

 

Vegan, organic, geothermal, natural - L'Acadie Vineyards keeps it green - via Saltwire by Bill Spurr

Great article about our environmental efforts to produce organic and vegan wines!

"L’Acadie’s supplier of corks for its bottles of sparkling and still wines has calculated that the Gaspereau Valley winery was responsible for the sequestration of “a whopping” 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2022 because it uses only natural cork."

Full story on Saltwire by Bill Spurr

Environmental benefits of using cork

 

Honoured to receive this award from Amorim Cork, our cork supplier. A whopping 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide sequestered from our use of cork in 2022!

We are proud to give you this honor and please feel free to share with your team or customers your carbon retention number! This number has been independently validated by Pricewaterhouse Coopers and/or Ernest and Young. The findings, are the only ones to date that underwent a multi-closure comparative peer review, indicating when considering sequestration by the ecosystem made feasible by the cyclic extraction of cork, a retention capacity up to 288 grams of CO2 is associated with every natural cork stopper and as much as 562 grams with a sparkling wine stopper, in stark contrast to the CO2 emissions to each plastic stopper (up to 14.8 g/sealant) and to aluminum caps (up to 37.2 g/cap). To find out more about the sustainability studies and on going efforts Amorim is making on your behalf please visit the following link here.

Earth Day message from our winemaker owner Bruce Ewert

World Animal Day October 4

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