L'Acadie Vineyards Blog

Vegan from Soil to Glass - Poured Canada

Vegan Wine Article by Bruce Ewert in Association of Sommeliers International ASI magazine

 

 

 

Spring Wineshop Opening

Spring Wineshop Opening

Wineshop and Tastings

 

Our wineshop at our Gaspereau winery near Wolfville opens May 6, 2022. Wine tastings and wine tours are by appointment and outside again this year to ensure COVID safe and intimate experiences.  Masks are required in the wineshop. 

Hours: Monday-Saturday 10:30-5pm, Sundays 12-4pm

We are very excited to greet visitors this tourist season with our award winning still and sparkling wines!! Organic and vegan, from soil to glass!!

 

New Releases

 

2021 Tiday Bay - we join other wineries of Nova Scotia is presenting our style of Tidal Bay, crisp and dry with enhanced minerality from our rocky ancient seabed terroir. Organic wine and certified Biocyclic Vegan wine, from soil to glass. Vertical tastings available while our library of 2020 Tidal Bay lasts!

2021 Rose - all of our 2021 vintage wines have the Biocyclic Vegan certifying logo on the label. This year's organic vegan Rose has strawberry and lime aromas and it's dry. 

2021 Star - It's back! We haven't released Star for several years, and many will remember this past award-winning white wine. Rich and weighty from skin contact of the ripest vegan and organic grapes from 2021! 

2020 Joie de Vivre - our newest sparkling wine, charmat method! A huge crowd pleaser and perfect for spring entertaining with many vegan food pairing options such as fresh salads and cold pasta dishes.

 

How to Visit Us

 

There are many ways to visit us in the Gaspereau Valley. 

Self Drive - we are about an 8 minute drive from exit 9 off of highway 101. Directions

Tour Partners - book your day of visiting Nova Scotia wineries with any of these incredible wine tour companies,

Grape Escapes Nova Scotia Wine Tours

Magic Winery Bus - on Thursdays and Fridays

Wild Grape Wine Tours - choose Escape Through the Vines tour

Where It's At Winery Tours

 

 

 

 

 

Give a Thoughtful Gift this Year for Valentines Day

This Valentines Day give your loved one a thoughtful gift that shows how much you care. Vegan and organic wine embrace the planet and show that you care for all living beings, and what’s in the bottle. 

We recommend,

Vintage Cuvee Rose - Traditional Method Sparkling. Aged in bottle 15 months to complete harmony goal with juicy cherry and strawberry flavours and a hint of brioche

Joie de Vivre- Charmat Method Sparkling. Dry with enhanced minerality from estate grapes on ancient seabed soil of schist and sandstone gravels. Concentrated citrus, lime, strawberry and slight toast with long creamy finish.

 

 Available at NSLC, Bishop's Cellar, Harvest Wines and Liquid Assets at the airport.

This is the symbol of love this season. Look for it on our bottles.

 Love for the environment, love for animals, and love for people.

Why we are Biocyclic Vegan

Last year, we achieved certification to the strict Biocyclic Vegan Standard based in Europe, the first farm and winery in North America. This vegan wine certification is a significant addition to our environmental stewardship, scaffolding the benefits of our certified organic status to new heights. Coupled with health benefits and animal welfare, you can see why it is so popular in Europe.

We had been looking for a certification for our vegan wines and were so happy when we found Biocyclic Vegan based out of Germany and Greece. We discovered that they certify the whole operation including the vineyard as well, and ours scored very high because of organic practices, biodiversity and not using animal inputs since 2017. The estate vineyard has been organic since inception, the first in Nova Scotia, and we released organic wines in 2008. Compelling reasons are better terroir flavours from living soils, healthy wines avoiding pesticide residues and, more significantly, protecting the environment from pesticides and synthetic petroleum-based fertilizers, both high carbon-generating practices. Biocyclic vegan practices raise the bar even more.

Biocyclic vegan agriculture means purely plant-based organic farming. This form of cultivation excludes all commercial livestock farming of animals and does not use any inputs of animal origin in viticulture or winemaking. Special emphasis is placed on promotion of biodiversity, healthy soil life, closure of organic cycles and on systematic humus build-up. Vegan viticulture enhances our environmental stewardship by avoiding products from the high carbon-generating livestock industry and instead using constant cover crops (also called green manure) between rows for regenerative agriculture carbon management. Composted grape pomace - stems, seeds and skins from every vintage, is significant for further sustainable management of our soil’s nutrition and microbial life.

Biocyclic Vegan certification recognizes our extra sustainable efforts and care that are beyond organic, veganic, and we embrace their principles for the good of environment, animals and people. 

Our medals from 2021 National Wine Awards of Canada

2021 National Wine Awards of Canada results

2018 Vintage Cuvee

Gold medal, 93 points, results

Wine critic and judge Michael Godel,

"Brilliant autolysis in sparkling wine that speaks in the glacial till vernacular of Nova Scotia bubbles. A cogent yet balanced stick of Annapolis Valley dynamite, cumulative of salinity, fruit and bitters. Last tasted blind at NWAC2021, October 2021.

From the frost year (June 5th), a blend of l’acadie and seyval blanc in a sparkling wine that shows the formers’s resilience, having raced out to meet bloom, veraison and harvest dates. In a 30 per cent crop but vines that bounced back the following year for a full yield out of harvest. A wine that meets the LV twain, somewhere between the fruit first sparklers and those of the longest tirage. The length of this is more than surprisingly impressive from a wine that looks for a new slate in every vintage. A wine of trials, investigations and experiments. Not at the toast ceiling but consistently malolactic and in that 8-12 g/L dosage. Truly a Brut style and middle of the road in the most complimentary way. Drink 2022-2026. Tasted September 2021."

Wine critic and judge Michell Bouffard,

"Rich and toasty on the nose and the palate with notes brioche and lemon rind mingling. Tangy acid with chalky texture. Very good. Dosage well integrated."

 

2020 Estate L'Acadie

Bronze medal, 89 points, results

Wine critic and judge Michael Godel,

"Just about properly picked early to preserve acidity and not allow the soft, cloying and flabby nature of a late harvested l’acadie to gain traction. Expressive of the intense nature of the early ripened grape so that fruit remains, vitality persists and balance hangs in the mid-palate. What still l’acadie can be though picking just a day or two earlier would have really sealed the deal. Drink 2021-2023. Tasted blind at NWAC2021, October 2021."

 National Wine Awards of Canada Judges. Penticton, British Columbia. October 2021

 

Pop the Cork on Canadian Sparkling Wine by Janet Dorozynski

Great timely article by sommelier and wine judge Janet Dorozynski on Canadian sparkling wine. 2014 Prestige Brut Estate, our organic and vegan wine, is recommended!! Especially significant considering the world shortage of sparkling wine this season. Choose local wine, from wineries in Nova Scotia.

Read article

Here's her wine review when 2014 Prestige Brut Estate was released last year,

"The 2014 Prestige Brut Estate from @lacadiewine is a thrilling and elegant traditional method #fizz made from 100 % L"Acadie Blanc that is aged sur lie for 69 months (long aging is a competitive sport among sparkling winemakers in Nova Scotia [🥂] ). Intense citrus, flinty and saline aromatics with a touch of toastiness. Bone dry and lively, with well defined and integrated acidity and fine bubbles. A perfect #sparklingwine for lovers of Brut Nature or zero dosage with 2g/litre residual sugar. If the 2014 is anything like past vintages I've tasted it will continue to develop and improve for a decade and then some. Certified #organic by Procert and #veganfriendly. Well done Bruce and team!"

She is a wine critic on Wine Align and rated it 94 points, and it also received 92 points at Decanter World Wine Awards. 2021 award winner of the Lieutenant Governor's Award of Excellence
 

It's Wine Club Month!

 

It's Wine Club month! Our L'Acadie Club is curated by winemaker Bruce Ewert and includes these exciting organic vegan wines being shipped in November from our Gaspereau winery, many of them new releases!

 

New Release 2019 Vintage Cuvee

2019 Joie de Vivre - our new charmat method sparkling

New Release 2016 Alchemy - dry appassimento red wine

2017 Passito - dry ripasso method red wine

2020 Estate L'Acadie - from our signature schist and slate soils

New Release 2019 Soleil -  A new vintage of this favourite recioto sweet dessert style. Grapes dried to 40 Brix.

 

L'Acadie Vineyards First Biocyclic Vegan Winery in North America

L’Acadie Vineyards has been certified to the strict Biocyclic Vegan Standard popular in Europe, making them the first farm and winery in North America. Biocyclic Vegan agriculture means purely plant-based organic farming. Vegan vineyards exclude all commercial livestock farming of animals and do not use any inputs of animal origin in viticulture and winemaking. Special emphasis is placed on the promotion of biodiversity, healthy soil life, the closure of organic cycles and on systematic humus build-up.

L’Acadie Vineyards is the first organic winery in Nova Scotia since its inception in 2004 and their operations go beyond organic with no animal inputs in their estate vineyard since 2017 and sustainable practices such as composted plant residue teas and cover crops, and encouraging biodiversity and soils that are living and regenerative.

“All of our wines have been made vegan wines for over a decade and this certification gives our customers confidence that no animal inputs are used in our vineyard and in our wines. Biocyclic Vegan certification recognizes our extra sustainable efforts and care that are beyond organic, veganic, and we embrace their principles for the good of environment, animals and people.” says Bruce Ewert, founder & owner.

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L’Acadie Vineyards was established in 2004 by well-known Canadian winemaker Bruce Ewert and his family in Gaspereau, Nova Scotia. Bruce has been a professional winemaker for over thirty years for wineries in Canada’s Okanagan Valley and Niagara Peninsula as well as in Sonoma, California, and Hunter Valley and Padthaway in Australia, and now Canada’s emerging wine region, Nova Scotia.  He has been head winemaker responsible for 400,000 cases and has made over a half a million bottles of traditional method sparkling in his career. He is integral in establishing Nova Scotia as a sparkling wine region. L’Acadie Vineyards is the first winery in Nova Scotia to release traditional method sparkling wines receiving international awards.

Prestige Brut Estate Wins 2021 Lieutenant Governor's Award of Excellence in Nova Scotia Wine

 

We were honoured to receive the Lieutenant Governor's Award of Excellence in Wine today for 2014 Prestige Brut Estate!

And so surprised and thankful for recognition during the ceremony by the Honourable Arthur J LeBlanc for its international award at Decanter World Wine Awards with 92 Points.

 

Here's the 30 minute live FB broadcast. The Lieutenant Governor presentation starts arounds 5:15 and mentions our International Decanter Award at 9:30..much to our surprise and delight!