L'Acadie Vineyards Blog

Effervescents du Monde - Nova Scotia's first international sparkling awards

 

 

 

Effervescents du Monde is a prestigious competition of the best sparkling wines in the world and in 2011 and again in 2015 L'Acadie Vineyards turned heads by claiming silver medals for their Prestige Brut and the first international sparkling awards for Nova Scotia!

 

 

 

 

 

The 2007 and 2010 vintages of Prestige Brut that won at the competitions were superb and put Nova Scotia wine region on the sparkling wine map. Since then there have been continuous accolades and more awards for more recent vintages, namely multiple times at Decanter World Wine Awards in London where the 2017 Prestige Brut Estate won Gold and 95 points, the first Decanter gold medal for Nova Scotia, the highest level of quality achievement. 

 

 

The matrix of factors and decisions was deliberate to achieve this highest level of quality,

• Bruce Ewert earned similar wine awards when he was an experienced sparkling winemaker in the Okanagan Valley.
• Bruce and family indentified that L'Acadie Blanc was ideal for sparkling while on investigative trips to Nova Scotia and tasting still wine versions from Annapolis Valley wineries in the early 2000's before there was a bubble in the province. We were the first to release sparkling wine in 2008!
• L'Acadie Vineyards estate in Gaspereau was chosen for its rocky well-drained soil. Schist, sandstone, slate, and ancient seabed. In 2017 test holes revealed roots going deep, over 3 feet.
• Farming organically and now Biocyclic Vegan as well encourages a heathly living soil so terroir mineral characters are amplified
• Prestige Brut comes from the same estate block every year, traditional method sparkling with aging for 5 years in a underground tirage cellar.

 

 

20 Years - Milestones along our journey

This year, this month, marks 20 years since we drove across Canada from an established winemaking career in the Okanagan Valley to acquire our piece of paradise in Gaspereau, Nova Scotia. Each year on July 21 our family celebrates that coming-home milestone and next year our winery will be celebrating the formal establishment of L’Acadie Vineyards – 20 year anniversary of planting first vines in 2005.

Many milestones in the last 20 years, here are the highlights,

2005 – Established Nova Scotia’s first organic vineyard. Certified organic from inception.
2008 – Opened sustainable winery with geothermal heating and cooling and insulated concrete construction
2008 – Released Nova Scotia’s first traditional method sparkling
2008 – Nova Scotia’s first appassimento wines. First releases of Alchemy and Passito from our 5-year appassimento research project with Agriculture Canada and collaboration with Italian researchers.
2010 – Gold and top scoring sparkling for 2007 Prestige Brut at 2010 National Wine Awards. A first for Nova Scotia.
2011 – Silver medal for 2007 Prestige Brut at 2011 Effervescents du Monde (Dijon, France) First international sparkling award for Nova Scotia.
2015 – Silver medal for 2010 Prestige Brut zero dosage at 2015 Effervescents du Monde.

2021 - Certified to European Biocyclic Vegan standard, the first farm and winery in North America.
2023 – Gold medal, 95 points for 2017 Prestige Brut Estate at 2023 Decanter World Wine Awards. First gold medal for Nova Scotia from Decanter, after earning silver and 92 points for previous vintages.

 

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.

 

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

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

 

 

Year in review 2023

Year in Review - 2023 curveballs

 

 

 Mother Nature threw many curve balls at us this year. We are thankful on many fronts and perhaps most promising are the early indicators of resilience from farming our Gaspereau vineyard organically.

The polar vortex in February reduced our viable buds and we adjusted our pruning and other cultural practices. L'Acadie Blanc and Leon Millot had reasonable yields but not so with Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc. Hopefully new trunks that we carefully nurtured this year will give us good growth next year in these vinifera blocks. There was some vine loss with these more cold sensitive varieties but not nearly as much as we anticipated and perhaps attributed to deep reaching roots in our gravelly soil coupled with living organic soils rewarding us with a measure of early resilience in these young blocks.

Read our blog about climate change resilience from living soils

Then the rains came. The resulting high mildew pressures were very risky all summer and our organic viticulture was put to the test! Happy to say that we avoided significant diseases with the great work from our new vineyard supervisor, Chris.

See video of Chris explaining our organic and vegan vineyard practices, 

Harvest started September 21 and we couldn't have been happier with finally getting dry, warm, shorts and t-shirt weather. And good timing for flavour development too! Everything was hand picked and whole cluster pressed with a gentle sparkling press program for best quality juice. The only exception to this daily routine was L’Acadie blanc fermented on its skins for our next release of Orange Wine coming from our Gaspereau winery in the spring.

The iconic signature in Nova Scotia didn't waver even with all the curveballs - consistent ripe grapes with great acidity and moderate sugar levels. We see it every year, no compromises, and it is this significant attribute of our cool climate that constantly validates our emerging sparkling wine region. Look for structured, lower alcohol and refreshing sparklings in future releases, and a dry crisp whites in the spring!

We earned many wine awards this year with Prestige Brut Estate and Vintage Cuvee leading our portfolio with golds from Decanter World Wine Awards and National Wine Awards of Canada, respectively. Very thankful for media attention and accolades for the first Decanter gold ever for Nova Scotia, throwing a spotlight on organic vegan wine quality.

Read our blog about Gold at Decanter World Wine Awards and Decanter's article Canada Calling: The wines exciting the experts now

Winter solstice resets our thoughts to reflect and calm as we plan the new season, the new cycle of life, for our 20th year. Very grateful.

 

~Bruce, owner winemaker

Sustainable Wine - how far have we come?

 

 

How far have we come? Sustainable wine may sound like a buzzword created by corporate wine executives to sell more wine and give impressions that all wineries must already subscribe to the concept because it's repeated in marketing so much and seems attainable but there remains a large gap between wine producers. You’d think the wine industry would have progressed the most since the beginnings of the environmental movement in the 1960’s, their marketing is so visible, seductive and competitive. But like climate change, microplastics and bee colony collapse there continue to be issues that our society has been slow to understand and act on.  Why aren’t we more advanced? The alarm sounding, environmental catalyst classic Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was published in 1961 and the culture at the time was that synthetic insecticides will save the world. Her dystopian outlook for the environment affected by these persistent chemicals such as DDT threatened that culture and she was attacked and muffled by stakeholders and the misinformed. Scenarios repeated time and time again for the last 60 years.

Wine, the beverage of ingredients. If mother nature doesn't provide during the growing season, well there’s an ingredient for that. And the range is great – Mega Purple for colour, potassium sorbate for stability, crushed chestnuts for more tannin, gelatin for less tannin, citric and tartaric acids for more acidity, potassium bicarbonate for less acidity, even ethanol for more alcohol, and water for less alcohol. There are animal inputs like egg whites, gelatin, milk protein, and synthetic inputs like PVPP (plastic) and a broad range of synthetic pesticides. I introduce vineyard inputs here because whatever is added to the vineyard ends up in your glass as residual chemicals. Similar to Silent Spring’s explanation of the relationship of aerial spraying DDT on Elm trees and the residue on leaves killing robins via earthworms. Many pesticides are systemic, they protect the vine from within by being absorbed into tissues, vascular system and berries, and even contact pesticides are absorbed into the plant, like our skin absorbs. Most provincial liquor boards require a pesticide residue analysis before listing a wine because there are limits set. Limits that are recognized to be safe doses, not carcinogenic. But pause here and think about the last 60 years and how we seem to have learned so little. The World Health Organization (WHO) classified Roundup, a too common glyphosate weed killer used in vineyards, as probable carcinogen but changed it to possible carcinogen in the 80's after chemical industry lobby pressures. It is now back to probable carcinogen.

Read Organic diets quickly reduce the amount of glyphosate in people's bodies

Raise your hand if you are interested in sustainability. In protecting our precious environment and your health, and your community’s health. Brock University recently conducted wine research: An Exploration of Consumer Perceptions of Sustainable Wine. Over 700 people surveyed.

“Consumers with high involvement in sustainable wines tend to be younger, better educated, more involved in wine in general, and spend more per bottle than those with low involvement.” Pickering, Best, 2023

“Results show that sustainability-related cues are somewhat valued by consumers when making purchase decisions, but have low importance relative to the other cues examined. Environmental dimensions of sustainability have high saliency, in contrast with social and economic dimensions, and a significant minority of respondents report no or very limited knowledge of sustainable wines.”

There is change happening and it is generational – millennials and Gen Z are leading consumers. In Europe the changes are most apparent. Spain’s Denomination of Origin Penedès in Catalunya (DO Penedès) recently announced an extensive roadmap up to 2030, taking into account sustainability and establishing the region as a high-quality wine producer in Spain. Most immediately, all grapes for DO Penedès wines must be from fully-certified organic vineyards by 2025. 

Full article: DO Penedes Organic Wine Plans by Decanter 

 European government funding for vineyards is based on level of sustainability, with certified organic being king. And as noted, quality is a large motivator for this Spanish region. Climate change resilience is a benefit too with cover crops, diversity and minimal tillage protecting the soil.

The organic approach is only natural inputs into grape growing and winemaking with every step monitored for traceability and transparency by rigorous third party inspections. Biodiversity of cover crops between rows create habitats for predatory insects such as parasitic wasps and dragonflies and protects the surface of the soil so that soil fungi and earthworms can cycle nutrients to roots which helps sequester carbon in a uniquely living regenerative agriculture system. Living soils are the goal of organics and nurturing it with composted grape pomace teeming with fungi extends vine root zone influence by as much as 10 times with symbiotic fungal filament networks. Vegan viticulture excludes animal manures that can lessen living soils and cause pollution of underground water systems. Vegan certified producers extend this concept to winemaking with no animal inputs. A common ingredient is gelatin and this is made from slaughthouse waste. Other ingredients not allowed in organic winemaking include synthetic preservatives, irradiated and genetically modified ingredients.

I’m in! How to find organic wines. Read labels and find organic vegan wines here! In Canada, only organic wines from soil to glass can bear the Canada Organic logo on the label. Wines that are made from organic grapes but not organic winemaking can not have the organic logo because the treatment of the wine after growing is unknown, and the integrity of chain of custody of grapes that went into bottles is equally unknown. Certification to the Biocyclic Vegan Agriculture standard, based in Europe, ensures wines have no animal inputs from soil to glass. This has far reaching benefits to climate change mitigation and animal welfare.