Putting Nova Scotian vino on the map

It took 25 years to build the industry and only 12 months for Gina Haverstock to turn a wine from the East into the toast of the town

BEPPI CROSARIOL

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

December 5, 2007 at 9:33 AM EST

It has taken a quarter century of pioneering vision and tenacity by a group of mavericks to forge a fledgling wine industry in Nova Scotia. It took one woman, Gina Haverstock, less than a year to put it on the map.

Ms. Haverstock, the new winemaker at Gaspereau Vineyards in the Annapolis Valley, has become something of a cause célèbre among local connoisseurs and grape growers since launching her first wine, a 2006 riesling, earlier this year. The tangy-sweet white not only invited comparisons to the archetypal style of Germany's Mosel Valley, it also quickly sold out at the brassy price of $18.99 for an undersized, 500-millilitre bottle.

More remarkably, it achieved something no other Nova Scotia wine had before, taking home a silver medal in a mainstream category at the All Canadian Wine Championships in Windsor in May, beating out highly regarded rivals from Ontario and British Columbia.

Pioneering producers such as Domaine de Grand Pré, Jost Vineyards and Blomidon Estate had made it into the medal rounds of the 27-year-old competition in the past, but with less-familiar grapes such as l'Acadie and cayuga, so-called hybrids bred to thrive in extreme weather. Ms. Haverstock's riesling, on the other hand, was made from a variety of vitis vinifera, the so-called noble European species from which virtually all the world's fine wine is made, including chardonnay, pinot grigio, merlot, and cabernet sauvignon.

"Riesling is known around the world, so it is obviously going to draw attention," said Ms. Haverstock, 30, from her home in the cottage-strewn Gaspereau Valley, an extension of the larger Annapolis Valley near the shores of the Bay of Fundy. "People are always asking for the riesling."

Critics have been applauding, too. Craig Pinhey, a New Brunswick-based wine writer for the Telegraph-Journal, was impressed enough to call my attention to it. Adam Dial, a Lunenberg, N.S.-based managing editor of Appelation America, a wine media and marketing company that publishes online reviews from critics across North America, enthused about the Gaspereau riesling in a recent posting.

"A lean and racy Moselle-like structure with bracing acidity invigorates the palate," he wrote. "Over all, an impressive early showing for this noble variety in Nova Scotia and another validation of the Gaspereau Valley's potential."

That potential is built largely on thermal currents pulled in daily by the world's highest tides a few kilometres away. Warm air means not only better ripening during summer, but also milder year-round temperatures, so tender varieties like riesling are less susceptible to winter damage.

"More water runs in and out of the Bay of Fundy in a day than all of the world's rivers," said Hans Christian Jost, the proprietor of Gaspereau Vineyards as well as Jost on the Malagash Peninsula, the latter founded by his late father in 1983 as Nova Scotia's second estate winery, two weeks after Grand Pré.

Ms. Haverstock's precocious riesling is all the more noteworthy as it marked her maiden vintage as a winemaker.

A native of Port Hawkesbury on Cape Breton Island, she graduated in biochemistry from the University of New Brunswick in 2000 with designs on medical school. Fate intervened during the summer when she worked in the tasting bar at Jost Vineyards.

Wowed by the exotic flavours, which stood in contrast to her previous exposure to wine, which she describes as "Cold Duck at Christmas or New Year's," she immersed herself in grape literature. "To be honest, I didn't really open my [medical] books very much," she said.

Mr. Jost was taken aback during regular tutorials he held for new employees at the winery. "The best taste buds you can ever come across," he said of Ms. Haverstock. "I kiddingly told her, 'Why are you studying medicine? You should be in the wine business.' "

She took the advice seriously. Abandoning her med-school plans, she pursued a sommelier degree and, by June, 2005, had fast-tracked her way through the oenology and viticulture program at Brock University in Ontario thanks to her science background.

Brock also opened the door to training stints in other cool-climate regions, notably Germany, where she fell for the peach-like opulence and complexity of riesling at Weingut Georg Breuer in the Rhine Valley. She also did brief apprenticeships in Austria, New Zealand and Burgundy, France.

All along, the plan was to return to Nova Scotia and take advantage of Mr. Jost's standing offer of a job at either Gaspereau or Jost Vineyards.

There was just one condition. "She said, 'You can't get me to come to Nova Scotia and not give me my riesling back.' " Mr. Jost recalled.

As it happened, Mr. Jost had earlier planted riesling as an experiment in the Gaspereau Valley. The deal was sealed.

Now Ms. Haverstock is being cast as a poster woman for the future of the tiny but burgeoning Nova Scotia industry, which covers 320 acres and numbers eight producers.

"The great thing is we have Nova Scotia kids interested in the wine industry and interested in first-rate training and coming back," Mr. Dial said in an interview.

In another milestone for the industry, the fledgling Winery Association of Nova Scotia recently introduced an official seal for bottleneck capsules, akin to the VQA designation in Ontario and British Columbia, which guarantees a wine was sourced from local grapes and made to various quality standards. The logo? A lobster claw clasping a wine glass.

Even industry veterans are heading eastward, drawn by affordable land, the exciting promise of other vinifera varieties such as chardonnay and pinot noir, and the improving quality of the province's signature hybrid grapes, l'Acadie and New York muscat.

At least four new wineries are under construction and Mr. Jost believes vine acreage could more than double, to 1,000 acres, within several years.

"I wouldn't bother if I didn't have full intentions to produce incredible wines," said Bruce Ewert, owner of L'Acadie Vineyards in the Gaspereau Valley, who moved in 2004 from British Columbia after garnering top awards for Champagne-style sparkling wines at both Summerhill Pyramid Winery and the former Hawthorne Mountain Vineyards in the Okanagan. His plan: to produce premium bubblies as well as table and dessert wines out of l'Acadie off 10 acres. His first vintage is due next year.

Arguably the splashiest new project is Benjamin Bridge Vineyards, launched in 1999 by Gerry McConnell, chief executive officer of mining company Etruscan Resources Inc., and scheduled to open next year. Also behind the project is veteran Niagara consultant Peter Gamble, whom Mr. McConnell hired to help assess the potential of chardonnay and pinot noir, with which Mr. McConnell hopes to make Champagne-style sparkling wine.

"So, we could have a Nova Scotia sparkling wine to celebrate," Ms. Haverstock said of the two new projects. "It's beaming. Nova Scotia is beaming with promise."