Nova Scotia wineries are getting it right

I recently tasted some of the new wines from Jost Vineyards and Gaspereau Vineyard in Nova Scotia. Here's a region that's going from strength to strength, and one of the reasons is that the producers there are paying attention to matching grape varieties and growing conditions.

Nova Scotia is a cool-climate region, with a relatively short growing season. They are limited to varieties that ripen fairly quickly, so there are good rieslings and chardonnays, and also some early-ripening native and hybrid varieties that we in Ontario don't encounter much on a daily basis -- varieties like l'Acadie blanc, New York muscat, ortega, and seyval blanc.

The wines I tasted were pretty impressive. They included a very attractive riesling, a lovely muscat and a very successful sparkling wine made from l'Acadie blanc. In fact, Nova Scoia is turning out some very good sparkling wines. You need grapes with good levels of acidity, and the province's climate is producing them reliably.

It wasn't only the whites that shone among the Jost and Gaspereau wines I tasted. There was a pretty nice Reserve Maréchal Foch and a stunningly good cabernet franc (from 2005) that would hold its own among its peers from many parts of the world.

This question of matching grape variety to growing conditions is an important one, of course. It underlies the appellation system in France and many other parts of Europe, where wine producers in each appellation (designated wine region) are limited to specific varieties if they want to label their wines with the name of the appellation. So Bordeaux producers are limited to six varieties, as are producers of champagne (although most use only two or three), while small appellations often specify a single variety.

The justification for these restrictions is that years of experience have demonstrated that certain varieties produce the best wines in the climatic and soil conditions of each region. In order to maintain consistently high quality and protect the reputation of an appellation, all the producers effectively agree to grow only those grape varieties.

Occasionally there are revolts. In the 1970s, some Tuscan producers rebelled against the limitations in force in Tuscany, and began to blend cabernet sauvignon into their reds, even though cabernet sauvignon was not a permitted variety. The result was some superlative wines that became known as "Super Tuscans," but they couldn't be labelled with the appellation name. Instead, they were initially classified as Table Wine, the lowest level recognized by Italian wine law.

New World (including Canadian) wine producers aren't nearly as limited in terms of the grape varieties they can make wine from. In Ontario, VQA rules set out a fairly long list of varieties, and it's up to the wineries themselves to decide which they'll grow. I think that's the way it should be, but I sometimes wish that they would focus on what generally ripens best, just as Nova Scotia's producers seem to be doing.