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hen Astrid Young set forth from California’s
sun-soaked Napa Valley 1 5 years ago to fur-
ther a career in wine, she knew she wanted
to specialize in pinot noir and chardonnay.
She could have pursued that ambition in the legendary
chalk-strewn soils of Burgundy and Champagne, or even in
New Zealand’s Marlborough region. Instead, she landed in
Canada’s Prince Edward County, then a little-known penin-
sula in Lake Ontario about 12 5 miles east of Toronto. “It was
this big block of limestone, and I knew it had huge potential,”
says Young, now the wine director at Merrill House, a hotel
in the region.
At the time, the county had a mere four vineyards over-
looking the lake. Since then, more than 4 0 producers have
set up shop in a bid to create a global benchmark for pinot
noir and chardonnay. Theireforts have transformed Prince
Edward County from a sleepy getaway for suburban dwellers
into an emerging powerhouse of viticulture and gastronomy.
Internationally, Canada’s wine is mostly associated with
the Okanagan Valley, a temperate parcel in British Columbia
that produces big reds from bold grapes such as syrah. But
part of Prince Edward County’s appeal is that the area has a
similarterroirto Burgundy, home to some of the most expen-
sive and most sought-after pinot noirs on Earth.
But even at the high end, the region’s pinot noirs—which
some claim already rival France’s best grand crus—are still a
steal in aine-wine market that charges exceptionally high
prices for the varietal. Exultet Estates, a remote producer set
on10 acres of vines planted near the lake, charges C$65 ($50)
for a bottle of the Beloved, a vibrant wine with notes of oak
and dark fruits. The2011 vintage is rated a 94 out of 100 bycritic Natalie MacLean, whose eponymous website is Canada’s
largest online wine-reviewing community.
It’s just as good as a $150 bottle from Burgundy’s acclaimed
commune of Volnay, at least according to Exultet Estates owner
Gerry Spinosa. “It’s the real deal. It really kicks ass and is wor-
thy of attention,” says Spinosa, a former medical research sci-
entist at the University of Toronto. “It’s a Cadillac for pinot
noirs, and if you’re looking at cool-climate expressions, this
takes the cake.”
Like Burgundy, Prince Edward County is prized for its lime-
stone bedrock, which lends a succulent and minerally taste to
pinot noirs and chardonnays, and its climate, where the warm
summer temperatures slowly taper of into autumn, producing
wines with strong acidity without being sickly sweet.
But making outstanding wines in this region can be a costly,
burdensome process. The frost that periodically alicts the
vineyards of Burgundy and Champagne in the winter can be
managed by lighting small ires to warm the grape buds, but
the Canadian way isn’t as cozy. Here, temperatures can plum-
met to –20F. In autumn, workers bury almost all the vines until
spring to prevent them from freezing, a practice pursued in
only a handful of regions, such as China and upstate New York.
The process of removing the dirt mounds, called dehilling,
starts late enough in the spring that the threat of frost has
passed. At that point, the vines are so vulnerable, having
cooked beneath the soil as temperatures have risen, that
even a light graze can damage new buds enough to knock of
a cluster’s worth of grapes.
“This is the worst place ever to grow grapes,” says Lee
Baker, a winemaker at Keint-He Winery & Vineyards on Loyalist
Parkway, a lakeside road deep in the county. “You’re runningWINE Bloomberg Pursuits August 20, 2018Clockwise from left:
A terrace at the Drake
Devonshire Inn; Merrill
House and its wine
shop. Previous page:
A mix of grapes and
apples planted at
County Cider