Just this year, area wineries brought home a slew of
medals - 21 in all - from the All Canadian Wine
Championships, Canada’s oldest wine competition. The final
medal tally was seven gold, eight silver, and six bronze from 10
different wineries. (Be sure to check out the sidebar for a list of
the winning wineries)
The wine business in our region has a storied past, with
Canadian South Wine Tours detailing the history of three
Kentucky farmers who came to the region in the 1860s. The
farmers found an opportunity to make wine on Pelee Island
and opened Vin Villa Estates. This was followed by two
brothers, England Edward and John Wardoper, who opened
Pelee Island Wine and Vineyard Company. In the 30 years that
followed, Windsor-Essex went from two wineries to 23,
making up more than half of the 41 in Canada by 1890.
But for a winery to be successful, one also needs to have a
great product and that means growing a grape.
“The quality of the wine starts in the vineyard,” says
Michael O’Brien, president of Cooper’s Hawk Vineyards in
Harrow. “You can’t make good wine out of crappy grapes.”
Grapes have been used as the basis for winemaking since
the beginning and the process of how they’ve been turned
into wine has developed over thousands of years. Wine was an
important part of the Roman diet, and winemaking became
an important part of that culture. It continued through to
Egyptian culture, as shown in hieroglyphics and carvings,
before trickling down to the Jews, Arabs and Greeks. The vine
was found in the Mediterranean as well, before travelling to
the rest of Europe.
When people think about making wine, often the image of
feet stomping on grapes comes to mind, but while some
winemakers say the method was commonly used, historians
think otherwise. What can be said for sure is that wine comes
from fermenting the grapes. Fermentation turns the sugar in
the grapes into alcohol and carbon dioxide. During the
process, the juice can become very hot - but too hot and the
yeast won’t work. To combat this, some wineries pour the wine
into large stainless steel containers so they can regulate the
heat, while others, like Cooper’s Hawk, also store their product
in oak barrels.
O’Brian says they use a variety of methods in order to
provide visitors with a choice of wines.
In Windsor and Essex County, as well as across the world,
the process differs between what is called the old or new world
methods. The former focuses around allowing grapes to
ferment on their own for months or years before bottling,
while also foregoing preservatives or extra additives..
Nancy Paglione, owner of Paglione Estate Winery, says
that using this method can sometimes create a smoother
wine, but at the same time means the wine must be drunk in a
quicker period of time due to the lack of preservatives.
Although this is the method she prefers to use, it’s not
necessarily the better way to make wine.
“That’s the way we do ours,” says Paglione. “Everybody’s
different, a lot of people have good wines, we’re just staying
old world.”
New world on the other hand does tend to use modern
methods such as cold soaking, while also using different
enzymes and stabilizers to make the wine ferment at a faster
pace. O’Brien says his vineyard tries to use a combination of
both, using stainless steel containers while also not adding
sugars and sometimes storing wine in oak barrels.
With the multitude of wineries and vineyards in Essex
County - nearly 20 as of 2015 - the region has become a hub
Wine lovers from China, Taiwan, England, Australia and the U.S.come
to our region for the wine
Opposite page: Cooper's Hawk Vineyards grows their own grapes using different soils on site Bottom left:
Master wine taster Laura Moore speaks with visitors at Cooper's Hawk Vineyards Bottom right: Several wines on
display at Cooper's Hawk Vineyards