The future looks challenging for some winemakers, but others are just hitting their stride—particularly those in Canada and Europe’s far north
As the cooler weather finally starts to arrive, we have only one word to describe the summer: hot, and not in a good way. Though the region’s sultry heat was punishing, we can only imagine the sufferings of our northern hemisphere winemaker friends, who battled a historically hot July.
True, warming temperatures over the past few decades have yielded an unprecedented string of great vintages of Barolo, red Burgundy (arguably fewer white) and German riesling, with winemakers consistently achieving ripeness unthinkable in the middle of last century. However, more warming probably isn’t better and we seem to be pushing past the sweet spot into a world of chaotic, uncertain weather with quality-wrecking temperature extremes.
Though poor vine growers can’t simply pick up their vines and move, as consumers we have the luxury of being able to turn our sights northward to cooler latitudes. Luckily, towards the north, and even beyond the 30-50º band historically favoured for vine growing, lie a number of regions just hitting their stride.
Canada
Though hardly that far north in European terms—the Okanagan Valley lies around 50º and Niagara-on-the-Lake around 43º—Canada’s wine regions were once of near-exclusive interest to ice wine drinkers but now have an increasing bounty to offer dry and sparkling wine drinkers as well.
However, wines from the two key provinces of British Columbia and Ontario differ significantly. The extreme continentality and unexpectedly warm, dry climate of BC’s Okanagan tend to produce generous, plush-fruited chardonnay, Bordeaux blends and pinot noir that could be confused for slightly dialled-back California wines. Meanwhile, temperatures in Ontario’s Niagara-on-the-Lake and Niagara Escarpment are stabilised by their proximity to Lake Ontario and are generally lower, consistently producing lean, chiselled sparkling wines and tense, mineral expressions of chardonnay, pinot noir, riesling and, trendily, Chinon-like cabernet franc.