The desire to produce fine wine in Canada was expressed as early as 1668, when a French Jesuit priest named Jacques Bruyas wrote from Quebec, “If one were to take the trouble to plant some vines and trees they would yield as well as they do in France and the grapes would be as good as those of France.” That this remains an ardent wish more than three hundred years later attests to the tortured history of the Canadian wine industry. The first commercial Canadian winery was established in 1811, and by the end of the century there were forty-one wineries, most of them located in Ontario, using local grapes and operated by Europeans with some background in winemaking. The fortified wine produced in these largely basement operations wasn’t just awful, it was dangerous; in 1928 the Provincial Department of Health set up a winemaking school in the east wing of Queen’s Park not as a cultural initiative, but as a public safety measure.
Postwar prosperity helped fuel a more ambitious viticulture, and in 1946 Brights Winery tried to grow Pinot Noir in Niagara, hoping to produce a red wine that could compete with those of Burgundy. By the 1950s, the experiment was abandoned, the yields too low for a viable commercial enterprise. But in 1955, they managed to produce a Pinot Chardonnay, the traditional white of Burgundy. There was hope. The estate wineries continued to expand and experiment, but their efforts were partly hijacked in the 1960s by the arrival of Cold Duck, a sparkling wine that originated in Michigan using labrusca grapes and a process that produced heroic amounts of sugar. It was a happy marriage of soft drinks and alcohol, and became instantly popular. In 1971 came a further scourge, André’s Baby Duck, another labrusca-based confection, this time produced in British Columbia.
By 1973, Baby Duck was a significant part of the Canadian market, and it spawned many variations. The Canadian wine industry became an almost purely corporate enterprise, with most of its energy spent on producing and marketing wines with homely names like Gimli Goose, Baby Deer, Baby Bear, Little White Duck, and Pink Flamingo. The success of sweet, sparkling wine divided wine consumption into two categories: European wines for the sophisticate, and Canadian wines for those who wanted to get their girlfriend drunk after the prom.
The impressive gains made by Ontario and British Columbia estate wineries were partly eclipsed by the large, pejorative shadow cast by the various Ducks. In 1976, the government began offering subsidies to wean growers off labrusca grapes, and in 1988 the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food finally banned their use in the production of table wine. That same year, the Free Trade Agreement stipulated that tariffs on American wines would be cut in half in two years and phased out in seven. Canadian winemakers would no longer be protected from their American counterparts, who had made significant gains after a similarly dismal colonial start. Soon after, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade increased European access to our market and exposed Canadian producers to even greater competition.
Yet the national industry survived. In 1991, the Ontario government financed a $5-million advertising campaign targeting people who hadn’t thought of buying Canadian wine since their girlfriend threw up on prom night. “We’re Ready When You Are” was its somewhat noncommittal slogan, but it produced a favourable response; by the following year, the sale of Ontario Vintners Quality Alliance (vqa) approved wines had increased by nearly 100 percent.
Only in the last decade or so has there been a significant attempt to produce premium wines in Ontario. Previously, winemakers had tried to maximize quality by perfecting technology inside the winery. But real improvement started in the vineyard, with new plantings, clone and root stock selection, and canopy management. The effort has paid off. Government revenue from Ontario wine went from $2 million in 1990 to $245 million in 2006.
Even in the age of globalization, it seems that to be successful on the world stage, first you have to win the nation; domestic markets are where wine sales begin. In France, 95 percent of the market belongs to French wine. In Australia, that number is 90 percent, and in the US it is over 80 percent. In Canada, it is 44 percent. The Canadian wine industry is at a watershed moment.
How well the industry fares in the coming years will depend to some extent on wine tourism. The Niagara region now brings in more than 750,000 people a year, according to the Wine Council of Ontario, though a higher Canadian dollar and an increasingly rigid border threaten this trade. Wine sold at the wineries is the most profitable sale for the producer and, for some, the primary retail channel. As such, the wineries themselves are becoming a critical marketing device, and it was considered a coup when Don Triggs persuaded Frank Gehry to design the winery for Le Clos Jordanne.
Triggs didn’t know much about architecture when he set out to commission the winery. He thought Gehry’s work was organic and uplifting but, given his marketing background, it was the Bilbao story that held the greatest appeal. The marketing benefits would be given a further boost by Gehry’s status as a quasi-Torontonian. Although the architect was born and raised in Toronto, he had never done a large Canadian commission, guaranteeing considerable media attention for the project. When he came to Toronto in 2000 for the press conference, Gehry was received as a favourite son. He talked about wine with his usual self-deprecating humour, the shrugging, almost Catskillian delivery that informs his public persona. “I don’t know one wine from another,” he said flatly, confessing that when he lived in Paris in 1962, he drank plonk. He pointed to his modest paunch as a “wine belly.” A preliminary sketch that looked like a line drawing of a crumpled napkin was met with reverence and applause.
Over the next three years, Gehry’s office produced more than twenty models for the winery, though none of them was within the budget. By 2002, there was a viable model, a 3,250-square-metre building with a draped roof made of either stainless steel or titanium strips that suggested, Gehry said, “a silver cloud floating.”
