Planting the seed for quality wine
In our local wine industry we have many pioneers.
In the 1970s there was a surge of young, vibrant characters that took a chance on planting European grape vines (Vitis vinifera) in a climate deemed ‘unsuitable’ by the professionals of the day.
Labrusca grapes (native North American grapes) were the norm back then. However, they didn’t create wines with the palate-pleasing flavours that vinifera grapes, such as Merlot and Chardonnay, did.
These brave, swashbuckling characters who went rogue are now synonymous with the foundation of our wine industry: Donald Ziraldo and Karl Kaiser, the founders of Inniskillin; Len Pennachetti and Angelo Pavan, who created Cave Spring Winery; and Paul Bosc of Château des Charmes.
However, the story I’d like to tell today is about someone who was a pioneer behind the scenes. Someone who used education as his tactic, and who quietly inspired the forebears of Ontario’s modern wine industry.
Ákos Bodo was a Hungarian immigrant who came to Canada with his wife and young son in 1951 and settled in Welland. He had a PhD in political science from his homeland, but geography was his true calling. He got a position teaching geography at Denis Morris High School in St. Catharines, and spent the remainder of his 30-year career teaching and acting as department head.
It was in his classes that he urged his students to look at the geographic landscape and climate of the Niagara region and realize its potential.
Being a wine lover and coming from a country where wine was part of the daily diet, Ákos’s real argument was that Niagara should be growing Vitis vinifera grapes instead of the rustic labrusca vines that, for drinking wine, “are the least desirable type,” according to his second PhD dissertation, Vitis Vinifera in Ontario.
As a student in his classroom in the early 1970s, Len Pennachetti learned about concepts such as the greenhouse effect. This inspired him to convince his father to take a leap of faith and purchase a 4.8-hectare vineyard and plant vinifera vines (Chardonnay and Riesling) in 1978. I met with Pennachetti recently and as we flipped through Bodo’s thesis he commented “these were the slides he used in our class.”
“At the time, the site selection mMap hadn’t even been published yet. He used to push us to research cutting edge things like this.”
The greenhouse effect is something commonly used today and something I teach in my classroom. It explains how the warm air off Lake Ontario flows over Niagara and is stopped by the escarpment and cycles back creating a warm pocket of air over this land; land that is thus suitable for tender fruit and grape production. It was in his class that Pennachetti, along with classmate and future winemaker Angelo Pavan, learned of the potential to grow Vitis vinifera in Niagara.
Interestingly, when Pennachetti and his father were looking for sites to purchase a vineyard and found Cave Spring, Pennachetti literally saw a scene out of his geography class — the limestone, slope, soil, everything he learned was ideal for vinifera. When he opened Ontario’s first winery restaurant Inn on the Twenty in 1993, Bodo came for lunch and Pennachetti greeted his former teacher saying, “This is all your fault. All of this.”
Bodo had another student who was destined for the wine industry.
Ziraldo remembers that he “loved Bodo’s class,” although admits that he was more focused on football than geography in high school. However, he claims the lessons he learned were instilled in him as he pursued his winemaking career years later.
“The concepts from his class like terroir and the seven-day climatic cycle are things that I used, and only in hindsight did I realize how valuable those lessons were,” said Ziraldo.
I have these romantic images in my head of his classroom, akin to scenes from Dead Poet’s Society — although I’m pretty sure Mr. Bodo would’ve ruled out standing on desks. Anyone who knew him remembers his zest for life, humour and passion for wine and food. This transcended at home, where after work he would cook dinner with his daughter Nancy, or make Hungarian sausage with friends. He made wine at home, and travelled to wine regions repeatedly, as Nancy remembers.
It was after his retirement, at age 64, that he obtained his second PhD on vinifera in Ontario. He saw the value of education, and the lack of it in Niagara at the time, quoting, “specific courses … to prepare students for careers in wine research and development are not existing ... over time, some educational expertise should be developed here in relevant disciplines.”
And to a teacher, there is no better job satisfaction than to see your students spread their wings and flourish.
Sadly, Bodo died in 2006, but his legacy lives on in the industry and the people he inspired.