Canadian winemakers learn from masters
Italy welcomes local vintners
Elisa Mazzi knows Niagara produces amazing sparkling wine.
Still, it’s always a bonus to hear it from someone else, especially if that someone is from a worldrenowned wine region that’s made bubbly for centuries.
Mazzi, the assistant winemaker at Malivoire Wine Co. in Beamsville, got that affirmation earlier this summer when she and 29 vintners from four provinces travelled to northern Italy, home of sparkling Prosecco and Trento.
As thanks for the hospitality shown to them by the host winemakers they visited on the trip, Mazzi and crew left bottles of Canadian bubbles behind. Their gifts received high praise from their Italian colleagues in blind tastings.
“I think for all of us, it was a good feeling,” Mazzi said. “When you know you’re doing something right and you have confirmation of that, it proves that we shouldn’t be scared to increase our sparkling program in Niagara.”
The five-day trip, which included stops in Trentino and Franciacorta, wasn’t to fish for compliments, however. It was a professional development exercise led by the Fizz Club, a fiveyear-old network of Canadian winemakers established by the Brock University Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute (CCOVI) to enhance technical knowledge of sparkling wine with the aim of growing the industry.
And it is poised to expand. Sparkling wine sales at the LCBO increased more than 13 per cent between 2015 and 2016, continuing an upward trend seen in previous years.
Nationwide, Canadians spent $58.2 million on bubbly in 2017, up from $52.25 million a year earlier, according to consumer data provider Statista.
So a trip to Italy to pick the brains of winemakers carrying the torch in an industry that’s hundreds of years old versus 20-ish years young in Canada is invaluable to continue that upswing, explained Belinda Kemp, Fizz Club organizer and senior oenology scientist at CCOVI.
Canadian winemakers were able to discuss with their Italian counterparts how to overcome issues with climate, which is similar in both regions, and other variables that throw “curve balls in the growing season.”
“The more information a winemaker has, the more prepared they are to deal with that,” Kemp said. “It’s one thing to make good wine but to make wine that’s revered is something else … and you don’t know everything.”
The Italian sojourn was the second Fizz Club trip to an oldworld wine region attended by Niagara winemakers like Mazzi. Two years ago, the Fizz Club, then just open to Ontario winemakers, visited the Champagne region to learn from the masters in France’s epicentre of sparkling tipple production.
When Fizz Club started in 2013, Kemp noted, there were 36 wineries in Ontario making sparkling. By 2017, there were 90. In that time, consumers have started to see local wines aged on the lees, also known as secondary fermentation, much like they do in Champagne, and win awards.
Still, for Mazzi, who attended the French tour, the Italian version was a bit of a homecoming. Mazzi grew up in Verona, in the heart of the region the vintners visited, and studied winemaking in Trentino. She also helped organize this Fizz Club jaunt.
The group’s itinerary included 12-hour days visiting large wineries producing only sparkling tipple, which is unknown in Niagara.
“It’s just the idea of it,” Mazzi said. “We might never go that way (in Niagara) but you never know.”
They also saw small wineries using proprietary technology that limited grape contact with oxygen between harvest and fermentation. The process, which used nitrogen instead, prevented issues with colour and created clean flavours, Mazzi explained.
The intention isn’t to copy what they’re doing in Italy, how- ever.
“Canada is different. The climate is different, the soil is different, so we’re making different sparkling,” Mazzi said. “But coming to these regions where they have hundreds of years of history, I’m confident that in talking to winemakers in these other regions, there’s always something for us to learn.”
One lesson did stand out, though, after Italian winemakers ranked Canadian sparkling among their favourites during blind tastings.
“All of our sparkling … can compete with Italian sparkling, even Champagne,” Mazzi said.
Tiffany Mayer is the author of Niagara Food: A Flavourful History of the Peninsula’s Bounty. She blogs about food and farming at timeforgrub.com. twitter.com/eatingniagara