National Post - Financial Post Magazine
GREEN & CLEAN
There has been a trend toward organic wines over the past five years, but there may be a good reason why it’s waning. Carl Villeneuve Lepage, an award-winning sommelier at Toqué, an upscale French restaurant in Montreal, says the removal of sulphites, which can help manage disease during the vegetative cycle and also help in the bottling process, means too many bottles are being ruined by unwanted yeast and bacteria en route to these parts. Strict organic wines will still appeal to certain people — read, hipsters — Lepage says “those who study wine are getting tired of infected wine.”
Although Lepage says organic wines won’t disappear, the better producers are taking a step back and using sulphites when necessary, which naturally means smaller vineyards will still be in favour. “Customers are looking for discoveries, so that may be smaller producers who have a philosophy that is respectful of the environment and also respectful of customers,” he says.
But when it comes to spending his own money on wines to keep in storage, as opposed to early drinking, Lepage likes CôteRôtie wines from the Northern Rhône region, the Nebbiolo-based Barolo wines from Piemonte and Pinot noirs from Burgundy. His interest in wine started when he was 16 and pitched in at a restaurant during Quebec’s gap year between high school and university. “The time and care taken to choose a wine impressed me,” he says. But it wasn’t until after he had a bartending licence and was working that he discovered that he had a penchant for talking about wine. He went to the Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec, took additional courses and was “entranced.”
Lepage can talk wine theory, chemistry, geology and geography, but he has a far simpler approach when recommending wine to Toqué patrons since he joined the staff 18 months ago: “It’s not about the particular wine, it’s about the particular moment spent with someone that will make this bottle unique,” he says. “It sounds cheesy, but it’s totally right.”