The Decibel - Canada’s billion-dollar wine industry is changing. Here’s why

Episode Date: November 8, 2023

Weather in Canada is becoming more erratic thanks to climate change – we’re seeing cold snaps, severe thunder and hail storms, and wildfires. That’s having a big impact on Canada’s wine industry. Today, The Globe’s wine writer Christopher Waters joins us to explain what’s going on in the industry, how that’s impacting the wines themselves, and why it’s such an important industry to pay attention to – and we even try some wines, for research, of course.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Nearly every year in Canada, we're now experiencing serious cold snaps, intense summer storms, devastating wildfires. And those are having a big impact on a very popular drink. Okay, so what I've brought in today for you to take a look at are two red wines from a family estate winery in British Columbia. That's the Globe's wine writer, Christopher Waters. They are the exact same grape varieties. They are the same label. They sell for the same price point. One is from 2019, which tastes the way you would expect this wine to taste.

And the other is the current release from 2021 that unfortunately shows the impact of smoke. This wine was made in a year with serious wildfires in BC's Okanagan region, where the grapes were grown. And Christopher says those wildfires changed the wine. All right, and we're not just going to take your word for it. We're actually going to try these bottles of wine. So maybe let's start with the untainted one, maybe the 2019. We've got some wine glasses there.

All right. Beautiful. I'm a journalist, not a sommelier, so forgive my pores. This looks pretty good. So yeah, so this was a wine that probably would have been released two years ago, but still very much in its prime. But yeah, it has all that kind of plummy and spice and a little bit of, you know, it's getting a bit savory. Even if it's to the uninitiated, it smells like wine. I was going to say, yes, my palate is not as refined as yours,

but it smells like nice red wine to me. It smells like something you'd put in your mouth. Yeah. For lack of a better term, right? Let's give this a try. Yeah, and so really fine use of oak aging and a well-made wine, a very fine example. It has a beginning and a middle and an end of what makes a aging and, you know, a well-made wine, a very fine example. It has a beginning and a middle and an end of what makes a great wine. It's like a story.

So this is the 2019. And then you've also got the 2021. So this is what you say is the smoke-tainted year. Yes, this unfortunately, from the Southern Okananagan shows a little bit too much campfire or a little bit too much, maybe we've had a Cohiba cigar. I'm trying to see if it smells any different. It should. And so here's one of the things to think about is that from 2021,

this should be showing a lot more of the fruit, a lot more freshness, lots of plummy, lots of dark berry, lots of recognizable fruit with some oak aging. All right. Let's taste this one. Yeah. Something a little heavier about that taste. Yeah, it's got a bit more of a base note to it,

but I also find there's this acrid and sharpness that wasn't in the first wine. Okay, so my palate isn't the same as Christopher's, but I let the wine sit for a while, and then I could really taste it. Oh, this one tastes very different now. Yeah, now that there's more air into it. Oh, this one tastes very different now. Yeah, now that there's more air into it. Wow. Wow.

I'm actually really surprised at how different this tastes. Now that it's, yeah. It's a lot smokier. Ordinarily. Even just smelling it. Yeah. I get campfire now. It's incredible. It's undeniable that there's a really serious smoke taint to that wine.

That's a very different taste than the 2019 bottle. Wow. That's what is happening, whether it's British Columbia, whether it's Australia, California, all these places around the world where vineyards are growing near places where wildfires are happening. This is the potential, that ripple effect that can come. And it's not just wildfires affecting our wine. As climate change gets worse, winemakers are trying to figure out how to keep their crops alive and how to stay afloat. So today, Christopher tells us how Canada's wine sector is faring,

and why it's such an important industry to pay attention to in the struggles with climate change. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Cheers. Cheers. Well, that was a very fun start to our interview. What has this year been like for wine producers in Canada? It seems cliche because I've been covering wine in this country since 1998 and how frequently in terms of climate change I hear the terms,

this has never happened before. And it's not even the new normal because that would suggest that there's a certain kind of rhythm to it, but it really is unexpected. And what's rare about this year is usually there's one wine region that really takes it on the chin while the other regions in the country blithely kind of get by there, but for the grace of God, so to speak. But if you look at Nova Scotia, Ontario, and British Columbia, all of them have faced extreme challenges and really been taxed to the limit of how sustainable, how do you manage this?

How do you get a crop out of this? Looking at British Columbia that started the year off with a very small amount of viable grapevines because they had extreme frost. Same scenario in Nova Scotia. A cold front came and actually killed this year's crop and in some instances killed the actual vines. So they're looking at replanting. So the cold has been kind of the weather stuff as well as the wildfires. As well as wildfires in British Columbia, as well as Ontario on the surface looks, well, you didn't have extreme cold this year. But they're looking at this, the variability of the hottest,

you know, the wettest summer and then the driest kind of September. So it's how do you manage a vineyard when you get four seasons and extremes all at once? So, Chris, we spoke to a few winemakers in Canada. One of them is Bill Rettelmeyer, and I know you've spoken with him as well. He's the owner of Southbrook Vineyards in Niagara-on-the-Lake, and he's been seeing these changes on his vineyard. Global warming is not an issue. Global weirding is the issue. It's the wild swings in weather. When we bought the property in 2005, moved to Niagara, everybody said, oh, it's great.

The temperature never goes below minus 20, And grapes are happy at minus 20. But since then, 2014, 2015, and 2022, we've had significant events in the minus 25 or colder range. In 2022, it was minus 24.8 here in our vineyard. And we lost most of last year's crop. And this is drastically affecting producers, right? I know the BC wine growers said that their production is down 39 to 56% significant. And that's early stages. So that's usually, they're usually a bit more optimistic in those ones.

And then it's what actually they bring in. Nova Scotia was similar. They're looking at no Chardonnay, no Riesling, and even the hybrid grape varieties suffering, which is unheard of because those are well-known to be workhorses, and they can kind of weather the weather no matter the weather, whether they like it or not, so to speak. But no, it's an extreme challenge, especially if you're a family farm

and you are farming your own vineyard. And this is all you're working with is what's in your backyard. It's also a challenge for the bigger companies. Finding available fruit can be a challenge because this used to be the way of the world. It's like, okay, well, if a soy has had a bad freeze... Could balance out a little bit. You could look in other parts of the Okan It's like, okay, well, if a Soyuz had a bad freeze, you could look in

other parts of the Okanagan. You could find grapes elsewhere. But when it's manifesting itself up and down the valley and it's a challenge everywhere, it's never been seen before. But this is not totally new this year though, right? How long have winemakers in Canada been struggling with stuff like this? I'd have to think back. I remember talking to one of the veteran wine growers in Niagara in 2000. Donna Laley, you know, said that we were starting to prepare ourselves for extremes. Extreme cold, extreme heat, extreme drought, extreme rain. And that makes it very hard to manage. But they've been talking about it, but it really has ramped up in

the last three to four years where the cycle, this seems to be speeding up. And a lot of this industry was ailing coming out of the pandemic, and they really needed to get some runs on the board, right? They really needed to have some good harvest. They needed to welcome tourism back. And all of those things are down, sizably down, or certainly down against the average. And you mentioned winter here as kind of a critical time. I guess what's happening in the winter and that sometimes we're getting a very early frost in December. Those vines haven't really kind of, they haven't gone to bed yet. They, in some cases, had a crop on them three weeks ago. You know, the vine itself is very susceptible to cold at that point in time. So if we get these early winters, which we are seeing increasingly, that can be a problem.

So will the vine be hurt or ruined, I guess, with the cold temperatures? Cold temperatures will almost always hurt the buds that are going to be your crop for the next year. In worst case scenario, it could actually be damaging. It could actually take out the vine, in which case then you're looking at a replant. And I know you've gone to visit some wineries this year, Christopher. I guess, what have you seen? Like, what impact are these climate events having on them? It's yielding a lot less wine.

Going to visit, you know, someone like Thomas Spatchelder, who makes Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in Niagara, and seeing many, many barrels, but a small fraction of barrels that actually have wine in them that are just, well, these are for next year because there was no wine. Less wine because there were just less grapes that made it. There was less grapes. So there's certainly less to sell, which means from a business standpoint, it's like, how do you keep the lights on? How do you keep your vineyard up to standards when this year, a lot of people were farming vineyards with no grapes. But if you couldn't just take the year off and say, well, catch it next year, you had to basically start

setting it up for rejuvenation. And so you're paying all of this money and not receiving any dividends from selling wine. That's difficult from a business perspective. Yeah. We also spoke with two people from Tantalus Vineyards. This is out in BC, David Patterson and Stephanie Mosley. And I understand you went to see them as well at the vineyard. say that we're maybe 10% of that. So to give you an idea, we would normally make or try to make 10,000 to 12,000 cases of wine and this year we would make about maybe 2,000 cases off our property. Seeing the hard winter year after year kind of hit the vineyard is heartbreaking.

It's pretty devastating. I think we have hope every season. Okay, let's, you know, let's see what takes place this winter. Let's get maybe a bit of a bumper crop. And we've just been hit hard a number of years in a row. We really shouldn't understate the business side of this, right? Because I understand that there are also a lot of wineries that are up for sale right now. Can you tell me about that? Since the harvest has started, suddenly,

social media is chock-a-block, particularly in British Columbia, with wineries and very well-known properties that are for sale. Insiders have said it's upwards of 60 to 80 wineries that are for sale in the Okanagan, which is meaningful when you have maybe, that's 10%. That's roughly 10% of the operating farm wineries across the country. On a normal year, what would you imagine? How many would be up for sale? Maybe it'd be closer to six or eight, kind of. Six or eight as opposed to 60 or 80. Yeah. And so it's a significant issue and one that's not going to solve itself overnight. We'll be right back. I think something we should maybe address at this point, Christopher, is, you know, why are we talking about wine? Because, you know, when it comes down to it, wine is a bit of a luxury, right?

It's not a staple crop or anything. And climate change has so many different effects around the world. But why is it important to pay attention to what's happening here in the wine industry? Well, I think it's important to remember that from an agricultural standpoint, and Canada is an agricultural country, this is the highest value-added agricultural product we have in the country. We're talking about, you know, 2019 is the most recent data, but we're talking about $11.6 billion. The hammer-on effect is what comes from wine tourism,

is what comes from, you know, spending a dollar on a Canadian wine usually nets about $3 or $4 in added business. So whether that's restaurants, that's hotels, or any type of, you know, there's a number of benefits that come from this product. Okay, so the money is important. So that $11.5 billion, that's what the wine industry contributes to the Canadian economy. So significant. But I also wonder, I guess, from a climate change

perspective, like when we're looking at the effects of this on wines, like can this kind of, I guess, signal what maybe is more to come? Yeah. I mean, what you're seeing in a tender fruit like a grape, it's less resistant in the same way that way back when they used to set up vineyards with roses planted at the front of each row because the rose would show any blight, any disease resistance, any problems sooner than the vine. So arguably the grapevine does that for so many other forestry, for whatever, you know, any number of things, because it is the next kind of weaker species that shows this and, you know, the vagaries of what's happening. We're seeing firsthand because not only do you see the fruit and you see how it develops, but we also see what happens when you ferment that juice and turn it into wine.

You can taste it like we just did. Wow. We are seeing warmer summers often now, right? So what does that mean for the grapes as they're ripening? It can mean wonderful things. You know, warm and dry can be great for a grape variety because it's going to, you know, get you the ripeness. A grape variety, any cultivated variety will basically gain sugar as it ripens. The acidity drops, it gains flavor. But what we're seeing is, you know, warmer, drier temperatures might actually stress the grape

vine out to the degree that the fruit doesn't go on this natural kind of progression. And so it starts to taste actually, Riesling starts to show more diesel and a gasoline kind of flavors because the vine itself was stressed and it didn't give you that lovely kind of peach and pear and lime zest, all that kind of lovely fruit salad aspect that you would expect in a really well-made Riesling. You suddenly get something that's like, it's just simply because at a certain point in time, the vine shut down or it didn't progress the way it was supposed to. Okay, so the actual flavor of the wine sounds like it can be very affected here. And I've also heard that the alcohol content of the wine can change too. How does that happen? Well, more sugar in the grapes translates to more alcohol in the wine.

And certainly we've seen alcohol levels in wine climb on the whole. Wines, you know, in the 70s and 80 80s you'd look at a bottle of wine and 12 percent alcohol would be commonplace from many parts of Bordeaux many parts of of Burgundy now current releases of the very best wines we're knocking about 15 percent alcohol so some of its trend you want riper grapes but it's also the natural factors of growing grapes in Bordeaux has changed. It's warmer, it's drier. So it's like, okay, we'll go in and pick early. Well, what we were talking about, remember, sugar accumulates flavors. You're waiting for the flavors to develop. So you can't just go in and pick early. But the one thing that we can change, the one thing, the variability that

changes is that they'll change the variety. So I wonder, what are some other ways that winemakers, in Canada particularly, are doing to try to protect their crops? From a winter injury standpoint, there's a lot more geothermal and textile blanketing that's being used. Inversion fans have been dotting the landscape in wine country for a significant number of years. In some instances, winemakers might make the call, instead of making a full-bodied red wine, maybe there'll be a lot of rosé made in areas that were blanketed by smoke because the smoke itself affects the skin of the grape a lot more than the actual berry. So if we're not going to have a lot of skin contact, maybe all that kind of the smoke effect won't happen if we press very gently and make a rosé instead of a red wine.

Because the rosé would not have the skin on it. It shouldn't, yeah. Wow. Just lastly here, Christopher, I mean, it feels like the wine industry is going through a pretty significant shift, really having to do a lot of adapting here. So you're watching closely everything that's going on. How do you feel about the future of Canada's wine industry? Increasingly, what we're seeing is a number of people who are very successful in other ventures. They can continue to invest in these wineries that in a year like 2023 probably isn't going

to make a lot of money. What about the taste of the wine? The taste of the wine has never been better. Canadian wine, even in challenging years. And the reality is it's like the vintage that we're actually enjoying, the wines that will be labeled 2023, there's going to be people who caught lightning in the bottle because they manage the Cokes, their grapes through all of those challenges and get happy, healthy grapes into the winery that they were able to make wine out of.

And they were able to make those wines without a compromise to produce a red or white or sparkling, a rosé, an orange wine, anything that will actually curl your toes, that will just kind of put a smile on your face. And there's going to be those wines from 2023. They're just going to be perhaps harder to find. All these diligent, dedicated wine growers, vineyard workers, winemakers, they get one shot each year to make wine. And the longer they're in it, they get better and better and better at it,

no matter what they have to worry about. It's no longer a case of can we do these types of wines in Canada? It's like, can we do? It's how they're adapting. They're figuring out how to do it. Yeah. Christopher, thank you so much for being here today and for bringing in the wine. You're very welcome.

I'm going to take another sip. Cheers. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms. Jay Coburn edited this episode. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin.

David Crosby edits the show. Adrienne Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.