I’m well used to wine being delivered by casually dressed couriers, but one morning last November two substantial men in suits arrived on my doorstep. They looked like Mormon missionaries, and they assured me that they too had some wine for me.
“Some” turned out to be seven large cases containing 50 bottles of Canadian wine, delivered by officials from the Canadian High Commission, no less. Because I’m updating a book and needed to revisit my knowledge of Canadian wine, I had “reached out”, as common parlance now has it, to Janet Dorozynski whose government job in Canada is to advance the cause of Canadian alcoholic drinks. If you were hosted by a Canadian official at Davos this year, your hooch will have been chosen by Janet. Her task for me was to choose wines she thought would demonstrate the progress Canadian vintners have been making recently.
Like any government official, she could not show geographical favouritism, so the bottles included not only dozens from each of the two major wine-producing provinces, Ontario and British Columbia, but also what she reckoned were the best ferments of Quebec and Nova Scotia. (Actually, I suspect that the very best ferments of Quebec may not be based on grapes at all but on apples – if Leduc-Piedimonte’s sweet Ice Cider is anything to go by.) The French-speaking province is clearly a bit too cold for most European vines but of the three Quebecois examples delivered I was quite impressed by an expensively oaked, mature dry 2008 white from Domaine Les Brome based on the hybrid grape Vidal.