Introduction
Why is it a good idea for winemakers to invest in old vines? What does it mean to be a good steward of the land? What unique challenges does the Ontario wine industry face in the next five years?
In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with winemaker Carolyn Hurst.
You can find the wines we discussed here.
Join me on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube Live Video
Join the live-stream video of this conversation on Wednesday at 7 pm eastern on Instagram Live Video, Facebook Live Video or YouTube Live Video.
I’ll be jumping into the comments as we watch it together so that I can answer your questions in real-time.
I want to hear from you! What’s your opinion of what we’re discussing? What takeaways or tips do you love most from this chat? What questions do you have that we didn’t answer?
Want to know when we go live?
Add this to your calendar:
Giveaway
Three of you in Canada will win a bottle of one of Carolyn’s fabulous wines.
How to Win
To qualify, all you have to do is email me at [email protected] and tell me that you’d like to win a copy. I’ll choose three people randomly from those who contact me.
Good luck!
Highlights
- Which entrepreneurial game did Carolyn love to play as a child?
- How did summer school in France change Carolyn’s life?
- What made Carolyn want to get involved in the wine business?
- Which special moment was the most memorable for Carolyn in her wine career so far?
- Why is it a good idea to invest in old vines?
- How does Carolyn’s motivation to be a good steward of the land inform her business decisions?
- What is the Niagara Escarpment, and how does its unique features influence its wine?
- Why does limestone soil impart a specific taste to wines?
- What’s holding Ontario wines back from increasing local market share?
- Which basic facts should you be aware of when it comes to the Ontario wine industry?
- Which challenges are being faced by Ontario wineries, and what is needed to achieve economic sustainability?
Key Takeaways
- Carolyn’s explanation of why old vines are precious and important to the quality of the wine makes a solid case for winemakers to invest in them.
- I like how Carolyn describes being a good steward of the land for the next generation and making that a big part of her consciousness in terms of how she operates.
- I was intrigued by Carolyn’s description of the unique challenges the Ontario wine industry faces in the next five years and was surprised at both its economic impact and that the wines still aren’t well represented on many wine lists.
Start The Conversation: Click Below to Share These Wine Tips
About Carolyn Hurst
Carolyn Hurst is president of Westcott Vineyards in Niagara, Ontario, which she founded with her husband Grant Westcott in 2006. Since 2017, she has been the Chair of the Board at Ontario Craft Wineries, representing more than 100 wineries in the province. Previously, she has been the president of three successful technology companies. She also has significant experience in the restaurant/hospitality industry earlier on in her career. She is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario.
Resources
- Connect with Carolyn Hurst
- The Coast Article | Natalie MacLean survived an online mob, divorce and drinking too much. Her new memoir will help you get through your own mess, too.
- Diary of a Book Launch: An Insider Peek from Idea to Publication
- Wine Witch on Fire Free Companion Guide for Book Clubs
- My Books:
- Unreserved Wine Talk | Episode 180: Extreme Winemaking, Ontario Wine Gems, Canada’s Regions & Grapes
- My new class The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner And How To Fix Them Forever
Tag Me on Social
Tag me on social media if you enjoyed the episode:
- @nataliemaclean and @natdecants on Facebook
- @nataliemaclean on Twitter
- @nataliemacleanwine on Instagram
- @nataliemaclean on LinkedIn
- Email Me at [email protected]
Thirsty for more?
- Sign up for my free online wine video class where I’ll walk you through The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner (and how to fix them forever!)
- You’ll find my books here, including Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines and Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass.
- The new audio edition of Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass is now available on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and other country-specific Amazon sites; iTunes.ca, iTunes.com and other country-specific iTunes sites; Audible.ca and Audible.com.
Transcript
Carolyn Hurst (00:00):
Old vines are very precious and really important to the quality of the wine. And the roots are down deeper. They’re less vigorous. They don’t produce as many clusters as younger vines. Every year the vine produces, all the new plant material is made up from the air, the water, the soil. Generation in a vine is one year renewing itself. Every year.
Natalie MacLean (00:23):
I find old vines are like people. They may be more wizened, less vigorous, but they’re more interesting because their roots are deeper.
Carolyn Hurst (00:31):
So true.
Natalie MacLean (00:38):
Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m your host, Natalie MacLean, and each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle please and let’s get started.
Welcome to episode 238. Why is it a good idea for winemakers to invest in Old Vines? What does it mean to be a good steward of the land? And what are the unique challenges that the Ontario wine industry faces in the next five years? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions in my chat with Carolyn Hurst, president of Westcott Vineyards in Niagara, Ontario. We talk about the issues facing the Ontario wine industry as well as her personal and colourful experiences in the business.
(02:03):
Now, a quick update on my memoir Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much. What are you working on, I asked my son who just graduated from Waterloo University’s honours computer engineering program. A way of putting you out of business, he said smiling. I’m working with convolutional neural networks and the synthroid activation layer. I looked at him blankly. Artificial intelligence and machine learning. he added, as though that explained it all. We chatted about AI’s impact on books, writing and wine reviews. And even though tools like Chat GPT4 are impressive, I believe they’re still a long way from replacing writers of long form narrative. When it comes to wine reviews, I’m not so sure though. I think they’ll need to learn how to taste wine to do those. In an upcoming episode, we’ll be chatting about these topics in more depth.
(02:58):
If you’ve read Wine Witch on Fire, I’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. If you haven’t got your copy yet and would like to support it and this podcast, please order it from any online book retailer no matter where you live. Every little bit helps spread the message. I’ll put a link in the show notes to all the retailers worldwide at NatalieMacLean.com/238.
Here’s a review from Catherine Nichols who lives in Carlsbad, California. “Wow, what a fantastic read. I could feel myself getting sucked up into the drama and wanted to help Natalie kick some butt. This is a must read if you’ve ever been trolled on social media – who hasn’t – or just want to see how one woman handled her world crumbling, but managed to just keep swimming. Brava. Five stars.” Thanks, Catherine.
There was also a great review in The Coast magazine and arts and culture editor Morgan Mullin had a great review. I’ll put a link in the show notes to the full review, but my favourite line was she called Wine Witch on Fire this decade’s Eat, Pray, Love. Woohoo. Alright, on with the show.
(04:14):
Three of you who live in Canada are going to win a bottle of one of her fabulous wines, I should say. All you have to do is email me at [email protected] and tell me you would like to win. I’ll choose three people randomly from those who contact me. All right. Back to our guest. Carolyn Hurst is the president of Westcott Vineyards in Niagara, Ontario, which she founded with her husband, Grant Westcott, in 2006. Since 2017, she has been chair of the board of Ontario Craft Wineries representing more than 100 wineries in the province. Previously, she has been the president of three successful technology companies. She also has significant experience in the restaurant hospitality industry earlier in her career, and she is a graduate of University of Western Ontario. Go Mustangs. Welcome, Carolyn. So good to have you here with us.
Carolyn Hurst (05:06):
Thank you for having me. I’m delighted to be here.
Natalie MacLean (05:08):
All right. Cheers.
Carolyn Hurst (05:10):
Go Mustang Go.
Natalie MacLean (05:11):
We got the thumbs up. Great. Yeah, that’s my alma mater, too. All right, so let’s start with some of your more memorable moments perhaps growing up. I love this story. I’ve heard you tell it before, but what did you love to do as a child that was a little bit more well unusual?
Carolyn Hurst (05:29):
Yes. I liked to play store. So rather than playing house, which was maybe what the other little girls in the neighbourhood wanted to play, I convinced them that we should play store. And so we would pretend that we were raising animals and making sweaters from the wool and putting them on the shelves of the store and making jams and all that kind of stuff to have a store.
Natalie MacLean (05:55):
So you were business minded from the, you were very young, and I might say judging from what you’ve just described, vertically integrated as well.
Carolyn Hurst (06:02):
Yes, yes, exactly. Understand the value of vertically integrating your business. But yes, I don’t know where it came from. My father was a surgeon and my mother was a social worker worker, and they were kind of scratching their heads to where this entrepreneurial drive came from, but.
Natalie MacLean (06:21):
That’s great. How did you convince the other kids not to play house or dolls or whatever?
Carolyn Hurst (06:27):
I can be very persuasive.
Natalie MacLean (06:30):
Okay. Yes, you can. And that’s going to come out in this interview. Now you went to summer school in France. Tell us a little bit about that.
Carolyn Hurst (06:37):
Yes. So I saved up all my babysitting money and somehow convinced my parents that I was mature enough to go to summer school at l’Institute de Touraine, which is in Tour in the Loire Valley. And
Natalie MacLean (06:55):
How old were you?
Carolyn Hurst (06:56):
I was 15 and I was supposed to be 16. I was turning 16 in September, so we snuck in a little bit early, but yeah, just 15 years old and it changed my life that experience.
Natalie MacLean (07:11):
How so?
Carolyn Hurst (07:11):
Well, the independence part of it. First time really being away from home and having to navigate things on my own, built a lot of confidence in terms of ability to just kind of deal with things. But I was really smitten with the lifestyle in the Loire Valley. I was tasting wine and touring the areas, looking at the beautiful chateaux. But the thing that I loved the most about it was just that everything was of that place. So the bread, the cheese, the wine food, even the most humble little shared table at a little restaurant would be serving delicious food and wine and that it stuck with me forever. One wine tour we ended in their cellar where they had chickens roasting on a spit on the back wall, and that was paired with beautiful Loire wine. And at the table with big chunks of crusty bed and roast potatoes that had been roasted in the drippings from the chickens. And I could still smell it. I could still taste it. It immediately brings back evokes incredible memories.
Natalie MacLean (08:29):
Wow. I can almost smell and taste it, too. Thank you for that. That sounds lovely. Oh my gosh. So now you’ve had an extensive career in business and technology. What made you want to get into the world of wine or the wine business?
Carolyn Hurst (08:43):
It’s been a long time dream in terms of something that was tied to farming and tied to the land. That said, even back when I was playing store, it was about making something and then selling it basically. But I think for the wine part of it, it kind of grew from that initial experience in the Loire Valley. And actually when I came back and when then went to university and kind of went on my way – I started out in the restaurant industry – but I was going to go to the hotel school in Lausanne, I just was cleaning out some stuff and found my acceptance letter. And my parents said why don’t you talk to some people in the industry to see if they think this is a good idea? And they said, well, maybe they advised actually going to work in the industry before I got more education.
(09:37):
And so I actually went into the restaurant business in Toronto and started as an assistant manager in the old Spaghetti Factory down on the Esplanade. But there’s always been that I wanted to travel the world and experience different cultures. That’s what was appealing to me about the hotel business. But I very quickly realized that the way to participate in that industry was to own your own business, and I certainly couldn’t afford that. So it became a journey. I ended up in technology. I just had an affinity for that type of work. And just one thing led to just kind of serendipitous in terms of that whole journey in terms of my career, but I ended up coming back to what I originally always wanted and loved, which was something that was based on the land and back to my hometown basically. So I’m back in Niagara where I grew up, and I’m now hopefully bringing to the world what I think are the fantastic things that Niagara is capable of producing.
Natalie MacLean (10:44):
Indeed, you are. So is there anything that’s happened during your wine career, whether it’s making wine, drinking it, or some other wine situation that has been strange or particularly memorable?
Carolyn Hurst (11:00):
So many things.
Natalie MacLean (11:01):
More than one. Okay.
Carolyn Hurst (11:03):
Yeah. Well, I’ll try and pick a good one. I’d say one of the most memorable moments for me in this was, so we purchased the vineyard in 2006. My husband and I were still living in Toronto, working our day jobs, basically to start funding everything that we were getting ready to enter into. And so from 2006 to 2012, we were planting vines, learning how to grow, working with consultants. It wasn’t until 2012 that we had our first harvest, and we actually didn’t have a winery building yet. We were caught up in the Niagara Escarpment Commission. So we’re heavily supervised in terms of what we’re able to do on these lands. So we’ve made our first wines in our equipment barn with no running water, no electricity. It was basically a shed.
Natalie MacLean
Wow.
Carolyn Hurst
So the moment in that first winter of 2012, 2013, when we started to pull with the pulling wine out of the barrels, the Chards and the Pinots, and tasting them for the first time in terms of, it was only in that first moment when I tasted them that I realized we were going to make great wines. And so really a six, seven year journey in terms of making all these decisions, spending all this money, trying to understand the business, and then those first sips of the wine coming out of those barrels was really a pretty special moment. And all by myself basically standing in the barn. Maybe this is going to be okay.
Natalie MacLean (12:46):
Yeah. Because what I find so interesting, what separates wine even from making beer or even creating a dish, a plate of food, is that it’s such a long-term business. I mean, the vines don’t come into maturity for seven years and you get one shot every year. You’ve talked about this, but you have a great head for business. You are making investments now that you’ve said aren’t going to pay off in your lifetime. What is an example of that?
Carolyn Hurst (13:12):
In 2018, we purchased Butler’s Grant Vineyard, so that had some of the oldest vines in Canada. They’re 40 years old, roughly Chardonnay, Pino, Cab Franc, and Riesling. And with the investments that we made in Westcott Vineyards for those vines to be 40 years old, Grant is going to be over a hundred years old when those vines reach the same maturity as the vineyard that we recently purchased with these old vines on it. So old vines are very precious and really important to the quality of the wine and everything else. So we’re not going to see it.
Natalie MacLean (13:50):
Why are they important for those who might not know what is it about old vines that makes a wine great?
Carolyn Hurst (13:55):
Yes, I think that’s a really good question. I would say that there are couple of things. The roots are down deeper would be one part of it. So in order to be a 40 year old vine, you’re down deeper into the ground. They’re less vigorous. They don’t produce as many clusters as younger vines. And I would say that I’m also working on a bit of a theory about what point does – not to get too geeky here – but from the viticulture perspective, vines their DNA and clones from, in our case from the Dijon region so they’re Burgundy clones grafted onto Canadian rootstock, and every year the vine produces all the new plant materials. So after 40 years, I kind of ask myself and the plant material is made up from the air, the water, the soil, everything that’s in our vineyard. And so 40 years is that the DNA hasn’t changed, but is the plant still a Dijon? Is it still a European plant grafted onto Canadian rootstock? Or is it a 40 year old vine of Butler’s Grant from Butler’s Grant? And that’s what it is. So it’s for me, it’s.
Natalie MacLean (15:13):
Like someone who had moved here.
Carolyn Hurst (15:15):
Yeah. Exactly. It’s like Canada is such a great multicultural country, waves of immigration and all the great things that come with that. And I really think about it that way. So a generation in a vine is one year, so it’s 40 generations basically of that vine renewing itself every year. So to me, it’s a Canadian vine, it’s an Ontario vine, it’s a Butler’s Grant vine at that point. So I think that’s why it’s important to protect some of these old vines. But they’re challenging because they’re not as productive. They get take a great deal more care in order to bring them the bottle.
Natalie MacLean (15:58):
Yeah, absolutely. I find old vines are like people. They may be more wizened, less vigorous, but they’re more interesting because as you said, their roots are deeper. So they’re picking up different layers from the soil, the nutrients.
Carolyn Hurst (16:12):
I love that.
Natalie MacLean (16:13):
They also produce these smaller grapes or berries, so more concentrated wines. It’s like if you would slow down and listen to someone who is older and had a life experience, you may have to lean in and listen, but what you’ll hear is just so much richer and deeper than someone who’s a youngster mouthing off at the bar or something. So much more to offer.
Carolyn Hurst (16:34):
Exactly. Wow. So true.
Natalie MacLean (16:37):
So you are making an investments in vineyards that you will not see come too fruition literally in your lifetime. And so what is the motivation there? Is it the legacy of your wines and your name? Is it like something to hand down to family? What’s motivating you?
Carolyn Hurst (16:53):
Yes. That’s a good question. So we have family working with us in the vineyard. Garrett Westcott is our vineyard manager and we’ve had our other daughter, Victoria, has worked with us. She’s gone back to the movie industry on the west coast now with her sister. So we’re not certain about whether they want to take over the business and do that, but we’d be happy if that were the case. But we’re equally view ourselves as stewards of the land. And so we’re trying to set things up so that the business is economically sustainable. So someone ultimately that shares our views and our vision of how the land needs to be protected because, sorry, I’m looking out the window here at the back of our property, which has the Niagara Escarpment running through our backyard basically, and it’s forested.
Natalie MacLean (17:47):
Describe what you see.
Carolyn Hurst (17:49):
Well, it’s a beautiful spring day here in Niagara. Buds are starting to come out on the trees. I was out earlier and walked to the corner of our property where we have a waterfall that falls over the Niagara Escarpment. It’s not Niagara Falls but it’s my little small waterfall. And it’s just a beautiful day. It’s the promise of spring. Everything’s starting to come back to life. But this land is very, very, very special. That’s why being stewards of this land, for whoever is going to be looking after us as a big part of our consciousness in terms of how we operate, how we’re making our wines, how we’re managing the vineyards, because we’re surrounded by the Niagara Escarpment and forest and fauna, and we have all kinds of animal. We thought there was a large Turkey that walked across the back little earlier. They’re all. It’s the Tom Turkeys are herding the hens at this time of year. Anyway.
Natalie MacLean (18:52):
That’s interesting. And for those who aren’t familiar with the Niagara Escarpment, maybe describe what that is geologically?
Carolyn Hurst (18:59):
Yeah, so actually I’m just back from Europe. I was in Düsseldorf for ProWein and Copenhagen, Berlin, and Bristol in the UK working with our agents in Europe selling our wines. And so I was giving geography lessons over and over and over again. And so the Niagara Escarpment that Niagara River falls over to create Niagara Falls is a geological formation that rose up 10,000 years ago as the glacier, the last ice age ended. So that created basically the Great Lakes. So as the pressure of the glacier – so you can imagine miles thick of ice is very heavy – as the glaciers receded, the escarpment rose up as the pressure of the weight of the ice left. So the escarpment rose up and exposed tens of millions of year old ancient seabed. So that you can see it even on the little waterfall behind my house here, you can see the striations, the slate, the shale, the limestone, all of that.
(20:06):
So the escarpment is very important in terms of our wines and our growing of our vines for two main reasons. One is that soil and the ancient seabed and limestone that comes up in big chunks and breaks things on our tractors every spring. And so we’ve got the soil mixed with ancient seabed, which is really unique in the world. There are only a couple places in the world that have this type of soil with that ancient seabed and limestone, and one of them is Burgundy. So that’s very important in terms of the Escarpment. And then the other part that’s important is the lake effect between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. So the Niagara Escarpment is in the Niagara Peninsula and our vineyards are about two kilometres from the lake. And in Butler’s Grant in particular, we’re on a bench land. So this escarpment running behind my house is actually creates a microclimate. So on a hot summer day, I can open my front door and I have a breeze coming in from Lake Ontario, and I can open my back door and I have the breeze coming back at me as it bounces off the escarpment and rolls back into the vineyard and through my house, back out the front door.
Natalie MacLean
Wow.
Carolyn Westcott
It’s a convection mechanism. And so in the summer it works to cool the vineyards and in the winter it works to warm the vineyards. And so those two things are extremely important in terms of the vine growing that goes on and really why our wines taste the way that they do.
Natalie MacLean (21:48):
That’s fascinating. And back to the limestone soil, just to satisfy my own curiosity, I mean it’s coveted everyone says, oh, it’s limestone soil. Is that just because it has many fissures, therefore the roots can get down deeper and there’s better drainage because we all know if the vines suffer without too much water, they produce more interesting concentrated grapes, or is there something else? Because big debate, what is minerality? Vines can’t, its organic matter, they can’t absorb actual minerals that then go into the wine. What is it about limestone soil that really gives the wines a distinctive taste?
Carolyn Hurst (22:23):
So as you mentioned, it’s lots of dialogue about what it really is that’s at the bottom of all of this. And so in the case of Prince Edward County, where they’re really right on limestone, they’ve barely got soil on top of their limestone. So in that case, you’re right, the roots are really just trying to cling into any little spots they can find in the limestone. So there’s a struggling aspect that I think is part of the nature of why Prince Edward County wines taste the way they do. Here in Niagara, we do have a fair amount of soil. It varies clay loam over the limestone. So the limestones sort of mixed into it. I think in our case it’s more about the calcitic nature of limestones. So there’s a lot of calcium in our soils. We do a lot of soil testings all over both of our vineyards and we’re doing very, very detailed analysis in terms of what the actual mineral content is of an elemental content is of our soils.
And we have some pockets of really highly concentrated amounts of calcium, which are I think related to the limestone. So when people talk about that flinty minerality kind of thing, we planted on our Westcott Vineyards farm, we planted a block of a clone 76 which is a Chablis clone, and we planted on a one acre parcel of land that there’s a creek running part of – the 18 mile creek runs through our property – and there’s a little corner that is full of where the glaciers receded. Again, the glaciers are so important in terms of our soils. When the glaciers receded, they left kind of the glacial till. It’s all gravelly and pebbles and stuff in it. We thought we would plant the Chablis clone there because that would give us the best possible combination of things to try to get that Chablis style of wine coming from our vineyard with the flint minerality kind of stuff. And it does. So the block 76 Chardonnay is it’s just completely different from the other Chardonnays that we pull from our other vineyards. And so you can’t explain it, I guess. But other than I think it’s got something to do with the soils and I think it’s got something to do with the plants.
Natalie MacLean (24:48):
Sure, sure. Now, you’ve made reference to Burgundy a few times, but I’ve also heard you mention in the past that Ontario wines need to stop comparing themselves to other regions around the world to explain themselves. Is that because there’s a lack of confidence with winemakers? Or is it a lack of consumer understanding as to, okay, what are Ontario wines? Where do I place them in the taste spectrum?
Carolyn Hurst (25:13):
Such a good question. And I think it’s a bit of all of the above. We are still a relatively young wine industry and we’re finding our way in terms of what grows well here. I think we’re getting to a pretty good place in terms of what grows well here. Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Riesling, Cabernet Franc, sometimes Gamay. But the style of wine making to me is still under development. And that’s part of the fun of it. So when I was with people tasting our wines in Europe, they’re kind of having this Old World New World discussion. So they think that Canada you are New World so you should taste like Oregon, or you should taste like New Zealand or Australia. So that’s where they kind of start the discussion. Then we have to have a geography discussion and a soil discussion, go back through some of that and say, this is who we are.
(26:15):
So we’re mid continental. We’re not coastal the way that a lot of those other regions that we just discussed are. So I think we’re somewhere between Old World and New World as a starting point. And then we’re just going to have to build from there. But I do think with Ontario consumers who have been. We’ve right now Ontario wines have about a 7% market share in our own local marketplace, which is to me that’s a challenge. We really need to be able to communicate with Ontario consumers to get them to understand and appreciate what our wines are and what we’re capable of. They love us in Europe with the. In Copenhagen, they were just blown away with this very sophisticated wine and food culture there in Denmark and they loved us. They love our cool climate style with, we’re right on the brink of really global recognition for what we’re doing, but we’re lagging in terms of our ability to express that to our Ontario consumers.
Natalie MacLean (27:21):
And where do you think the market share should be? Where would you like to see it in Ontario for Ontario wines?
Carolyn Hurst (27:27):
Well, I’d like it to be more than seven. I’d like it to be like. Any other wine region in the world, they wouldn’t even be having this discussion. It would be
Natalie MacLean
True.
Carolyn Hurst
They’re 90 and up in terms of their market share. You go to California and you’re hard pressed to actually find a restaurant that wouldn’t have some great Californian wines on it. I mean go to Toronto or Ottawa restaurants and we’re slowly working our way in there. But we’re not highly represented in restaurants. And the LCBO has been a good partner to us in terms of trying to help us, giving us presence in the stores, but we’ve still got a lot of room to grow. I’d like to see us double at least our market share by 2030, would be my hope. And that’s dependent on what we were talking about earlier in terms of the length of time it takes to put vines in the ground, to get a crop, and build into that strategy of growth for the market is going to take a while to plant all the grapes that are going to be necessary to do that. But there’s land here in Niagara. There’s land in Prince Edward County. There’s Lake Erie, North Shore. We’ve got the land and we’ve got the knowhow. We need to be able to sell more of our wines.
Natalie MacLean (28:52):
Well, it calls to mind when I’ve traveled to different wine regions, especially in France. You go to Bordeaux and don’t even think of ordering anything but a Bordeaux wine when you’re in a restaurant. Same with the liquor stores, grocery stores. They’re just chock-full of local wines. And it’s quite different when you come back to Ontario to see the underrepresentation.
But let’s talk about the Ontario wine industry because you have a leadership role as the chair of the board of Ontario Craft Wineries. Give us some context for those who may not know. How many wineries roughly are there in Ontario? What’s the production terms of whether you want to talk bottles or sales, that sort of, those kind of statistics?
Carolyn Hurst (29:33):
So I think there’s 190 wineries in Ontario right now. We generate about $375 million, $380 million in sales every year in terms of wine sales. We have, I just was realizing I should have brought my notes from there, but
Natalie MacLean (29:56):
Oh, that’s okay. Estimates are fine.
Carolyn Hurst (29:59):
And I need to put my glasses on to read the report.
Natalie MacLean (30:03):
Go for it. No, that’s fine. Keep it at a high level. But what I found interesting is that you’ve noted previously that every bottle of VQA ,Vintner’s Quality Alliance Ontario, wine contributes $98 to the economy versus roughly how much for an imported wine?
Carolyn Hurst (30:23):
So I guess that everything’s about tax in our industry. And so the federal government collects excise tax on imports and on everything that we produce domestically. We have all of the wines that are sold in the province of Ontario also there is obviously a big portion of the price of a wine goes to taxes. So in our case in terms of VQA wines, it’s when it’s on the shelf of the LCBO, roughly 60% of the value of that bottle of wine is going to the government in terms of tax or margin.
Natalie MacLean (31:01):
Wow, that’s a lot. Yeah. I mean in terms of the fees and excise taxes. But in terms of the contribution of VQA Ontario wine contributes $98. I’ve heard that maybe an import, it’s maybe a dollar or two. We’re talking spinoff jobs and grassroots industries, jobs and that sort of thing. It’s pretty different.
Carolyn Hurst (31:19):
Absolutely. Our economic impact is astounding in terms of. Because all of us have invested in we’ve invested in farms. You can’t get a license to produce wine unless you have a minimum number of acres. You’re producing growing grapes and then making wine. And then you’ve got the investments of all of your tanks and equipment and everything else. And then the retail space and your wine making team and all of your sales effort. In our case, we have onsite patio. Quite a number of wineries have hospitality options and integrated into their offerings. So all these rural communities that are outside cities by virtue of the fact that we’re farmers first, we are really strong economic engines of growth. So for these regions, and we’re bringing all kinds of tourism dollars to the areas that we operate, and we’re also making beautiful places to live. So everybody wants to live near wineries. During the pandemic, we had a flood of people leaving the city to try to find places to live down here in Niagara and in Prince Edward County because it’s nice to live near a vineyard, maybe not as nice to live near the car manufacturing plant, but that’s part of our economic value add to the regions that we exist in.
And so it’s order of magnitude. Whereas if you buy a bottle of imported wine from the LCBO or it’s really just the tax that the government is collecting on that, but we pay those taxes too. So to me it’s neutral in terms of that aspect of it. The rest is maybe some agency jobs or whatever but it’s just very small compared to the economic impact of growers and winery operators.
Natalie MacLean (33:17):
Sure. And you’ve talked about the tax, you just said astounding 60%. And then I’ve seen other charts if you add in all the fees and taxes, it can be even higher. But that’s an issue for Ontario wineries. Why is that an issue that you’re getting taxed the same as an import? Is it because you feel it’s just not recognizing the economic contribution you’re making and that other countries have subsidies that we don’t have here in Ontario?
Carolyn Hurst (33:43):
Yes. I mean it’s a perfect storm of challenges in terms of that. So we have our EU. The producers in the EU have huge marketing subsidies that are brought into our market. So if you just flip through the LCBO magazine and look at most of them have a little symbol at the bottom identifying that they’re funded by the EU in terms of the marketing dollars that are being given to the LCBO to promote their products in our market. So not only are we taxed in our local market as if we’re an import, we’re also forced to compete with import who are heavily subsidized by the governments in terms of – I’m not anti wine from anywhere else because I drink that wine too and I want to have the opportunity to do that – but I just think that we’re in a David and Goliath kind of situation here with the home team really not getting any home team advantage in terms of getting our products in front and marketed to Ontario consumers. Because we’re making incredible wines in this province right now. It we’re got so many different examples of my neighbours and people in other areas in province that are making, being internationally recognized by Decanter, by all these different publications, as among the best in the world. And yet we’re struggling to get that message out to Ontario consumers that we’re making phenomenal wines here in this province.
Natalie MacLean (35:24):
And you’ve even noted that an incredible percentage of Ontario wineries aren’t even profitable or breaking even. Like was it 40 something percent said they were struggling financially?
Carolyn Hurst
Yes.
Natalie MacLean
That’s incredible.
Carolyn Hurst (35:37):
Well, as I said when Grant and I first started in this, we were working our other jobs in order to fund it. It’s a very capital intensive business, and so we wanted to try to set everything up with minimal amounts of debt. So we self-funded everything that we created and that’s pretty much the scenario for well over a hundred of our small wineries. And they’re doing a lot of the work themselves in terms of. It’s a winemaker grower. They’re driving tractors. It’s very challenging in terms of getting to profitability and it takes time. So you’ve got to build inventory. You’ve got a business degree, so you know the drill in terms of your CapEx and Opex and how you balance that and how often you have to turn inventory in the wine industry. We’re sitting on wines for that we harvested. We’re just releasing our 2019 Pinot now, so we’re in 2023. So that inventory has been sitting there. We had to have the funds to carry that inventory all the way through that’s going on in every small winery in Ontario that they’re investing and they’re trying to get up onto that plain where hopefully they are economically sustainable.
And I think it’s really important for the overall industry, like we were talking about legacy and being able to hand things over to the next generation to run, whether it’s your family or whether it is another owner operator that wants to work in this industry. The businesses need to be economically viable and sustainable in order to continue to protect these lands, these very precious vineyards and lands, that we need to get this figured out in terms of the long-term viability of our industry.
Natalie MacLean (37:31):
Absolutely.
Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoy by chat with Carolyn. Here are my takeaways. Carolyn’s explanation of why old vines are precious and important to the quality of wine really makes a solid case for winemakers to invest in them. Number two, I like how Carolyn describes being a good steward of the land for the next generation and making that a big part of her consciousness in terms of how she operates and every decision she makes. And number three, I was intrigued by Carolyn’s description of the unique challenges the Ontario wine industry faces in the next five years and was surprised at both its economic impact and that the wines still aren’t well represented on many restaurant wine lists.
In the show notes, you’ll find the full transcript of my conversation with Carolyn, links to her website and wines, the video versions of these conversations on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my memoir online now no matter where you live. That’s all in the show notes at NatalieMacLean.com/238. Email me if you have a sip, tip, or question at NatalieMacLean.com. If you missed episode 180, go back and take a listen a chat with Janina Doyle about Ontario Wine gems, Canada’s regions and grapes and extreme wine making. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.
Natalie MacLean
10 out of 10 vintages, we will make ice wine. Three to four out of vintages in Germany will make ice wine.
Janina Doyle
Exactly.
Natalie MacLean
So it’s that advantage of cold. Ice wine needs to be made naturally until the grapes freeze on the vines, and they must be picked at minus eight degrees Celsius or colder. There are stories where the temperature will plunge such that the grapes become marble pellets and they’ve been known to break the presses. They’re so hard.
Janina Doyle
Oh my gosh.
Natalie MacLean
You only get like a drip out of each one. They call it extreme winemaking. You don’t want those little pellets to, so either they’ve got to stay frozen because it’s the concentration of the flavour, the dehydration that has happened naturally that’s where they get all of that luscious elixir. Oh, it’s honey elixir. It’s like peach preserves and apricots. It would be the drink that they would serve you as you’re waiting outside the Pearly Gates to get into heaven.
If you liked this episode, please email or tell one friend about it this week, especially someone who’d be interested in the wines tips and stories we shared you won’t want to miss next week when we continue our chat with Carolyn. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week, perhaps the Westcott Lillias Chardonnay.
You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the secret full body bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media. So subscribe for free now at NatalieMacLean.com/subscribe. Meet me here next week. Cheers.
