A major wine tasting in Ottawa on Saturday echoed a famous tasting in Paris nearly 30 years ago. And, it turns out, Canadian wines did extremely well.
Back in 1976, bicentennial year in the United States, a blind tasting in Paris pitted some of France's most prestigious wines against some of California's best. To their dismay, French judges ranked the Californian wines highest, and the result is often said to have kicked California's premium wine industry into high gear.
Would this Ottawa tasting do the same for British Columbia and Ontario wine?
Billed as "Canada vs. Bordeaux: Dawn of a New Millennium," the tasting involved 18 wines, six each from Bordeaux, B.C., and Ontario. (The reference to the "New Millennium" was that all wines were from vintages between 1998 and 2002.) All were reds, and all were made from the red grape varieties permitted in Bordeaux wine: mainly Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, but also Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot.
These blends are sometimes labelled "Meritage," a brand name devised to replace "Bordeaux blend" on wines that are not from Bordeaux.
Janet Dorozynski, who chaired the organizing committee, said the tasting was not designed as a competition between Canada and Bordeaux, but as a benchmarking exercise.
Because Canada's modern wine industry is so young (scarcely 20 years old), it's important to see how it is doing against regions that are considered the standard against which wines are judged internationally. She said she supported the tasting "because simply not enough people know about the quality of Canadian wine. Too many people think Canada is falling behind."
Ms. Dorozynski also thinks it was important to have the tasting in Ottawa. Not only is it outside any wine region, but "it's important to draw the attention of people, especially decision-makers in Ottawa, to the strides that Canadian wine has made."
Most of the 60-odd tasters in this benchmarking exercise were from the Ottawa-Gatineau region, but others came from across Canada and the U.S. The majority were winemakers, wine writers, sommeliers, and other wine professionals. A number of people who are simply interested in wine paid to participate.
They gathered at the Vendange Institute on Albert Street (which offers wine appreciation and certification courses) and tasted and rated wines from some of Canada's and Bordeaux's most prestigious producers.
The six Bordeaux wines included four in the Second Growth category of the 1855 classification, which ranked the wines of some Bordeaux regions into five Growths (First Growth being best). It's still considered a good guide to quality.
This was a professional tasting, organized so that no one could claim it was unfair to any of the wines or regions. Under the supervision of certified wine judges, bottles were opened three to four hours before the tasting and checked for faults. (Of 72 bottles, six were "corked," giving the all-too-common rate of one corked bottle in 12.)
Four bottles of each wine were decanted into sterilized containers and then poured back into the bottles, which had been rinsed to remove sediment. This process eliminated any minor variations among the bottles of each wine. The wines were randomly numbered and served to tasters by number.
Tasters rated the wines on a 100-point scale and, as the results show, the range of scores was very narrow: the top-rated wine scored an average 89.3 and the lowest 82.2 points.
The influential American wine magazine Wine Spectator describes 80 to 84 points as "Good: a solid, well-made wine," and 85 to 89 as "Very good: a wine with special qualities."
Canada's Wine Access magazine is a bit more demanding, describing 80 to 84 as "Good quality and drinkable ... Balanced and basically correct, but simple," and 85 to 89 as "Very good quality and enjoyable to drink."
Based on the average scores, all the wines at Saturday's tasting fell into one of those two enviable categories.
So which wines did best?
In order, the top three were from B.C., Ontario, and B.C. again. They were followed by another from B.C. and two from Bordeaux, one a Second Growth and the other a Fifth Growth.
The first three were priced at $40, $25, and $35, respectively; the next three at $50, $69, and $74.
If there was any correlation, it was that the less-expensive wines in the first six did better than the more expensive.
The results are good for B.C: three B.C. wines finished in the top six, and the other three came in at 9, 10, and 17. In other words, four were in the top half of the list.
The Bordeaux wines finished in places 5, 6, 8, 11, 14, and 15—three in the top half, three in the bottom. As for Ontario, its wines finished at 2, 7, 12, 13, 16, and 18—two in the top half, four in the bottom.
In broad regional terms, we could say that B.C. came out best, followed by Bordeaux and then Ontario.
These results confirm that we shouldn't think of wine as "Canadian," but in terms of the wine regions. In fact, I think the tasting might better have been described as "Ontario vs. B.C. vs. Bordeaux," rather than "Canada vs. Bordeaux." If it had really been Canada vs Bordeaux, there should have been as many Bordeaux wines as Canadian.
Clearly, B.C. outshone Ontario in this tasting, and it's worth noting that the most successful Ontario wine, from Colio Estate, is from the warmer Lake Erie North Shore region, where the Bordeaux grape varieties fare better than in cooler Niagara Peninsula. Of five Niagara Peninsula wines tasted, four ranked in the bottom seven.
These results are an additional argument that Niagara producers should focus on varieties that do best. It's not that the Bordeaux blends from Niagara in this tasting were not good, but simply that Niagara does consistently better with other varieties.
In a broader sense, the tasting helped to place Canadian wines in a wider context.
One of Saturday's tasters was wine writer David Lawrason, executive editor for Canada at Wine Access magazine. He said the tasting "shows that Canadian wines are more orientated to the European style than to Australia or other New World styles.
"With some exceptions in B.C., it's a reference point that helps Canada find its position," he said.
Mr. Lawrason won a prize for identifying all six Bordeaux wines in the blind tasting. He later said he was sure of four of them, but that the other two could easily have been from Ontario or B.C. Still, he said, "it shows that Bordeaux really has an identity. There's a real Bordeaux signature."
For the record, the top four wines in Mr. Lawrason's personal ranking were Bordeaux. (Also for the record, so were my top three.)
Another of Saturday's tasters, Vancouver-based wine and food writer Tim Pawsey, praised the event. "It's very productive to have this kind of exercise. B.C. and Ontario need to know where they stand, and we don't do enough of this kind of tasting in B.C."
What's next?
Mr. Pawsey suggests an East-West tasting of Canadian wines, while others talk about a comparative tasting of Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs from Ontario and Burgundy.
But first, Larry Paterson, the Peterborough-based wine writer who initiated the Ottawa tasting, wants to carry the exercise into the heart of the Canadian market for French wine.
He wants to hold a "Canada vs. Bordeaux" tasting in Montreal, where taste preferences clearly favour European-style wines. Now, that will be interesting.
Canada vs. Bordeaux Results
Wines were marked out of 100 points and had to be scored between 70 and 100 to count. Any score lower than 70 was not counted, to avoid an average being skewed by a one very low (under 70) score. All scores were added and the total divided by the number of scores, so the final score is a simple average.
- 89.3 Cedar Creek Platinum Reserve Meritage 2002 (B.C.), $40
- 87.9 Colio CEV Reserve Merlot 2000 (Ont.), $25
- 87.4 Burrowing Owl Meritage 2002 (B.C.), $35
- 87.3 Sumac Ridge Pinnacle 2001 (B.C.), $50
- 86.7 Château Lascombes 2000 (Bordeaux), $69
- 86.4 Château Pontet-Canet 2001 (Bordeaux), $74
- 86.3 Stoney Ridge Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve 1998 (Ont.), $25
- 85.7 Château Rauzan-Gassies 2000 (Bordeaux), $55
- 85.7 Osoyoos Larose 2002 (B.C.), $35
- 84.8 Mission Hill Oculus 2002 (B.C.), $38
- 84.8 Château Pichon Longueville Baron 2001 (Bordeaux), $109
- 84.7 Lakeview Cellars Cabernet Merlot 1998 (Ont.), $25
- 84.2 Fielding Estates Cabernet Merlot Reserve 2002 (Ont.), $35
- 83.3 Château Brane-Cantenac 2001 (Bordeaux), $95
- 83.2 Château la Tour-du-Pin-Figeac 2001 (Bordeaux), $60
- 83.1 Thirty Bench Blend 1998 (Ont.), $35
- 82.8 Fairview Cellars Bear's Meritage 2000 (B.C.), $25
- 82.2 Cave Spring Cellars Cabernet Merlot 2002 (Ont.), $30
The National Capital Sommelier Guild is offering a series of tutored wine tastings in conjunction with this year's Ottawa Wine and Food Show at the Congress Centre (Nov. 4 to 6).
Tastings include Pinot Noirs, Zinfandels and Cabernets and other varieties from California (the theme region at this year's show), selections from the winners in the 2005 Cellars of the World competition, Port, and wines from France and Australia.
For information and tickets, visit the website www.sommelierguild.com.
One of this week's featured wines (the Cabernet Merlot), below, is a Bordeaux blend that's new to the LCBO. All are from McWilliam's, one of Australia's oldest (since 1877) and largest family-owned wineries. At a time when wineries are being swallowed up by large multinational companies, it's reassuring to see an independent doing well.