A couple of years ago your faithful correspondent and long-suffering spouse drove east to revisit old haunts of great triumph and tribulation. On the way we spent several interesting days in Niagara, seeing first-hand how the micro-climate there works in practice to produce such interesting wines. We were en route to Ottawa and, regrettably, had to drive past Ontario’s hot new wineland in Prince Edward County.
So I have been interested to revisit Geoff Heinrich’s book A Fool and Forty Acres. Heinrich was one of the first to rediscover (wine grapes had been grown in PEC for over a century) the potential of the County, especially for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.Prince Edward County is a peninsula, virtually an island, on the north side of Lake Ontario, just off the highway between Toronto and Kingston, near Belleville. It has become a bucolic escape for many of Toronto’s high fliers,ready to risk turning a large fortune into a small one.
The lure of the County is the soil, very similar to Burgundy,filled with the limestone that is so conducive to good, even great, wine. The tragedy of the County is the weather: on the north side of Lake Ontario, it does not benefit in the same way from the moderating effect of the lake, and winter can be deadly to vinifera grape vines.
Over the past ten years or so some outstanding wines have come from the County, and Heinrich is seen as a trailblazer, so it has been it has been interesting to reread his book. So next time, there will definitely be no drive by.
Cheers,
The Professor