Nova Scotia organic winemaker goes out on a vine

from Crush Summer 2018

By Melanie Franner

Bruce Ewert has a lot of

experience in the winemaking business. His profession has taken him across Canada, California, and Australia. But leaving behind a highly-successful career to start his own small, organic winery in Nova Scotia was certainly going out on a limb.

“It was a pretty gutsy move to leave an established career to relocate to Nova Scotia and start producing sparkling wines,” says Ewert, owner and winemaker, L’Acadie Vineyards. “No one had done it yet. We were the first.”

That gutsy move has translated into unqualified success. L’Acadie Vineyards’ 2007 Prestige Brut

was awarded a silver medal in 2011 at Effervescents du Monde, an international sparkling wine competition held in France. And again for 2010 Prestige Brut Estate at the 2015 Effervescents du Monde.

“Winning that award made us think we were on the right track,” says Ewert. “It’s pretty humbling to be able to benchmark against the big guys.”

“O” is for Organic

Ewert and his wife, Pauline Scott, opted to locate their winery in Nova Scotia’s Gaspereau Valley for two main reasons. Scott comes from a farming family spanning nine generations in the province,

and Nova Scotia has a cool climate tempered by the Atlantic Ocean, making it an ideal location for sparkling winemaking.

“We came out here a lot on vacations to visit family,” says Ewert. “We tasted a lot of the still wines produced here and thought we could make a good sparkling one.”

Finding the right property took some time but eventually Ewert and his wife settled on a ribbon of soil with very good drainage, an unusual find in Nova Scotia where most of the soil is clay. The two purchased 30 acres in 2004 and thus, L’Acadie Vineyards came into being.

Perfectly lined organic vines at L’Acadie Vineyards in Nova Scotia.

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“The property hadn’t been used for agriculture for the last 50 years,” says Ewert, who adds that it used to be an apple orchard back in the day.

L’Acadie Vineyards 2012 Prestige Brut

Photo credit to Mark Davidson, NewTrailsOutThere

The fact that the land hadn’t been used agriculturally in so long made it easier for Ewert to follow through on his goal of creating an organic winery – the first in Nova Scotia.

“We decided to go organic right from the get go,” says Ewert. “For one, it’s a lifestyle factor for us. That’s how we live. And also, I had experience making wines from organically grown grapes and found the taste to be incredibly intense.”

Ewert suggests that organically grown grapes tend to be more flavourful for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the micro-organisms around the root soil.

“We encourage the growth of these micro-organisms in order to help the vines take up the flavours,” he says, adding that the winery’s success can also be attributed to the terroir of the winery’s sloped, rocky, and welldrained soil.

L’Acadie Vineyards has been certified organic by Pro-Cert Organic Systems since its inception, making it not only the first organic winery in the province, but the first to be certified.

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According to Ewert, being organic isn’t necessarily more complicated; it just means you have fewer choices. “The toolkit for organic winemaking is definitely lighter in that you don’t have as many options,” he

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says. “As a result, you have to be more proactive such as ensuring good air circulation, planting cover crops, or choosing lesssusceptible varieties. It means setting things up prior.”

A sparkling future

Having since helped educate other Nova Scotia grape growers on the benefits of going organic, Ewert is planning to expand production beyond its current 2,000 cases per annum.

Owners Bruce Ewert and Pauline Scott with the family in the vineyard.

“I’d like to eventually grow to about 5,000 cases. I think that will be a happy place for us,” he says. “I don’t want to be too big – I’ve already been there – but I do want to continue to be recognized as a producer of high-quality, upper-end organic wines.” o

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