John Schreiner (JS): Did you canvass the island extensively before choosing this site?

Marcel Mercier (MM): I put together basically an ecological model for the island. I brought together data from many different sources – climate, topography, soils, site aspect – and from there, identified the areas that had the best potential for growing grapes. I overlaid that with a map, showing access to market in terms of roads. This area here came up best.

The soil here is good sandy, gravely loam. Some parts of the vineyard have soil that is a little bit heavier. I have divided the Pinot Noir into two blocks – one part in heavier soil, one part in sandy soil.

In terms of the aspect, it faces due south. The slope here is about 55%. When you have a really good slope, you get extra heat. Then at the back of the site, there are the terraces. It was too steep to drive the tractor up and too soft because of the sandy loam. That’s why we built the terraces.

I’m a little prejudiced but I think we have one of the best sites on the coast here. I think it has demonstrated itself in the fruit that we get.

JS: Salt Spring Island is notoriously dry. Do you have a reservoir or a well?

MM: Both. We built a pond and we also have a well. I keep the pond topped up as much as I can from the well. Where we put the pond, there was also a natural spring.

In the first few years here, we kept the watering low, trying to make the vines get their roots really deep. The soil is really sandy there, in the area close to the trees. And up at the top, near the terraces, the soil is sand and cobbles and does not retain a lot of water either. The plants there do not carry as much fruit; we maintain the balance that way. The fruit that we get is really good, but we don’t get as much.

JS: What is the range of crop load here?

MM: On average, two and half to three tons an acre.

JS: How much of that is your cultural preference and how much is water related?

MM: It’s viticultural practice.

JS: You could produce four or five tons, if you wanted to?

MM: Yes, but the Pinot Noir we keep to a ton and a half, maybe two tons, depending on the year.

JS: How many acres of Pinot Noir do you have in the two parcels?

MM: Almost two acres.

JS: How many clones?

MM: We have 115 and 375. Also, most of the rootstock is Couderc 3309. Where it is a little drier on the slopes, we also have SO4. We chose those because of the soil here. They work well. The 3309 rootstock stresses the plant a little bit and helps ripen the plant a little bit earlier.

The 3309 is a North American rootstock from vines that grew along the bends of rivers, where they were subject to flooding in the spring. Here on the coast, we tend to get a fair amount of rain in the winter – although, on Salt Spring, it is pretty dry. But there is more rain in the winter and that rootstock can really tolerate wet feet in the spring.

JS: Did you have a lot of clones available?

MM: Yes. The clones we selected, and the rootstock as well -- we selected them for the climate that we have. The 115 and 375 clones are known to ripen earlier but also are very flavourful.

The earlier growers on Vancouver Island got most of their vines from the Okanagan, and didn’t even know what clones they had. When we started, we had the advantage of more choice. The 115 and 375 are Burgundian clones. Our Pinot Gris is a clone that hadn’t been grown in this region before. The Pinot Gris and our Gewürztraminer were budded from the Alsace. And our Zweigelt was brought in from Austria. (see John’s recommendation)

We were among the first to grow Zweigelt, so we stuck our necks out. Also with the Pinot Gris, we were the first to graft that particular clone to the 3309 rootstock.

JS: How many acres of other varieties do you have?

MM: Just under two acres of Zweigelt; just over two acres of Pinot Gris and one acre of Gewürztraminer. Then we planted Léon Millot in the cooler parts of the vineyard, in the shade of the trees. We don’t have much of that, maybe half an acre. Every place that we can have a vine, we’ve got it planted. It is just under seven acres in total.

JS: What is the density of vines here?

MM: We are planted at about 1,500 vines per acre. It is a lot denser than most other places on the coast. If you look at Paul’s planting [Paul Troop, owner of a nearby vineyard], that may be closer to 450 plants an acre. Salt Spring Vineyards is planted about 900 vines per acre. We wanted to go a little more dense, a little more Burgundian, although I know in Burgundy, they are even more dense.

JS: Is your density working?

MM: The Pinot Gris is perfect for that plot. Some of the other plantings, though, we will probably have to make less dense, but that is an issue of soil and water.

JS: Why did you chose that density?

MM: It resulted from the research which I had done in terms of recommended crop load for the varieties to produce a quality wine. I am planted at 1.3 meters, basically four feet by seven and a half feet. That’s about 30 square feet a plant. I thought that would be the most optimal growing conditions in terms of figuring out the number of shoots I could get there and the number of clusters.

The French have been doing it for centuries and we have been doing it for seven years. It’s like peeling an onion. The more you know, the more you realize you want to know.

JS: Do you buy Okanagan fruit?

MM: We buy Okanagan fruit for the blend which we call Fetish (see John’s recommendation) The agreements we have with the grower basically control how the grapes are grown, when they are picked, and so on. We go to the Okanagan several times a year to check on the fruit.

JS: What varieties do you buy?

MM: Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. We were also getting Blaufränkisch. We had that grown for us for a couple of years for a wine called Labyrinth. We discontinued that contract. The growers we had were really good, but the vineyard had changed hands and when we went to look at the fruit last year, the vines were way overloaded, in our opinion.

JS: How many cases are you producing in total?

MM: Between 1,500 and 1,700 cases. That was always our plan.

Elaine Kozak (EK): The main focus is estate wine … and then we produce Fetish, which is our big red. We don’t have particular ambitions to grow more.

JS: Tell me about the character of your Gewürztraminer compared with the varietal from other sites?

EK: We grow a clone that is somewhat uncommon. Most of the Gewürztraminer grown in the Okanagan is the German clone. I think Gray Monk and Arrowleaf have the Alsace clone, but not the rest. The organoleptic qualities are different. The Alsace clone leans more to the rosewater, floral and ginger. It does not have the strong lichee characters. It is more pink grapefruit, rosewater, especially ginger.

We find the Okanagan Gewürztraminers can be quite heavy and earthy; they can be fat, especially if grown in warmer places. Ours is more of a delicate style of wine. It does not have that oily, fruity element that some have. What we did in 2005 is, because we are focusing on estate, we created a blend based on our Gewürztraminer. We discovered that we had Chardonnay plants mixed in with both the Pinot Gris and the Pinot Noir. We harvested them separately. We deliberately blended it with the Gewurz and got a very pleasant wine that ended up tasting a bit like a Riesling. Fairly dry. We called it Prism.

JS: Why do you not tent your vines like others do in the region?

MM: The most critical thing here on the coast is the bud break, because it will determine the length of your season. Some are tenting to advance that bug break. Usually, they are tenting varieties like Merlot. I know of one vineyard that is tenting its Pinot Noir. What determines bud burst in spring is soil temperature and air temperature. If you have heavier soil, like clay, it tends to take longer to warm up. So you tent it to try to give extra warmth around the cordon itself and advance bud burst. If you can advance the bud burst a few weeks, it helps.

EK: It is a question of respecting terroir. If you have to create basically a greenhouse, don’t try to grow varieties that won’t grow. You are going to plant Merlot? Well, why?

JS: Comment on the terroir influence in your wines.

EK: This is our fifth vintage. We are seeing a consistent character presenting itself. You see it more in our Pinot Gris. One of the things we get from the site here is some really nice minerality, and a very clean, fresh element to it, that really distinguishes our Pinot Gris from Okanagan Pinot Gris.

The fruit is brighter here. There is a brightness and a cleanness and that minerality which is really complimentary. The flavours are fairly classic within the varietal spectrum.

In the 2005 vintage, we got some herbaceousness, in a nice sense. The Pinot Gris had an element recalling Sauvignon Blanc. One of the yeasts I used may have drawn out some flavour components.

I would describe the Pinot Noirs as having a brightness, a freshness and a clarity to the wine. The texture is quite smooth. If you do a Pinot in a warmer climate, you may get a granularity or a roughness in the texture. Ours is clean and smooth. That is a consistent character which we have seen, year to year.

MM: This is a coastal climate, as opposed to continental. The other thing that distinguishes this from the Okanagan is that the soils are different. There, they are alkaline. Here, they are acid. There, they are very sandy. Here, they tend to be more silty and loamy and in a lot of areas, there is a lot of clay. Vancouver Island in particular.

So you have a very different climate when comparing the interior to the coast. The temperatures are very different … they have higher daytime temperatures and lower night time temperatures, particularly south of Penticton. Here, the night time temperatures tend to be warmer. That has a large effect on the expression of the fruit in the grapes.

One of the things in terms of the coastal terroir is that you don’t have the same amount of soil. You have a hard pan underneath. It’s very, very dry here in the summer time. The average amount of moisture here on Salt Spring – and we’re drier here than most of Salt Spring – is five centimetres during the growing season between May and the end of September. What distinguishes this vineyard site from many others on the coast is that, on the soils map, this is actually zoned gravel.

When we started this, we dug holes to see how far we had to go down to hit that hardpan. It was six or seven feet, which is very unusual. Some parts are as far down as 10 feet. In other places, it is only two feet. The Gewürztraminer is planted where the hardpan is, 2 ½ feet down, so there tends to be more moisture there. (So), the way you approach canopy management is different.

Because we have warmer evenings, we have to remember that the plant has a system for developing sugar but it has a completely different system for developing the phenolic ripeness – and they are independent. So when people are measuring phenolic ripeness by Brix, it doesn’t really mean very much.

Phenolic ripeness tends to develop earlier with warmer evenings. One of the things we find here is that we tend to get phenolic ripeness at lower Brix levels.

When we started this vineyard, Ross Mirko [the former consultant] had made wine in the Okanagan but never from coastal grapes. With all of his Okanagan experience, he was fascinated by the flavours we were getting without having 26, 27 Brix.

JS: So what are the typical sugar levels you are seeing here?

MM: We pick at 21 to 23 Brix.

EK: We’ve had the grapes go up to 25.

MM: If you look at Bordeaux, some of the best wines are 11%, 12% alcohol. That’s 20, 21 Brix.

EK: Our plants rarely shut down during the summer, which they can do in the Okanagan.

MM: Also in the fall, we don’t get frost. We may get frost in January, but by then the plants will have senesced. The senescing is different here.

EK: We usually harvest our Pinots three weeks later than in the Okanagan.

MM: You always get the best expression of a fruit at the northernmost edge of its climate zone. Here, the Pinots, the Gewürztraminer and the Zweigelt are performing well, and this is definitely the northernmost edge of the zone (for these varieties). The fruit that we get has berry flavours. We don’t get jammy, cooked prune flavours; rather, we get really fresh berries. Normally, we are harvesting around the first or second week of October. Merlot or Cabernet just won’t ripen here. But in the Okanagan, the best Merlot and Cabernet is grown south of Penticton and that happens to be the northern most edge of the climate zones for those varieties. If you look at those grapes, they are usually picked from the middle of October to the end of October.

In the Okanagan, they don’t want a frost in September so they can let the Cabernet hang. Here, we don’t want a big rain in September, so that we can let our Pinots hang.

We’re not trying to grow wine that tastes like Okanagan wine. We’re making wine that will express the coastal climate and our own site.

~ John Schreiner, Regional Correspondent – British Columbia


To comment on John Schreiner’s writings and thoughts, contact him at j.schreiner@appellationamerica.com