The Art of Winemaking
A Winemaker Who Works Like an Artist
In The New York Times Magazine's Maggie Harrison’s War on Wine, Alex Halberstadt writes about a winemaker who is making some of the most-sought-after wines in the most unique way.
Maggie Harrison has a condition known as synesthesia, which is when your brain routes sensory information through multiple unrelated senses, causing you to experience more than one sense simultaneously (e.g., tasting shapes, hearing colours). Studies suggest that synesthetes have an enhanced capacity for creativity, with synesthesia being more common in artists (David Hockney and Duke Ellington have reported having it). Harrison specifically has grapheme-color synesthesia, where numbers and letters become associated with colours, and she attributes that to her ability to map so many flavours at the same time during her blind blending process when she is making wine.
Harrison says that being aware of a wine’s origins would influence her sensory experience when she is making wine, and as her grapes come from different vineyards, she blends blindly to avoid any bias. This laborious process of tasting and combining unlabeled samples goes on for days until the final blend is found, when the wines find their identities.
The painstaking blending process that I observed, which sets her apart from so many other producers of still wine, is also the reason Harrison makes some people irate. Her process violates one of the central tenets of her craft: terroir. A French word that can be translated loosely as “sense of place,” terroir refers to every factor affecting a vineyard: soil composition, climate, elevation, drainage, even the surrounding flora and fauna.
Harrison calls terroir a myth. While she knows the importance of the land, Harrison doesn’t “believe that great vineyards magically create great wines.”
For her, wine is an entirely human undertaking requiring intense effort and artistic commitment. Blending frees her from the limitations imposed by particular vineyards, grape varieties and climatic downturns, allowing her to rely instead on intuition and aesthetic vision, an approach that results in wines that are more distinctive and sometimes stranger than just about anyone else’s.
Art is referenced throughout Halberstadt’s article, from the Jim Dine heart painting that hung in Harrison’s childhood bedroom (her parents were art collectors), to some of her favourite artists (Christo and Jeanne-Claude), to the artist her style of wines have been compared to (Jean-Michel Basquiat). Art and winemaking are clearly intertwined for Harrison, whose synesthesia allows her to blend and create her own unique expressions of wine.
Maggie Harrison learned how to make wine as an assistant winemaker at Sine Qua Non, a small winery in Ventura, down the coast from Santa Barbara. Harrison is the owner and winemaker at Antica Terra in the Willamette Valley in Oregon, and also makes wine for the California Syrah label, Lillian.
A New BC Wine Destination
According to the Wines of British Columbia, there are 929 vineyards in B.C. across the province’s official wine regions: Okanagan Valley, Similkameen Valley, Fraser Valley, Vancouver Island, Gulf Islands, Thompson Valley, Shuswap, Lillooet, and the Kootenays. In The Globe and Mail's New wineries add excitement to Summerland’s expanding tourism trade, Christopher Waters writes about Garnet Valley, calling it the “new destination for wine lovers in the Okanagan.” Waters highlights a new winery, Solvero, which means “truth in soil,” and Okanagan Crush Pad, a certified organic winery started by Christine Coletta and Steve Lornie, who planted the first commercial vineyard in Garnet Valley in 2014, and also operate Haywire Winery and Garnet Valley Ranch Winery.
Local Wine News
The Ontario wine industry is calling on the government to eliminate the 6.1% tax on VQA wines, which is charged on Ontario VQA wines sold at on-site winery stores. Niagara Region’s council unanimously supported a motion, Support for Ontario’s Wine Industry, brought forward by Councillor Andrea Kaiser, at its July 20 meeting. Canada has some of the highest alcohol taxes in the world, according to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
The Liquor Control Board of Ontario has selected Cossette as its new creative agency, who is being tasked with helping the LCBO (the crown corp responsible for the retail and wholesale of alcohol in Ontario) respond to consumer preferences, including “a demand for purpose-led brands making an impact through sustainable practices.”
Meanwhile, some Toronto grocers have stopped selling wine due to thin margins. Since 2015, Ontario grocers have been permitted to sell alcohol in their stores through an agreement between the government and the Beer Store, which limits the margins stores can make on sales.
And the 2023 National Wine Awards of Canada winners have been announced. Deep Roots Winery, located on the Naramata Bench in British Columbia, was awarded the 2023 Best Performing Small Winery of the Year, and Ontario’s Hidden Bench was named Winery of the Year. All award winners can be viewed here, and for more info on wine awards and scores, see Wine Ratings and U.