Terroir Harmonies
August 17th, 2017 Missive from J.K. Farm
As I surveyed the people gathered in the dining room last Saturday evening, I spied Peter and Alice Mennacher. Each Saturday I convey the message that we are exploring the relationships between foods and wines grown in a specific place. It is exciting to me to discover the natural harmonies that exist and to share those harmonies with my guests. Seeing Peter and Alice reminds me of a show they helped to mount in their Blizzmax Gallery 10 years ago. An artist from Munich called Ekkeland Goetze was spending some time in Prince Edward County where he became intrigued by the concept of terroir. Through his conversations with Peter and Alice and others in the area he began to understand that terroir in wine is all about what factors make a wine unique to the place it was grown and different than wine grown in another place. For his exhibition called Terroir, he decided to paint pictures illustrating the unique soil compositions in the vineyards of Prince Edward County. He ventured into vineyards all over the county from Hillier to South Bay. He made a slurry from the soil in each vineyard and rolled it, like paint on to a canvas. I went to see the show at Blizzmax. There were groupings of rectangular canvasses covering the walls. When I stood back to take it all in, each canvass glowed with its own special light, inviting me to imagine what made each place unique. No two soils were exactly alike. For my birthday my friend Geoff Heinricks gave me one of the canvasses of his own vineyard, Domaine Lauren. It is in Hillier right next to my own. For me the show was an allegory for unique artisanal expression. It was an invitation to discover the uniqueness of the villages of this region and to celebrate their differences.
Peter and Alice were in the room to have a nice evening out together and they were also there to honour and support their friend and neighbour Glenn Symons owner and winemaker of Lighthall Vineyards. Many years ago, Peter and Alice planted the Lighthall Vineyard to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. These were some of the first plantings of vinifera in Prince Edward County. Glenn purchased the vineyard from them a few years later and started his own winery. The wines that Glenn provided showed beautifully. There was an elegance and depth to all of the wines that spoke to me about the vines reaching an age where they were beginning to express the unique terroir from where they were raised. Glenn also brought cheeses that he is making at the winery to complement his Riesling. What a treat that was and probably the best example of terroir based gastronomy for the evening!
Saturday August 12th, 2017
An evening with Lighthall Vineyards
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