Last fall, we were asked to submit samples of our Pinot Noir to Ottawa writer Rod Phillips for an article he was putting together on Canadian Pinots. Rod has always been a fan of Canada and Southbrook, and anything that we can do to help Canada’s reputation is worthwhile.
Overseas, Canada’s reputation for wine (if we have one) rests on Ice Wine. History has proven that without an international reputation, it is very hard to build a domestic reputation. Inspired by historical turning points for wine like the Judgement of Paris for California and Eleanor of Aquitaine for Bordeaux, I have worked for years to try to build Canada’s reputation for fine wine. All of the shows, including the Chardonnay tasting I organized in London 13 years ago were designed to show that Canada deserves a place on the map. This is made more difficult as, unlike every other wine producing country, we cannot dominate our home market to build our reputation. We are unique in the world because we have a quasi-governmental agency in control of the buying and selling of our wine in our home market who still thinks a 7.7% share of market is reasonable.
We were very pleased last week when we saw the article, where Rod praises the Canadian wine industry for producing great Pinots, and gave our 2020 Laundry Vineyard Pinot 95 points. Woohoo.
You’ll notice this wine is not featured in our online store. We offered it first to our SIP Club members in Sept 2022 and for 24 hours at our Open House. Now, dear readers, it’s your opportunity to purchase our 2020 Laundry Pinot Noir or the 2020 Triomphe Pinot Noir.