Our bubblies are really down to earth. They are a reflection of our rainy autumns, cold winters, unpredictable springs and short but intense summers. They don’t try to emulate the luxury branding of Champagne. Quite the opposite, in fact. They’re made for the present moment, the true moments of everyday life. Spur of the moment drinks with people who really count, rather than starchy formal events. Our bubblies are for drinking between friends, pinkies down.
Sometimes refreshing, sometimes bursting with tension, our sparkling wines are always bright, dry, with a destabilising dose of bright fruit–and always ready to go for an apéro.
TRADITIONAL METHOD
In the beginning, traditional method was an obvious choice for us, and since then, it’s kept affirming itself as an appropriate approach, vintage after vintage. The prism of double fermentation is the most suitable one for expressing the full potential of our climate, our soils and our grape varieties.
All our wines are aged at least 15 months on lees, and in some cases up to 30 months. Since brut nature isn’t for everybody, a liqueur made of wine and organic beet sugar can be added at disgorging to balance out bitterness or the intense acidity of some of the sparkling wines.
Every step of the traditional method vinification is done by hand, which means that a bottle is handled 18 times before it is released from the winery.
Anything beyond traditional method sparkling is not exactly a planned thing, for us, but what can you do: we are a creative and curious bunch. This is why we decided to give pétillants naturels a try, made with the same care as our traditional method wines, but with a lower effervescence.
The base wine was fermented at low temperatures to preserve the aromatic character, and after several rackings, we transferred it to bottle to finish fermenting. We should describe it as an ancestral method wine because we gave it a basic disgorging to take out the rather explosive effects of its tartric deposit – which distinguishes it from pet nats that are often undisgorged.
THE WINERY
Our winery was designed to minimize its ecological footprint. Built like the root cellars of old, it is naturally cooled, which helps lower its energy consumption considerably. Moreover, windows overlooking the tanks allow the wines to naturally cool down in winter.
Most of the materials used in the building were taken from the winery’s natural surroundings—including Township pine, Sherbrooke slate and driftwood from the Outaouais river.
In the same manner, materials used to package and sell our wines have been specifically chosen for their low environmental impact:
- Bottles made in part from recycled glass
- Bottles recycled through the recycling program introduced by Hatley Township’s municipal government
- Pyrographed corks, rather than printed
- Environmentally-friendly labels using 100% FSC certified paper (ensuring that the paper producers are replanting to compensate for tree cuts)
- Environmentally-friendly glue for the labels
- Cardboard boxes made in a Québec plant employing workers with physical disabilities