People who share a love of Canadian wines might start a conversation about our country’s viticulture by expounding upon the joys of the but­tery Chardonnay or the black-­cherry-­nuanced Cabernet Sauvignon that are produced in the Niagara region. It might have been a different story, however, had it not been for the passion and perseverance of industry visionaries like Paul Bosc.

This affable Canadian wine-­industry maverick, along with his son Paul­-André, sat down to talk wine with me on an early spring after­noon. Before we began our discussion, Paul­-André, who is the winery’s vice-­president, marketing and administration, uncorked a chilled bot­tle of Château des Charmes’ recently released 2005 Rosé Sparklng Wine as a toast to his wife Michèle’s birthday. Made using half Chardonnay and half Pinot Noir grapes in the méthode traditionnelle style of Cham­pagne, the elegant Rosé Brut is a testament to what so many said could never be done in the Niagara region.

Before local experts were proved wrong, and long before the award­-winning vineyard we now know as Château des Charmes existed, the Bosc family’s intense connection with all things from the vine was planted in Algeria. Bosc grew up in the midst of his great-­great­-grandfather’s vineyard, learning about the soil, the European grape va­rieties that were planted, and the wines they produced. He studied oenology and viticulture at a nearby school before enrolling in the pres­tigious program at the Université de Bourgogne in Dijon, France.

“The professors were of a higher calibre there and you could see in them a real love of wine. In Burgundy, it’s in their blood! And they taught us to believe in science,” Bosc says, adding with a smile, “One of the comments of our chemistry professor, who was a real SOB, was, ‘We’re giving you the diploma today, but if you think you know every­thing, it’s far from the truth. What we’re giving you here is the oppor­tunity to get a job. And you take it from there.’ That’s always stayed with me and that’s what I did.”

And that’s what he continues to do. When civil unrest gripped Al­geria in 1956, Bosc returned to France with his family. Following a chilly reception there, the pioneering spirit in Bosc had him glancing to­ward the open spaces of Canada. In 1963, the then 27-­year­-old wine­maker moved his wife, Andrée, and their son to French-­speaking Montreal. (Son Pierre-­Jean was born in Canada and, until he estab­lished a new career in farm equipment sales in 2004, worked for many years as a winemaker alongside his father). Within a year, Bosc’s job as a store clerk for the province’s Société des Alcools du Québec (the equiv­alent of the LCBO) proved unsatisfactory. He saw no future in it, so he moved on to plan B, which included learning to speak English.

At the Quebec liquor commission, Bosc had been exposed to Ni­agara’s Château­Gai wines, which continuously got branded as faulty and were dumped. “Some of those wines had some residual sugar in them that they didn’t filter. I gave them a call because obviously they needed someone who knew better. Two days later I got a call saying they wanted to see me,” he recalls. Twenty-­four hours later, he was in Niag­ara inspecting the Château­Gai plant. He knew he could do something with this opportunity; at the time he had no way of knowing just how intrinsic a hand he’d have in changing the industry.

John Schreiner, author of The Wines of Canada, writes that about three years before Bosc’s arrival in Canada, Bill Lenko planted a two­-thousand-­vine Chardonnay plot at his Beamsville Bench, Ontario vine­yard. By the late 1960s, after working his way up from production supervisor to chief winemaker at Château­Gai (eventually accepting the role of chemist in the research-­and-­development lab), Bosc had con­vinced his employer to use some of Lenko’s vitis vinifera plantings in order to improve the quality of Canadian­-produced offerings.

Before he made that happen, however, Bosc studied the Canadian wine industry’s conventional wisdom, reasoning that if things were being done a certain way in Niagara, then it had to be with good rea­son. If you look back to local wine offerings in the 1960s and ’70s, you’ll recall that there were no locally produced European varieties on store shelves. Wine educator Julia Rogers says, “Even as late as the mid-­1970s, vinifera plantings were still a hard­sell, as best­selling sherry­style wines and the ever popular Baby Duck made labrusca [a local grape species] seem tasty enough to the bulk of Ontarians with untrained palates and no inherited culture of wine drinking.”

Local experts insisted that vitis vinifera varieties like Chardonnay, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon wouldn’t grow well in the Niagara re­gion, despite the fact that it shares a similar climate with wine­produc­ing Burgundy. Bosc and other forward thinkers like Cave Spring Cellars’ Len Pennachetti were told that European varieties wouldn’t survive. “Back in the ’70s, it was like we were Copernicans in a geocentric world. We were right [about vinifera] but we had to convince everyone that the way they were looking at the world was wrong. At the time, we were considered freaks,” says Pennachetti. Experts warned that vinifera wouldn’t ripen during our summers, that they’d get mildew, and that they would not survive our winters.

The experienced Bosc knew enough to realize this wasn’t necessar­ily the case. “It took me three years to see that there wasn’t any reason. It was just that they didn’t know. They were growing Concord and some French [hybrid] varieties… like Maréchal Foch and Baco Noir. They said, ‘You can’t grow [the European grape varieties].’ This is where I got very suspicious,” Bosc recounts.

Wine consultant Peter Gamble adds, “When others were saying that winter­-hardy French hybrid grapes would always be the backbone of Canadian winemaking, Paul had the courage to establish a wine­making operation based primarily on classic European vinifera vari­eties.”

In 1976, Bosc bought land in what is now known as Niagara’s Four Mile Creek sub-­appellation and planted fifty acres of only the more ten­der European varieties, making it Ontario’s first commercial vineyard dedicated to growing only vitis vinifera varieties. At the same time, Pen­nachetti planted twelve acres of vinifera. Critics said they’d get clob­bered and watched closely as, year after year, the men – and their grapes – survived to tell the tale. In 1978, Bosc’s Château des Charmes (named after his family’s seaside home in Algeria) started making wine with vinifera grapes purchased from local farmers, including Lenko, until his own vines were ready. The following year, Bosc’s wines were on the mar­ket and wine writers were complimentary towards the Niagara­-produced efforts. By 1980, he had his own grapes to work with. And that’s when the buzz really started.

“We proved them wrong by holding on,” says Paul­André with pride. Eventually, other vintners started following suit. Julia Rogers adds, “These first plantings were hugely important for Ontario wine. The work of Paul Bosc and others is the foundation upon which Nia­gara’s current reputation as a quality wine region rests.” Bill Lenko’s son Daniel, of Daniel Lenko Estate Winery, adds, “Bosc showed guys like me that dreams are possible. He saw the potential here and made fine wines fashionable.”

In 1988, the Ontario Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA) standard was established and, much like European designations of quality, the VQA stamp assures consumers of the quality of wine they’re purchasing. Pennachetti helped draft the original VQA rules and calls Bosc “the con­science” of the alliance, pushing for mostly vinifera wines that are 100 percent Ontario­grown and that have passed certain quality-­assurance tests. All of this so that Niagara wines can compete on the world stage. The buying public fully embraced these efforts. According to the Cana­dian Vintners Association website, “Sales of VQA wines grew from vir­tually zero to over 10 million litres by 2000,” and industry professionals add that this spawned a wine-­tourism industry that continues to boost the regional economy.

Today, the Boscs own four distinct farms totalling 280 hectares, on which fourteen different vitis vinifera varieties are planted. Over the years, through trial and error, Bosc has been able to match the right clone with the right vineyard block to produce the style and flavour profile of the finished wines he feels best typify the varietal. At the St. David’s Bench vineyard, where the regal­-looking château is located, I walk out to the impeccably tidy rows of vines that have benefitted from the Boscs’ drainage innovations, clonal selections (like their famous Gamay Droit), and vine-­planting techniques. Father and son look over the gnarled vines with fascination and with pride. This is, after all, a family business where Old World know-­how, perseverance, science and passion all intersect on the field and in the bottle. As one of the region’s largest wineries, Château des Charmes is also one of the most respected because quality is key for the Boscs. “Bosc is a scientist. He knows that you don’t make wine, you grow it,” says Pennachetti. I’m fairly certain Bosc’s former chemistry professor would agree.

Mary Luz Mejia (www.maryluzmejia.com) is a Toronto­-based freelance food writer and food TV producer who enjoys an aromatic, Canadian­-produced Viognier as much as a drop of Niagara icewine, the region’s “liquid gold.”

© Edible Toronto, Summer 2009
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