Bruce's Peninsula
Meet Inniskillin’s new winemaker, industry all-star Bruce Nicholson By David Lawrason
Image credit: Brian Rea
No wonder the Canadian wine world calls him Bruce Almighty. Bruce Nicholson, the mild-mannered vintner who was recently hired to run Inniskillin Niagara, put Jackson-Triggs’s British Columbia vineyards on the wine map, amassing national and international awards with amazingly big and complex yet poised Okanagan reds. And just last year he won top honours in a prestigious British competition for the world’s best shiraz. Thanks to Nicholson’s new gig at Ontario’s best-known winery, it’s a fair bet we’ll be hearing more of his name. The Niagara Falls–born winemaker studied science at Ryerson and the University of Windsor, all the while bewitched by the magic of turning juice into wine. He turned pro in the mid-’80s, toiling in obscurity for Canada’s mass production wineries until Jackson-Triggs’s huge desert vineyards near Osoyoos came on-line in 2000. The cabernet, shiraz and icewine that Nicholson made there proved he could master the region’s hot, dry conditions. But can he translate this success to Ontario’s cooler climate and leaner, less ripe fruit? I’m betting yes. While tasting 2006 tank samples with him at Inniskillin, his palate’s keen sense of balance was obvious. “Acid levels in icewine just have to be off a fraction and the wine is ruined,” he said. And in an age when so many vintners make wines to win medals or wow critics, Nicholson insists he’s aiming only to please the regular folk who’ll buy his wine. With his very first 2006 Inniskillin whites—riesling, chardonnay and pinot gris—entering stores this spring, consumers will be able to judge whether Nicholson has nailed their tastes. The bigger, more expensive 2006 chardonnays, pinots noirs and cabernets are still in barrels—awaiting, I suspect, the kind of fame and fortune Nicholson earned out west.
TEST Originally published May 2007
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