Jackson-Triggs Winemaker Bruce Nicholson returns to Ontario after 20 years in British Columbia
By John Schreiner
November 7, 2006
In a decision that sent shockwaves through British Columbia’s wine industry, Bruce Nicholson this week announced that he is becoming the senior winemaker at Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Inniskillin winery.
“My family is back there,” says Nicholson. Born in Niagara Falls in 1958, he comes from a large and tightly-knit family. The draw of going back to where he was raised proved irresistible when the chance came along.
Inniskillin, Canada’s first boutique winery and its best-known icewine producer, has had two Australian winemakers in succession during the past six or so years. Both returned to Australia. That, coupled with the retirement in September of Karl Kaiser, Inniskillin’s co-founder and the emeritus winemaker, left a big technical hold to fill at a critical time - the eve of the annual icewine harvest in Ontario.
At the Jackson-Triggs winery in Oliver, Nicholson consistently has made more award-winning icewines than any other British Columbia winemaker. The big difference is that the icewine volumes at Jackson-Triggs have always been small. At Inniskillin, Karl Kaiser liked to boast that he had more icewine under his roof than all of Germany. That was not much of an exaggeration.
Nicholson is a chemical engineer who began making wine at home as a student. He was so seduced with wine that, just to get his foot in the wine industry’s door, he offered to work a vintage without salary.
The irony is that the offer was made to Inniskillin. Before Kaiser had made a decision, Nicholson was hired in 1986 for the laboratory at the Château-Gai winery in Niagara Falls.
The following year, he was transferred to Casabello, Château-Gai’s sister winery in Penticton. Both wineries disappeared into the merger that produced Vincor; and when Casabello closed in 1994, Nicholson moved to the Jackson-Triggs winery.
The year after he came to British Columbia, two-thirds of the Okanagan’s vines were pulled out as the industry prepared for its uncertain future under free trade. “They were ready to play taps for the Canadian wine industry and I could feel it,” Nicholson remembers.
He recalls sitting alone at night and thinking about his career options. However, the tide of pessimism receded in the early 1990s when the VQA program was launched. VQA brought attention to the better wines that were being made with vinifera grapes. When consumers began buying them, new vineyards were planted in the Okanagan, and the British Columbia wine industry was reborn – along with Nicholson’s career.
His career took off when the Jackson-Triggs label was launched in 1994. Named for Allan Jackson and Don Triggs, the founders of Vincor, the label was designed to showcase premium varietal wines made with vinifera grapes (except for Vidal icewine). Nicholson was the Jackson-Triggs winemaker in British Columbia.
The label’s initial successes were wines made with Merlot and Chardonnay, the two most widely available vinifera in British Columbia then and now. “I was a big Chardonnay fan and I was pleased when I could work with it,” Nicholson says. It was certainly a big change from the Verdelet grapes that he had to make wine with in his first years in British Columbia. Verdelet was one of the hybrids that was pulled out in 1988.
“Did I like Verdelet?” he says rhetorically. “You made it the best you could.”
Nicholson has emerged as an internationally respected winemaker in this decade, with a remarkable number of awards.He was named winemaker of the year last year at the big San Francisco wine competition on the strength of all the medals awarded to Jackson-Triggs wines. This year, the Jackson-Triggs 2004 Okanagan Estate Proprietor’s Grand Reserve Shiraz took the top Shiraz trophy at the International Wine & Spirits Competition in London.
“We are making waves,” Nicholson says. “That was a goal of mine, to have the Canadian wine industry recognized for real.”
Okanagan Estate refers to the 800 or so acres of vineyard that Vincor planted in the Okanagan, beginning in 1997. The top-quality grapes grown on those vineyards began arriving at the Jackson-Triggs winery in 2000. Not too long after, Nicholson’s wines began attracting attention and winning awards.
Shiraz was a case in point. The Jackson-Triggs planting was one of the earliest in the south Okanagan. Nicholson remembers getting six or seven tons of grapes in 2000 from two-year-old vines. The quality of the wine astonished him. When he took it to an international tasting in Toronto, the audience guessed it was from California or France or Chile. “They were astounded that it came from Canada,” he recalls.
Another case in point is Sauvignon Blanc. Nicholson was dubious at first when Vincor decided to stop making Pinot Blanc, a reliable workhorse white, in favour of its newly-planted Sauvignon Blanc. Once he started making wines with that variety, it became his favourite white for personal consumption. He has been advising Vincor to graft some of its less successful varieties to Sauvignon Blanc.
Having grown up in Ontario, he understands that he is going to be making wine in a region where the climate and the soils are perhaps less than ideal compared to the Okanagan terroir.
“It will be a big challenge for me,” he says. “But I have had a good ride here.”
goodgrog@shaw.ca
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