GEOFF HEINRICK'S
ST. LAURENT ARTICLE
AS PUBLISHED IN ISSUE ONE OF THE
PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY WINEGROWERS ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER
by permission of editor Deb Marshall

The feast day of St. Laurent is celebrated on August 10th. This fellow is known for being grilled on a gridiron, like St. Vincent, the patron saint of Burgundian winegrowers. Strangely enough, I've often noticed veraison is well underway or completed by that date on an early season vinifera red variety that has been growing in Prince Edward County since 1996 - also called St. Laurent. It has been steadily planted over the last five years at Station Road, Hillier, and in 1999 Ed Neuser put in a large quantity at his Waupoos location (though the exact number seems to be a state secret.)

In the early 1990s I was thumbing the 1990 edition of Larousse Wines and Vineyards of France, scouting for early or first epoch grapes that might do well in the County. I noticed a very short entry on Saint-Laurent:

"Synonyms: Saint-Laurent Noir, Saint-Lorents, Pinot Saint-Laurent [also, in middle Europe, Vavrinecke or Svatovavrinecke]. Bunches medium sized, cylindrical; grpaes mediums sized, blue-black, ovoid, thick-skinned; ripening period: first epoch. This vine originally came from the south of Alsace; it reached Baden in Germany, and was propagated in that area. It gives full-bodied wine of an attractive, dark-red colour. An unclassified variety [meaning it is not offically approved in France, nor are registered clones inventoried], it is very little grown in France."

The thick skins, early season, wine qualities, and, of course the name (Prince Edward being so close to the head of the St. Lawrence River at Kingston - the river tied to the foundation of Canada) moved it to the top of the list of rare grapes I thought might work here. Carefully scanning the second edition of Tony Aspler's Vintage Canada, I noticed that the small Nichol Vineyard in Naramata, B.C. listed St. Laurent as one of the varieties they grew and vinified.

I contacted Alex and Kathleen Nichol in the fall of 1995, and they were happy to sell me cuttings, and have continued to every year since. The St. Laurent they grew came from John Vielvoye, grape specialist with the B.C. government at the time. These 74 vines were given free to the couple, on the condition they make cuttings available to all who asked for them. Apart from Lloyd Schmidt - then at Mori Nurseries - and myself, no one had.

The entire small handful of St. Laurent cases the Nichol made has been purchased by the Grand Okanagan Resort up until now; this year is the first offering of St. Laurent they have made to the public - a mere 46 cases of Canadian St. Laurent.

Apart from the small but growing toehold St. Laurent has in Canada (there is also a limited quantity in Niagara), it primarily can be found in Austria; occasionally the LCBO Vintages brings in examples (the last was in the May release - product number 993303 - and you may still find some of this if you have the system searched on your behalf). There is also is an inexpensive Slovakian version (or is it Czech?) at under seven dollars that only hints at what St. Laurent is capable of, but is worth trying.

Wine writer Janis Robinson rates St. Laurent in her Guide to Wine Grapes as capable of reaching the top quality on her sliding scale; she also wrote of it favourably in here classic Vines, Grapes & Wines, summarizing it as "soft, sweet and scented". The only negative entry I've seen on St. Laurent is in Jackson and Shuster's The Production of Grapes and Wine in Cool Climates, where it states: "A vigorous low-yielding Austrian red grape with, at best, moderate quality ... Further plantings of this grape cannot be recommended."

I strongly disagree with that.

Viticulturally, the most attractive aspect of St. Laurent is that it ripens up to ten days earlier than Pinot Noir. The leaves are thicker than Pinot Noir; the skins of the berries noticeably so. The flavours in the ripe berry are different than Pinot Noir - you can tell the berries apart in the mouth, though it's hard to explain how. (To date, I've fermented my St. Laurent with Pinot Noir, so the qualities of the wine compared to Pinot Noir in Prince Edward County are not known.) The thicker skins and slightly looser clusters of grapes make the fruit less prone to disease than Pinot Noir. The thicker skins provide more colour, and for that reason it used to be blended in France to help deepen the colour of Pinot Noir.

St. Laurent's reported fruit-set problems and early budding are more of a difficulty in Europe; here the season begins later, with less of a window for frost, but St. Laurent does bud a few days earlier than the Pinots, so it is best to give it a good location so any frosts in the last days of April don't affect it. (Almost all varieties are vulnerable to possible frosts here in the first 13 days of May.)

St. Laurent wine shares a silky Pinot Noir texture, what Janis Robinson calls "juicy fruit and relatively low natural grape tannins". The debate has raged for years about whether St. Lauren and Pinot Noir are related. Through genetic studies done in Austria, it is now known that, like Chardonnay, Gamay, Auxerrois, Aligote, Melon and a host of other varieties, St. Laurent IS the offspring of Pinot Noir and a reviled white variety call Gouais in France or Heunisch in the German speaking countries. (Zweigelt, a variety finding favour in Niagara, was the result of a 1922 cross of St. Laurent and Blaufrankisch or Limberger).

I believe St. Laurent has a very strong potential here in the County, for both excellent viticultural and wine quality reasons. I think it can help set this area apart from others around the world, and I have a few exciting tools to help market this relatively unknown variety and create unifying presence, should other growers in the County wish to work in this direction.

(Those interested in getting some St. Laurent cuttings can contact me - I'll distribute some of my annual purchase from B.C. at cost. Or, alternatively, EuroNursery now offers grafted St. Laurent vines for sale.)

Sources:
John Schreiner, Chardonnay and Friends - Varietal Wines of British Columbia (Orca Press, 1998) p. 187-8.

Jancis Robinson, Vines, Grapes & Wines (Mitchell Beazley, 1986) p. 221.

Jancis Robinson, Jancis Robinson's Guide to Wine Grapes (Oxford University Press, 1996) p. 163. [or see either the first or second edition of the Oxford Companion to Wine]

David Jackson & Danny Schuster, The Production of Grapes & Wine in Cool Climates (Lincoln University Press, 1997) p. 105-6

Larousse Wines and Vineyards of France (Arcade Publishing, 1991) p. 489

F. Regner et al, in XXIV World Congress for Viticulture & Enology, Section 1 p. 53-9 (1999); F. Regner et al in Mitt. Klosterneuberg 48(6) p. 193-202 (1998).

There are also entries in Galet's Ampelography and various German ampelographies.

Growiners Articles Growers Page www.littlefatwino.com