September 2013, Vol. 37, No. 9
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AgriNews Interactive www.agrinewsinteractive.com |
Blue Gypsy Wines unlocking unique flavours
OXFORD MILLS It has been well documented just how difficult it can be to grow grapes for wine in Eastern Ontario. Knowing that it requires a full-time approach, Louis Gaal and his wife Claire Faguy decided to take an alternate approach when they got into the wine business in 2008, with fruit wines.
"It all started for us back in college. We would make our own beer and wine for fun out of kits," said Gaal. "We spent some time living in New York State and were right in the heart of a wine country. We would take tours of the wineries on weekends but found ourselves going back to the same ones, ones that had fruit wine."
The couple returned to Canada in 2006 and started looking into a winery of their own. They bought the 62-acre land to build their winery in 2008 and after going through the processes, they found investors and opened in 2011. "We had a solid business plan," said Gaal. "However, it is considered a high-risk business so it took longer to get financing."
Gaal and Faguy built their current facility themselves with the help of their friends. "It was more work than we ever expected," noted Faguy.
They decided on fruit wine because they could not afford to care for grapes full time. In addition, they would be the only fruit winery in the area and knew the potential.
In their first year, the two set up two picnic tables, which are still present at the Oxford Mills location. One had the wines available for tasting, the other was for payment. People seemed to enjoy the initial wines, so much so that Gaal and Faguy sold enough in that first year to qualify as a farm.
The key for Blue Gypsy Wines is that they do not add sulfates to their wine as preservatives. Faguy is very sensitive to them so they are quite careful with their production. In addition, while not certified organic, they do observe organic practices on the fruit they grow for their pure fruit wine. "We can t control what we bring in but we do observe organic practices with everything we grow," said Gaal.
Locally, Blue Gypsy Wines brings in apples from Smyth s Orchard in Dundela and Cranberries from Upper Canada Cranberries in Greely.
"We have between five and seven acres that we grow strawberries, raspberries, black berries, black currant, cider apples and rhubarb on. The rest we bring in but we try to buy locally whenever possible," added Gaal.
"We do no pesticide spraying at all. There is too much going on with the wild life around here. For the most part, spraying is done for appearance, but that doesn t matter to me because I am just going to toss it in a barrel," said Gaal.
Gaal remembers the first year. After making wines in 2010 they released a cranberry, strawberry, raspberry and maple. "We developed recipes based on what we thought would be good and then tried it in small batches."
They also did surveys in both Ontario and Quebec to test the waters for certain flavours.
In 2013, Blue Gypsy offered seven varieties: apple, blueberry, cranberry, maple, ginger, sangria and chocolate mead.
For the most part, the operation is run by Gaal and Faguy, yet they do have one friend who comes in and works "the bar" and is fully knowledgeable about the wines.
The drought last year hit the winery hard as it did to all growers in the region. But when asked about what other challenges of producing in Eastern Ontario are, Gaal gets a bit of a chuckle. "One thing we found out is that things turn to vinegar. In 2012, we lost a batch of blueberry because it turned to vinegar. I thought oh no we are going to lose thousands, but then we realized that it was actually very good vinegar.
So we started producing that too. It has been a hit and we end up making more off of it as vinegar because there are not the same taxes that apply to wines," said Gaal.
The taxes are less favorable on fruit wine producers than on grape and fruit wines cannot qualify to be VQA. That has made it harder for Blue Gypsy Wines to gain exposure. "We would like to get into the LCBO," says Faguy. "But we wouldn t be able to make anything off what we sell. We would have to write it off as an advertising cost and just use it to gain exposure."
This season looks like it will be another strong one for the winery. Their production is up from last year, but construction in the area has hurt their sales a bit. Still, certain flavours like the cranberry, blueberry and chocolate mead are selling like crazy.
In terms of the future of Blue Gypsy Wines, they are planning on using their cider apples to eventually make ice cider. In addition, they are experimenting with rhubarb and black currant flavours. But what Gaal really sees in the future is actually in their mistake, their white vinegars. Currently, they have four varieties: apple, blueberry, cranberry and raspberry. "The vinegar is huge! For what started as a mistake, it has out sold some wine and because it is not taxed the same way we keep more of the profits and can sell it at farmers markets," explained Gaal.
It appears that Blue Gypsy Wines will continue to experiment with interesting wine and vinegar flavours and with the way their customers buy it up, they should continue to be successful.
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