MY LIFE? WHERE TO BEGIN… The holiday season can be mixed up within financial turmoil, familial obligations - uncomfortable or cozy - and a myriad of other shortcomings. If you’re a beverage manager, as I am, this is a great time to over-plan drinking. I associate this time of year primarily with hygge, a 19th century word that bowls out the idea of coziness when we are buried in snow and the sun recedes uncomfortably early. My neighbors in Fogo keep birch burning in their wood stoves, but I keep a liquor cabinet. Sidenote: I don’t really keep a liquor cabinet. My girlfriend insisted that I include that part. However, sometimes, I will have a bottle of old grape juice stowed away under the stairs. Lightfoot & Wolfville is a biodynamic Nova Scotia winery that shepherds a herd of designer farm animals to facilitate organic farming. Their wines are devilishly enjoyable. In particular, the feat of their Ancienne Series Pinot Noir always leaves
me gobsmacked. With flavours of deep cherry and bright Virginia rose radiating from the glass, it has settled itself in as an impossible-to-grow grape in an impossible climate. As I stare out to the Atlantic right now and a weather system pelts the windows with sleet, I find it unfathomable that the heartbreak grape can be stewarded in Nova Scotia. The heartbreak grape is pinot noir, and it is a real piece of work. How do you sustain a vineyard with a will-to-die grape in a place where polar vortexes routinely appear? Outside of the devastation of losing years of work, this team pivots with courage. Year-in-year- out, they motivate themselves to continue onward even though nature is feuding with them. Their Terroir Series is a brooding example of this persistence. The Lightfoot family are as earnest in principle as they are in name. Their vines are doted on year-in and year-out with delicate, nature-made fertilizers. Babydoll sheep roam the estate and have a purpose
"I associate this time of
year primarily with hygge, a 19th century word that bowls out the idea of coziness when we are buried in snow and the sun recedes uncomfortably early."
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