Pillitteri Estates 2012 Exclamation Cab Franc, VQA Niagara-on-the-Lake Canada
Pillitteri Estates Winery is a generational family wine business in the truest sense of the phrase. From a family of grape growers, Gary Pillitteri immigrated to Ontario, Canada from his native Sicily in 1948. Following his marriage to Lena Argo in 1960, the couple purchased a small farm and settled in Niagara-on-the-Lake in 1965 with their three children, Connie, Lucy and Charlie.
They cultivated tender fruit trees, and naturally planted some grape vines as well. In 1988, Gary experimented by making his first Vidal Icewine, which won him a gold medal at a local competition, and cemented the idea that a life of grape growing and winemaking in this emerging region was the direction he needed to take. These were the humble beginnings of what is now one of the most important wineries in not only the Niagara Peninsula, but across Canada as well. The winery today is collectively run by three generations of the Pillitteri family, and they are farming around 100 acres of vitis vinifera and hybrid varieties.
Before I get into some of the details about this wine, a bit more of a personal story. This video marks the 100th Cab Franc du Jour since starting this effort officially in October 2020. And upon reflection of what wine I wanted to taste and talk about for this important milestone, it only seemed fitting to go back to where it all began. Over the course of the last two years, many have asked me when my love of Cabernet Franc began, and how it all started. And it really started here, in the Niagara Peninsula and with Pillitteri Estates. My first job in the wine business was Export Manager for Pillitteri Estates, which I started in August of 2007, a position which I held for 7 and a half years.
Our many focus abroad was Icewine, Canada's calling card in the global wine world. And I was fortunate during my time at Pillitteri to have travelled to dozens of countries preaching the gospel of Canadian Icewine and introducing people to our exciting, emerging region, particularly at a time when, besides a couple other players, no one else was doing this. And in nearly every market we entered with our Icewine, we always introduced a still white and red, and Pillitteri's flagship red was Cabernet Franc. It was a grape we could ripen consistently every year, we could make a definitive style that was unique to Niagara, and it was a point of differentiation in markets that were flooded with Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Pinot Noir.
So, here I was travelling the world talking about our Cabernet Franc, and naturally this launched my curiosity and journey to understand this grape better. I tasted as many examples from the Niagara Peninsula as I could get my hands on. Any time we participated in large trade shows like ProWein and Vinexpo, on my breaks from pouring for customers at our stand, you could find me in the Loire Valley wines selection trying as many examples of Chinon, Bourgueil, St-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil, and Saumur-Champigny as I could in a half an hour period. When I travelled abroad, if there was a Cabernet Franc on a wine list, you can bet that I was ordering it. And so began my obsession with this humble grape.
I moved to the US in 2015, and that catapulted my exploration of Cabernet Franc to new heights. The largest wine market in the world, without the same restrictions to access that exist in government monopoly-run Ontario, at the click of a mouse, I could find and purchase all the Cabernet Franc my heart desired. And so, the spark that began in my own back yard in 2007 with wines like this, grew into insatiable appetite and passion for Cabernet Franc, that eventually fuelled my desire to start this project when I moved back to Canada in October 2020.
So with that all that said, time to talk about this wine. This wine is from Pillitteri's Exclamation Cellar Series, which is their reserve tier of wines. One thing to note about Pillitteri Estates, which I have immense respect for, is they only make reserve wines in the best vintages. The Niagara Peninsula experiences quite a lot of vintage variation, so in vintages that are less favourable for red wines, the parcels that would normally be designated for reserve wines will get declassified and go into their entry-level Cabernet Franc. But 2012 was an exceptional vintage, so they actually made two tiers of reserve wines that year, their Exclamation Series, and also their Family Reserve series.
So this wine is coming from 5ha of vines across 3 vineyard sites in the Four Mile Creek VQA sub-appellation, which is one of the four sub-appellations that make up the Niagara-on-the-Lake regional appellation. The sites are all at an elevation of about 90m above sea level, and while to the naked eye appear flat, the slope ever so slightly to the north. Jamie Slingerland, the winery's Director of Viticulture, shared that these three sites are in a bit of a 'goldilocks' zone in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Close enough to the lake to get the benefits of the warmth of the lake in the fall, delaying frost risk and extending ripening, but far enough away from the lake to not experience any cold breezes in the spring and fall that could impact vine growth and ripening.
From a soil perspective, as is the case across the entire Niagara-on-the-Lake regional appellation, the bedrock here is the Queenston formation red shale. The topsoils across the region vary in texture, depth and stoniness, but all are glacially-derived soils. In all three vineyards, we have sandy silt-loam topsoil, which is known locally as Halton till, and it ranges in depth from as little as 30cm to upwards to 90cm, over a clay-loam subsoil, giving good balance between moisture retention and drainage.
The Cabernet Franc vines here were planted between 1992 and 1997, so in 2012 the vines would've been on average about 17 years of age. They are working exclusively with clone 214, which is the Loire clone. Their vines are trained using a system called Pendelbogen, which is a variation on the double guyot training system, where the canes are arched, giving more buds, which Jamie says not only helps preserve yields in the event of frost, but it gives him more choice when it comes to cluster thinning later in the season, inevitably with the end goal of achieving ideal fruit to canopy balance, which is very critical for minimizing the pyrazines in Cabernet Franc.
From a winemaking perspective, the fruit was hand-harvested, destemmed and crushed. The fermentation was in stainless steel with selected yeast, and the maceration would've been about 3 weeks, and the aging takes place in a combination of new and old French oak barrels for about 20 to 24 months before bottling.
And for those that are curious about the label, in 2006 the family commissioned the creation of 23 stainless steel chairs, that now hang in the barrel cellar. These chairs tell the story of the Pillitteri family, their past, present and future. And the label is a rendering of the 'king's chair.'
Key wine wine facts below:
Producer: Pillitteri Estates Winery
Region: Niagara Peninsula, Ontario
Appellation: Niagara-on-the-Lake VQA
VineyardsMazza, Puma, Pillitteri
Soils: 30-90cm of Halton till (sandy silt-loam topsoil), over a clay-loam subsoil, Queenston red shale bedrock
Alcohol: 13.5%
