Articles - enviroFEATURE

A World in Balance - By Pamela Steel

Dennis Sanson is living his dream at Sanson Estate Winery, a picturesque spot on Lake Erie’s North Shore where he gets to combine his passions for food and wine, sustainable agriculture, regional rural economies and the environment.

While award-winning winemaker may be on your top 10 list of dream jobs, it’s not all wine tastings and glamour for Sanson. There’s a lot of sweat and a few tears that go into the hard work of running this multi-faceted business. Sanson began this journey as a chef and though he now wears many hats, "I always have a white (chef’s) hat on my desk. I am the chief cook and bottle washer."

The estate is located just south of McGregor, Ont. in the Canard River valley on the eastern edge of Amherstburg in Essex County. There on the idyllic 100 acres, grapes are lovingly nurtured to maturity, a heritage garden thrives, top quality cattle graze, heritage hogs are raised and a retail business and food establishment both prosper.

The property was originally deeded as a 100-acre farm to John McGregor in 1840. When it went on sale in 1997, Sanson recognized its unique potential and value to the surrounding ecosystem. The potential came in the form of the excellent soil quality and the growing conditions that come from existing at the same latitude as northern California and central Italy. "Hybrid vines, baco noir and vidal blanc, were planted," says Sanson. "And the results of the first vintages were outstanding. Vinifera grapes were obtained from local growers expanding the winery’s offerings to sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot and shiraz."

The down-to-earth wines are good, winning a local following and praise from wine experts like Tony Aspler. The Ontario Wine Review has called the winemaker’s approach impressive and eccentric. The winery’s signature wine is baco noir and the 2002 reserve won Best in Category at the Canadian Wine Championships and the winery was named winner at the All Canadian Wine Championships for 2007.

This year they have made three styles of wine from 2008’s harvest of baco noir and vidal blanc grapes: a late harvest vidal, a dry vidal and their signature baco noir reserve. When conditions are right, they also make a vidal ice wine.

Much of the grape harvest is picked by hand. "It’s exciting and it’s sleep depriving," says Sanson. "It’s a lot like being a new parent." He predicts that the 2008 harvest will showto be "a very distinctive year."

Sanson takes his role as steward of his land very seriously, and has restored more than a third of his property to its natural state as wetland and woods. "Our goal has been and remains the combination of sustainable agricultural practices with restoration of the natural heritage of the land," says Sanson.

He is co-chair of the Essex County Land Stewardship Network, working with local landowners, farmers, naturalists and hunters who share a vision for responsible use of the land. "Of particular interest to us is the creation and maintenance of wetlands and wooded areas on the western edge of the winery’s property," says Sanson. "Here there are homes for white-tailed deer and wild turkeys. In addition, the fields behind the winery, grazed on by our Limousin cattle, provide much needed habitat for grassland species of birds such as savannah sparrows, meadowlarks and bobolinks. We wish to restore and maintain our native Carolinian habitat and preserve it for future generations."

His childhood in Chatham encouraged a keen interest in both the outdoors and the production of food and wine in southwestern Ontario. Sanson trained as a chef at St. Clair College in Windsor and honed his skills in the restaurant industry in Toronto and London.

He went on to teach in the culinary section of the hospitality department at St. Clair College. Thirty years as a chef translates into the fantastic food served at the winery. The meat on the menu comes from the farm as do the heritage vegetables and, of course, the wine. What he doesn’t grow, he brings in from other local farms. And everything is cooked with natural gas.

"We work with all kinds of natural gas equipment starting with our natural gas barbecue," says Sanson. "I do love the consistency of natural gas. Flavour coached from simplicity. I like the convenience and we’re lucky to have access to natural gas in our rural location. We use it in our food service facility and our food production facility."

Sanson trademarked the Field to Fork label a decade ago. And this is the name under which he markets all the products raised on the co-operative of farms with which he works. Everything sold at the estate’s retail outlet has a farmer’s name, a face and a story attached to it. It’s a far cry from anonymous food purchased in mega-chains. This kind of alternative to the status quo in terms of distribution systems for food products and wine is a huge part of Sanson’s mandate.

And he intends to install natural gas equipment as part of the expansion planned for the retail and food service aspect of Sanson Estate Winery. "We’re planning to expand our ready-to-eat and gourmet-to-go lines as well as a full service butcher shop. Our heritage breeds of pork: Berkshire, Tamworth and Duroc are fantastic. These animals are not bred for commercial pork, they take too much care but the result, like with everything we do is superior taste. My mission in life is the pursuit of flavour."

To keep his business growing while maintaining top quality in everything he does, Sanson has to wear a lot of hats, from marketing manager to chef to winemaker. He sums the whole experience up with, "It’s a good thing that I’m a cook because I can keep a lot of pots on the stove, keep from them from boiling over and still manage to serve them at the appropriate time."