Trius, 2017 Red Shale Cabernet Franc, VQA Four Mile Creek, Ontario, Canada
Cab Franc du Jour #59
Trius Winery is part of the Andrew Peller Group, one of Canada’s largest wine companies, with several premium wineries across Ontario and British Columbia. Winemaker Craig Macdonald is an Australian native who made wine in Australia, New Zealand, Oregon, and California before arriving in Ontario at Cave Spring Cellars in 1997. His first vintage at Trius, then known as Hillebrand, was 2010.
The Niagara Peninsula and the Four Mile Creek VQA Sub-Appellation
There are two distinct viticultural areas in the Niagara Peninsula: the Niagara Escarpment and Niagara-on-the-Lake. Today’s wine comes from Niagara-on-the-Lake, which is bordered to the west by the Welland Canal and to the east by the Niagara River, and is divided into four sub-appellations: Four Mile Creek, Niagara Lakeshore, Niagara River, and St. Davids Bench.
The wine is sourced from the Four Mile Creek VQA sub-appellation, a large and relatively flat stretch of land that receives full sun exposure throughout the growing season thanks to its open, uninterrupted topography. That warmth generates convection currents off Lake Ontario that help to drop overall vineyard temperatures significantly during the hottest months, creating a pattern of warm days and cool nights that supports flavour and colour development and makes this one of the top terroirs in the region for Bordeaux red varieties.
The bedrock is Queenston Formation Red Shale, formed during the Upper Ordovician period of the Palaeozoic era, between approximately 443 and 485 million years ago, placing it roughly 250 million years before dinosaurs walked the earth. Shale is a sedimentary mudstone, and this particular formation is predominantly red and grey, calcareous and argillaceous, with a high iron oxide content. Above it, the topsoil across Four Mile Creek is essentially glacially derived sediment formed after the last Ice Age.
The Clark Farm Vineyard
This wine is made entirely from estate fruit grown at the Clark Farm vineyard, located more or less in the heart of the appellation. Approximately 8 acres (3.26 hectares) of Cabernet Franc are planted here, established in 2006 with Clone 214, the Loire clone. The Queenston Formation red shale bedrock lies beneath approximately 1.5m of Halton till clay-loam, a topsoil composed of around 70% clay with the remaining balance split roughly equally between silt and sand. Craig also noted a distinctive stoniness to the site, with noticeable shards and fragments of red shale throughout the soil profile, and it was this textural character that inspired the wine’s name.
In the Cellar
The fruit was machine harvested in two passes, destemmed but not crushed, leaving a proportion of whole berries in the fermenter. Fermentation took place with a combination of indigenous and cultured yeasts in 4-ton wooden fermenters, using a few different cap management techniques during the active phase before the wine was left on skins at around 20C for 14 days after fermentation was complete. Aging followed in predominantly older French oak barrels for approximately 20 months before bottling.
Wine Details
Producer: Trius Winery
Region: Niagara Peninsula, Ontario, Canada
Appellation: Four Mile Creek VQA
Vineyard: Clark Farm Vineyard
Soil: 1.5m of Halton till clay-loam atop Queenston Formation Red Shale bedrock
Alcohol: 14.4%