Vineland Estates, Legacy ‘Infinity Vintage’ Cabernet Franc, Niagara Peninsula, Ontario, Canada
Cab Franc du Jour #139
Established in 1979, Vineland Estates Winery is among Ontario’s oldest and most pioneering wineries. Brian Schmidt, a third-generation winegrower, completed his first harvest at Vineland in 1991 and assumed the role of winemaker in 1992. The estate farms around 40 hectares (about 100 acres) of vines, of which approximately 12 hectares are planted with Cabernet Franc.
When it comes to Cabernet Franc in Ontario, there is no greater champion than Brian Schmidt. It would not be an exaggeration to say that he has devoted his professional life to the pursuit of making great Cabernet Franc that is expressive of place, through a deep understanding of his vines and soils, a commitment to learning, observing, and questioning, and an unwavering belief that this grape is truly the best suited to Ontario. That passion, combined with an insatiable curiosity and a desire to communicate the soul of a place in the glass, ultimately gave rise to this wine: the Legacy Infinity Vintage Cabernet Franc, a wine that was more than a decade in the making.
It began with a question that Brian struggled for years to fully articulate: what is the true expression of Cabernet Franc from their Bo-Teek Vineyard? In a region that experiences considerable vintage variation, how does one isolate the voice of a place from the noise of any given year? The answer, as Brian came to see it, was to blend across vintages, effectively eliminating vintage variation and allowing the terroir to speak more clearly. This wine is the inaugural bottling of that vision, a multi-vintage blend that began with the 2012 harvest and was first bottled in 2022.
Niagara Escarpment and Twenty Mile Bench VQA Appellations
Bo-Teek Vineyard is located within the Twenty Mile Bench VQA sub-appellation, one of three sub-appellations that make up the Niagara Escarpment regional appellation, alongside the Beamsville Bench and the Short Hills Bench.
The Niagara Escarpment is one of the defining geographical features that make viticulture possible in the Niagara Peninsula, alongside Lake Ontario. This prominent ridge rises to nearly 200m and plays a critical role in trapping and circulating airflow from the lake into the vineyards below. That air movement reduces disease pressure and frost risk, and the warmth it carries helps raise overall vineyard temperatures, prolong the growing season, and support ripening.
The vineyard area along the escarpment is composed of a series of wide, north-facing terraces, or benches, built from layers of sedimentary rock including dolostone, shale, and sandstone, all formed after the last Ice Age as the glaciers receded. These terraces form part of the larger Lake Iroquois Bench, sitting just above the historical shoreline of the ancient Lake Iroquois. They vary in width, slope, and elevation depending on location.
The Twenty Mile Bench stretches about 9km from east to west and is distinctive in that it spans two of these wide terraces, sometimes referred to together as the Vineland Double Bench. The lower of the two, the Bell Terrace, ranges in elevation from around 128 to 140m above sea level and continues westward into the Beamsville Bench sub-appellation. The upper terrace, known as the Irondequoit Terrace, covers a smaller area and ranges from approximately 150 to 180m above sea level.
For Cabernet Franc, the Twenty Mile Bench occupies something of a sweet spot. The region receives long periods of sunshine during the growing season, and warm air that circulates near the base of the terraces extends daytime temperatures and encourages a steady, continuous ripening process.
Bo-Teek Vineyard and the Legacy Block
Located about 5km south of Lake Ontario, Bo-Teek Vineyard sits on the Bell Terrace, ranging in elevation from around 126m at the base of the slope to about 140m at the top. The vineyard comprises three distinct blocks and is the source of five of Vineland’s estate Cabernet Francs. The topsoil, which varies in depth across the vineyard, is predominantly Oneida clay and clay-loam, sitting atop a bedrock of dolomitic and argillaceous limestones.
The two main blocks are the sources for the winery’s clonal bottlings, the Elevation Cabernet Franc and the Reserve Cabernet Franc. A block of about 3.2 hectares in the northern part of the vineyard was planted in 1996 with Clone 327, a Bordeaux clone, while directly adjacent sits a 2-hectare block planted in 2006 with Clone 214, the Loire clone.
The third block, known as the Legacy Block, was planted in 2010 with Clone 214 specifically to create this wine. It is a small parcel of about 1 acre located in the southeast corner of the vineyard, and it benefits from a south-facing slope, a rarity in the Niagara Peninsula, which provides slightly more sun exposure throughout the day. The soils in this block carry a touch more clay than the rest of the vineyard.
The Winemaking
The target yield for the Legacy Block is about 1 ton per acre. The fruit is hand-harvested, destemmed but not crushed, and fermented in 1-ton bins with selected yeast. Brian performs no punchdowns or pumpovers, relying entirely on infusion for extraction, with total skin contact ranging from 14 to 21 days depending on the vintage. No press wine is incorporated, and aging takes place in neutral, older French oak barrels.
What makes this wine unlike any other in the region, however, is its structure as an ongoing multi-vintage blend. The first vintage was 2012. With each subsequent harvest, the newly finished free-run wine was blended with the accumulated assemblage of all previous vintages and returned to barrel. This continued through to the first bottling in 2022, at which point the wine contained contributions from every vintage between 2012 and 2021.
With that first bottling, Brian retained 1,800L of the assemblage as a base to be blended with the 2022 vintage. A second bottling followed in 2023, again with 1,800L held back for the next vintage. The system now functions as a solera-like fractional blend: each year, 600L is bottled, and every bottling will always carry some portion of the very first vintage, and every vintage thereafter, chronicling the ongoing story of a place and a lifelong passion for Cabernet Franc.
Wine Details
Producer: Vineland Estates Winery
Region: Niagara Peninsula, Ontario, Canada
Sub-region: Twenty Mile Bench
Vineyard: Bo-Teek
Soil: Oneida clay, over a bedrock of dolostone and argillaceous limestone
Alcohol: 13.5%