Bordertown's Petit Verdot at Vancouver Wine Festival

Photo: Bordertown's Mohan Gill

A single varietal Petit Verdot wine from a British Columbia winery is a rare wine.

In the 2018 vintage (latest figures available), the production of Petit Verdot, at 270 short tons, was a mere 1.27% of red wine grape production. To put that into perspective, the most widely grown red is Merlot. At 7,957.5 short tons, it was 37% of red wine grape production.

That explains why few wineries make Petit Verdot on its own. Those that do include Bordertown Vineyards & Estate Winery of Osoyoos. This winery will be at the Vancouver International Wine Festival and may have a Petit Verdot at some of the public tastings. I am assuming it will be under the table, since it does not appear on the list of wines Bordertown will be pouring. That is not surprising: only 120 cases were produced in 2017.

I would advise asking for it anyway. You just might be lucky.

There are several reasons why so little Petit Verdot is grown. The main one is that, as Jancis Robinson observes in Wine Grapes, the variety is “late ripening – even later than Cabernet Sauvignon.” In BC, Cabernet Sauvignon comprised 2,926 short tons in 2018, or just under seven per cent of total red wine grapes.

BC growers have taken a chance on Cabernet Sauvignon because the variety is far better known than Petit Verdot, thanks the numerous varietal Cabernets from California, Australia and South America that are ubiquitous in this market.

For most producers – in Bordeaux as well as in BC - Petit Verdot is a blending grape that adds colour, volume and spicy to Bordeaux blends.

The Robinson book continues: “When fully ripe – not always easy to achieve in Bordeaux – Petit Verdot produces wines that are rich, deeply coloured, tannic and ageworthy, often spicy and with good levels of alcohol and acidity in the best sites. Today it generally plays a small part in the Bordeaux blend but in the nineteenth century … Petit Verdot was the dominant variety in the Queyries vineyards on the left bank of the Gironde …”

Petit Verdot is widely planted in the south of France. Acreage has been increasing in California and Australia and, according to the Robinson book, the variety “looks set for a very positive future in South Africa.”

It is unlikely to see much more acreage of Petit Verdot in the Okanagan or the Similkameen. The available sites for planting are limited; and vintages like 2019, when an early October freeze ended the ripening time for late varieties, discourage growers from taking risks with Petit Verdot.

However, we should be thankful that Mohan Gill, Bordertown’s owner, took a chance on Petit Verdot. Here is a note on the winery’s 2017 Petit Verdot.

It is worth observing that his vines are in a vineyard on the Osoyoos East Bench, one of the warmest sites in the South Okanagan. In 2017, the grapes were picked on November 14 at a ripeness of 27 Brix. That is very late.

Bordertown Petit Verdot 2017 ($30 for 120 cases). The wine is characteristically dark as night in colour. (Someone once remarked that you could look at the sun through a glass of Petit Verdot.) It begins with aromas of plum, black cherry, blackberry and spice. The wine is generous on the palate, with flavours of plum, fig and black currants. Spice and dark chocolate linger on the long finish. 93.