Villeneuve fruit wines changed my mind
Little-known haskap berries grow on a globe-shaped deciduous bush that can reach about two metres in height.
The fruit the native bushes produce, a sort of lighter-coloured, elongated or cylindrical blueberry, often ripens before early strawberries, depending on the weather, while offering a slightly tart flavour akin to a raspberry.
Most important to farmer and winemaker Michel Villeneuve, haskap berries, their name derived from a word in the rare Hokkaido Ainu language, also make a very fine fruit wine – a beverage that Villeneuve has been producing since 2017.
The history of his farm, Les Vergers Villeneuve and Blueberry Farm where he makes the wine, has its own rich history.
“This farm is 175 years old and has been in my family for 125 years,” Villeneuve says. “My great-grandfather was a dairy farmer here, but we converted it after the 1998 ice storm. He retired from farming – after ten days without power.”
For the last seven years, Villeneuve’s haskap wine has been part of a robust lineup of 19 fruit wines made on the 16-hectare farm, open to the public, on Rollin Road in the village of Saint-Pascal-Baylon.
“A friend of mine had been making fruit wine for about 40 years and used my blueberries. His kids didn’t want the business, so he asked me if I would take over. After I retired, I had the time and spent a year with him learning,” Villeneuve says.
He then bought all of his friend’s equipment and had it shipped and re-installed, including dismantling, board-by-board, his friend’s barn and rebuilding it.
Villeneuve’s six or seven hectares of planted crops, along with Mother Nature, generously provides the growing conditions for his wine’s raw ingredients: 2,000 blueberry plants, 3,600 raspberry plants, 500 cherry bushes and 50 grape vines along with 450 apple trees (with 25 varieties), 25 pear trees and rhubarb.
When the weather permits, Villeneuve will have hundreds of customers arrive to pick their own seasonal berries over the summer and fall.
As for the process of making fruit wine, it’s basically the same as traditional wine made from grapes as it is done around the world, he says … for more, visit Editions Andre Paquette.
