Tidings Magazine

The Cypress Hills, located in Saskatchewan’s South-West corner, are a bit of a geographic anomaly. Rising 1400 meters above sea level, they are the highest point between the Rocky Mountains in the west and Labrador to the east, and were left largely untouched by the forces of nature which carved the rest of the Prairies from the receding glaciers thousands of years ago. Because of this they are home to many plants found nowhere else on the Great Plains, including the only working vineyard and winery on the Prairies! The town of Maple Creek (just off the Trans-Canada Highway) is considered to be the gateway to the Center Block of the Cypress Hills, and the winery is located 20 km south of the town on Highway 271 on the way to the Fort Walsh National Historic Site (another very interesting place to visit!).

We’re flying high over the turbulent Andes Mountains. The stewardess is serving the last third of the plane as a rushed Spanish voice comes over the loud speaker. I can see the surprise in her eyes as she stops, turns and starts to collect the garbage. It’s the 25th minute of a 50-minute flight and we’re going down. I’m wondering if the onboard snacks will be my last meal. Ten minutes later we’re safely down at Mendoza’s El Plumerillo airport. The stewardess says this is the fastest they’ve ever flown from Santiago to Mendoza. At this point I just want a drink.

Things actually started quite uneventfully a few days earlier, as a number of us arrived in Santiago for a junket to visit Chile and Argentina’s growing wine regions. As we headed for our tour of the city there was an air of enthusiasm. Most of us had delighted in the local wines but only some of us had actually been here before.

On October 14, 1997, Natalie Skeldon entered the world naked. As adult-movie star Savanna Sampson, Natalie has spent the last eight years of her life in front of the cameras in the same condition. It is not because of her legs or her body that she is being featured in Tidings, though, but as a bona fide wine producer whose wines have elicited scores of 90 and 91 points from adult-wine critic Robert Parker. As a result of this endorsement, her initial offering of 400 cases sold out before it could reach the US market.

So far, Savanna’s image graces three products, all made in Italy by a vintner who also supplies wines to the Vatican. Tony Aspler caught up with the Manhattan-based wine celebrity in Toronto recently, where importing agent Larry Brenzel was introducing her 2004 Sogno Uno (“Dream One”) at Nocce restaurant.

“A Katyusha rocket will take out forty vines.” That is just one of the hazards Avi Feldstein, winemaker for Israel’s Segal wines, has to deal with — along with the deer, wild boar and grouse that devour his grapes.

We are standing in the Dovev vineyard, in the Upper Galilee, within sight of a former Hezbollah outpost. To the north, the Lebanese border. Until 2006 Feldstein had to be accompanied by Israeli soldiers whenever he went to tend to his mountaintop vineyard. Ten years ago, he carved out twenty-four hectares of shallow terra rossa soil — the rockiest vineyard in the north of the country — and planted it with Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Shiraz, Sangiovese, Ruby Cabernet, Chardonnay and Muscat of Alexandria.