Jean-Paul Scieur offers a taste at Le Cep d’Argent.Le Cep d’Argent
I took a cautious step back as winemaker Jean-Paul Scieur, clad in an ankle-length oilskin apron, selected a bottle from rows of sparkling wine set bottoms-up in a large rack to manually disgorge the sediment – spent yeast cells – in the neck of the bottle. It’s a rare process to witness, though it happens often in this small Quebec winery, where Scieur and his brother François produce sparkling wines using traditional Champagne-making methods.
This particular rack of wine has gone through a second fermentation and, after a 20-month rest, each bottle has been carefully rotated by hand three times a day – every four hours, carefully recorded on a schedule – for the past 10 to 12 days. The contents of the bottle he selects is under six kilograms of pressure, Scieur says, opening the cap toward a large wooden barrel with a window cut out of one side. The bubbly wine is released, and almost instantly he stops the spray with his thumb, then holds the bottle up to the light to show the perfectly clear, sediment-free liquid inside before pouring us each a sparkling glass.
Scieur and his brother are sixth-generation Champagne-makers who were born in the region that gives the wines their name and worked on the family’s vineyard in Étoges.
Jean-Paul Scieur produces sparkling wines at his Quebec vineyard using traditional Champagne methods.Julie Van Rosendaal/The Globe and Mail
Growing up, they learned the intricacies of cultivating grapes and transforming them into wine from their parents, whom Scieur points out among a cluster of other relatives standing behind a truck in a framed black-and-white photo labelled “Libération d’Étoges, 28 August 1944” on the wall of one of the tasting rooms. The Scieur family is well-known for its French brand, Champagne Scieur & Fils, now managed by their eldest brother, Michel, back in France.
Further down the wall, another photo captures the brothers in their early teens, arms tightly wound around each others’ shoulders. In the eighties, Scieur and François brought their operation to Canada, scouting Quebec for the ideal combination of soil and climate for a new winery. At 200 metres above sea level, the 46 hectares they selected on the gentle slope of a plateau overlooking Lake Magog, nestled in the Eastern Townships about an hour and a half southeast of Montreal, had the terroir they were looking for, a combination of sand, clay, lime and chalk, and a microclimate ideal for growing Frontenac and Seyval blanc and noir hybrid grapes. Their new location inspired their new name – Le Cep translates to “vine,” Argent to “silver,” referring to the shimmering surface of the lake below.
The first vines at Le Cep d'Argent were planted 33 years ago.Le Cep d’Argent
The first vines were planted in 1985 and the first visitors welcomed in 1988 to taste, learn about the winemaking process and explore the vineyard. Since opening, becoming a destination for locals and tourists has been as much a part of the Scieur brothers’ business as producing the wine itself. “Winemakers must offer an experience,” Scieur says. Their wines are available through provincial SAQ stores, and last year a revised law came into effect that allows Quebec winemakers to also sell directly to grocery stores. This is an improvement, he says, but the ideal is to draw customers to the winery to buy direct. At Vignoble Le Cep d’Argent, this means offering catering services through the on-site kitchen, offering tours and dinner packages, hosting special events such as weddings and meetings, and coming up with creative ways to attract the public to their rural winery and surrounding vineyard.
To encourage this, there are tasting rooms throughout the winery and visitors can enjoy a glass out on the grounds. Scieur opens a bottle of actual Champagne from the family property in France to compare with a bottle of brut produced in Magog. To be called Champagne, a wine must be produced in one of the four main growing areas of the Champagne terroir, whose boundaries were defined by France’s appellation system in 1927, even if traditional techniques are used. Both the Champagne and the sparkling wine are crisp and delicate, clearly crafted with the same precision.
We wander outside, up the gentle slope, through sun-drenched vines ready to harvest two weeks early this year and pass a group of friends eating lunch under a veranda with panoramic views of the vineyard and the lake. Scieur chats with them as we walk by, making me wish I’d paid more attention to my French. But there is one phrase I recognize, which he translates as he turns, extending an arm toward the vines with their lake backdrop. “Enjoy,” he says. “This is the best terrace in town.” Like the bubbles themselves, nothing is lost in translation.