Vine Intervention

BC’s bid to become the next great wine region

- ELLEN HIMELFARB

ON A DRIZZLY November evening, the Palais de la Bourse shines like gold, its Ionic pillars lit from below, its cupola poking through the mist. The palace, built at the centre of Bordeaux’s eighteenth-century riverfront and bearing a striking resemblance to Paris’s Place Vendôme, is an apt venue for a gathering of winemakers. When Jacques-Olivier Pesme strides into the banquet hall, his trench coat the same honey hue as the antique stone, he looks right at home.

He scans the room. “Let’s start with Mendoza.”

The wine-tasting party is a hot ticket at the Great Wine Capitals conference, an annual gathering of the world’s ten most powerful wine-producing regions. And on this, the twentieth anniversary of the Great Wine Capitals Global Network, Pesme, fifty-two, is a marquee name, headlining talks and generally holding court to more than 100 high-octane delegates who have flown in from five continents. Pesme’s expertise in tourism, brand identity, and global positioning has earned him a reputation as a sort of wine whisperer. It’s also led him to his current position at the University of British Columbia, where he has the unusual academic mandate of supporting the development of the province’s wine industry at home and abroad. The goal is that, one day, the Okanagan Valley will be as well-known as the Loire.

Pesme seems less egghead than rock star this evening — it takes us ten minutes to advance from the coat check to the ballroom’s threshold, so steady is the barrage of air kisses in his direction. I leave him to the crowd and escort myself around the room, sipping Spanish Riojas, Napa Cabernets, Bordeaux Supérieurs. Finally, I arrive at Argentina’s Mendoza.