Portrait Gourmand | Château Taillefer Lafon, for the love of the land and good wine

Isabelle Vallée
Blogger-curious and nosy

Professional and passionate about 2.0 marketing, Isabelle Vallée has long contributed to Montreal's cultural vitality by handling communications for the city's biggest fashion events. Now self-employed since 2011, she supports organizations in their online presence challenges by offering 360° Web strategy, community management and personalized content marketing services. In January 2015, Isabelle launched the cultural platform lesbonsplans.ca, for which she acts as editor-in-chief and photographer. Curious, foodie, culture lover, she shares on this blog what to see, what to do, what to discover on the North Shore, in Laval and in the Laurentians.

Did you know there's a château in Laval? Yes, a real château... and it even produces great wines! On Montée Champagne (a predestined name), Château Taillefer Lafon, the first winery in Quebec authorized to use the term "Château", welcomes you to a vineyard born of a great passion for terroir and a great deal of ingenuity and tenacity. It's the perfect place to discover and purchase an impressive variety of 100% Laval wines. Interview with the vineyard's cellar master, Merched Fakhry.

What products can you find at Château Taillefer Lafon?

We have two entry-level products: our red wine and our white wine (blended wines containing a variety of grape varieties). These are two wines that, over time, will retain the same blend of grape varieties to offer our customers a relatively consistent taste year after year. We also have our top-of-the-range single-varietal products, including our Chardonnay, Muscat and Riesling, not to mention our two Champagne-style sparkling wines (made in the bottle like Champagne) and our ice cider, which is one of our most popular products.

A must-have?

I'd say our sparkling rosé can be drunk with cakes, chocolate or any other occasion! (laughs).

What sets Château Taillefer Lafon wines apart from other Quebec wines?

We are one of the largest producers in Quebec to use grapes from "noble vines", i.e. vitis vinifera. This is the main vine species cultivated in Europe, and the origin of many grape varieties such as Cabernet, Chardonnay, Riesling and Muscat. Our vineyards also have hybrid vines, crosses that are widely used in wine production. Unlike noble vines, hybrid vines adapt more easily to cold climates and produce many more grapes. However, the quality of the wine is often less attractive than that produced by vitis vinifera. As a result, using noble vines requires more work. In winter, we have to bury the vines, as they don't stand the cold very well, and this requires more intervention on a daily basis. Even if the work is more difficult, it makes a big difference to the quality of the wine we offer here.

How many bottles do you produce per year?

We produce between 35,000 and 40,000 bottles of wine a year, depending on the year, the vintage and the harvest. For cider, we produce around 180,000 bottles a year.

Awards and distinctions

Over the years, Château Taillefer Lafon has won numerous awards and distinctions for its products, including a gold medal for its ice wine and a silver medal for its ice cider at the Sélections Mondiales des Vins in 2004. The Château's ice wine also won the Vinofed Grand Trophy in 2004, when it competed against 2,300 other products from 30 countries.

**Château Taillefer Lafon is part of the Saveurs de Laval repertoire.