Planting for the Future: Clonal Diversity at Westcott

There is a phrase in viticulture that gets used often but rarely examined closely: vines need time. A vine planted today won't produce wine worth talking about for five to seven years. The fruit it carries in its prime, genuinely expressive, terroir-driven fruit, may not arrive until the vine is fifteen or twenty years old. This is the nature of the work. You plant not for next year's harvest, but for the vineyards your grandchildren will farm.

With that in mind, we have made a very significant investment in Westcott's future. Over the past several seasons we have planted more than 30,000 new vines at Butlers' Grant. The goal is not simply to replace old or underperforming blocks. The goal is to transform the genetic complexity of our vineyards.

For most of our existence, our Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Cabernet Franc plantings have relied on a relatively narrow range of clones: Chardonnay 95, 96, and 76; Pinot Noir 777, 667, and 115; and Cabernet Franc material planted close to 25 years ago. These are good, reliable clones. They built our reputation. But they are also among the most common selections in Niagara. In choosing them, we were in excellent company and in very crowded company at the same time.

What we are doing now is different.

A clone is a vine propagated vegetatively from a single mother vine. Because grapevines reproduce by cuttings rather than seeds, any natural genetic mutation that occurs in a single vine, a difference in berry size, cluster weight, ripening time, or flavour compound, can be stabilized and propagated. Over centuries, this process has produced dozens of distinct clones within a single variety like Chardonnay or Pinot Noir, each with meaningfully different viticultural and winemaking characteristics.

In France, the national program of clonal selection is managed through ENTAV-INRA, the technical institute for wine and vine in partnership with the French national agricultural research institute. Their official selections catalogue lists certified clones rigorously tested and registered, often from conservatory plantings that house hundreds of vine candidates grown side by side under identical conditions. The newest registered clones carry four-digit numbers, because after decades of selection there are simply that many candidates that have passed the threshold for certification. The fact that we are planting clones numbered in the 1000s is a reflection of the depth and rigour of that process.

In the United States, the equivalent body is Foundation Plant Services (FPS) at the University of California, Davis, which maintains more than 80 registered Chardonnay clones alone, each disease-tested and indexed before distribution. Many of the clones most widely planted in Niagara today, including the Dijon series, arrived in North America through California and Oregon, where they were heat-treated, virus-indexed, and re-registered through the UC Davis program. The new clones we are planting at Butlers' Grant come to us directly from French-certified ENTAV-INRA sources, the same programme, the same rigour, the latest generation of selections, with no California detour.

Chardonnay has deep roots in Niagara. Bill Lenko and his father John planted what is believed to be the oldest Chardonnay in Canada in 1959 on their Beamsville property. Paul Bosc Sr., a French-trained viticulturalist who immigrated to Canada in 1964, went further: in 1976 he founded Chateau des Charmes as the first commercial vineyard in Niagara dedicated exclusively to European vinifera varieties, a decision that earned him the Order of Canada and changed the trajectory of the entire industry. The clones that arrived in those early decades, principally 76, 95, and 96, were originally developed at the University of Burgundy in Dijon under the ENTAV-INRA program. We are not abandoning these clones. But we are adding to them considerably, with selections that come to us fresh from France.

It is also worth noting: some of the 2024 plantings have already surprised us. Through the combination of Butlers' Grant's natural fertility and the viticultural practices of the Westcott team, a number of these vines will bear fruit in 2026, their third season, earlier than is typical for newly planted vines, and a real testament to how well both the site and the management of these new blocks has progressed.

Cabernet Franc is one of Niagara's two signature red grapes, and Westcott has long treated it seriously. But our existing block, planted close to 25 years ago, draws on older certified material that has served us without being particularly distinctive in a regional context where most serious producers are growing from broadly similar clonal stock. The new plantings bring something genuinely different.

This is the kind of clonal conversation that has long characterised the great Cabernet Franc appellations of France. The Loire's finest Chinon and Bourgueil producers have always worked with multiple clonal selections to build the complexity and freshness that distinguishes their wines. In Saint-Emilion, Chateau Cheval Blanc, where Cabernet Franc constitutes around sixty percent of the blend, demonstrates what the variety can achieve when site and clonal selection align. We are not claiming to replicate those wines. But we are, for the first time, planting the kind of clonal diversity that makes that level of thinking possible.

Of everything we have planted, the Swan Clone Pinot Noir may be the most significant choice.

Westcott's existing Pinot Noir blocks, Clones 777, 667, and 115, are not going anywhere. But Swan adds an entirely different voice to the conversation. When we eventually blend across all of them, we will have structural richness and dark fruit from 667, aromatic complexity from 777, balance from 115, and the Swan's distinctive brightness, spice, and floral delicacy. The sum should be greater than its parts.

None of this fruit will appear in a Westcott bottle for several years. The first young-vine harvests, whenever we choose to use them, will be blended into larger lots to add rather than define. The wines that will fully reflect these choices, the ones where a customer opens a bottle and notices something genuinely different, something more layered, are probably ten to fifteen years away.