Domaine St-Jacques (CVQ*)

About Domaine St-Jacques (CVQ*)

Domaine St-Jacques is a family winery of 23 hectares. All the grapes are estate grown and organic. The vineyard is operated by the Du Temple-Quirion family and is located in St-Jacques-le-Mineur, which is in the Richelieu Valley region, in the extreme south of the province of Québec at the 45th parallel, close to the border of the United States.
With harsh winters as a Canadian cold climate region, Domaine St-Jacques has initiated in 2006 a winter protection method. The method was tested, adapted and developed in our vineyard and is known today as the “Domaine St-Jacques technique”. Some wineries in other cold climate regions, like Ontario, states like Ohio and Michigan and even in Japan, now utilize the geotextiles to protect their vines.
We have been among the first, in 2008, in Québec, to test the Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris. We have today a majority of viniferas, including, as mentioned, the Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris, but also Chardonnay, Riesling, Gamay, Cabernet Franc, Syrah, Sauvignon Blanc and Gewürztraminer.
“Grown in a family climate” is our philosophy, focusing on quality and long-term vision to take care of our environment, soil and our people. These are the main reasons why being organic and making minimal interventions on our wines is so important to us. Our team is composed of 19 passionate people sharing our vision, controlling all the operations from grapes to bottling for all our wines on site. We are proud to produce estate-grown terroir wines in our beautiful province of Québec. Enjoy!

CVQ*
The Conseil des Vins du Québec (CVQ) is an association that brings together nearly a hundred Quebec winegrowers and players in the Quebec wine industry — all united by an all-consuming passion for vine growing and wine production.
The association was created in October 1987 thanks to the initiative of winegrowers anxious to unify their energies to give birth to the wine industry in Quebec. The CVQ defends many files of interest in order to develop this sector of activity — files relating, among other things, to commercialization, the prosperity of entrepreneurs and the development of science and knowledge.
Our common goal? Grow and promote the Quebec viticulture industry one cuvée at a time.

Representative Biography

Yvan Quirion, Owner

Yvan Quirion is an entrepreneur and has started different businesses since 1991. In 2005, Nicole his wife, Yvan and their three kids, Laurie, Jérémy and Sarah bought a 5 hectares vineyard in St-Jacques-le-Mineur, 30 minutes south of Montréal, in Québec. They built a winery for their first vintage in 2007. Yvan realized rapidly that the cold winters killed the primary buds and start testing different materials to protect buds from damages. In winter 2005-2006, with the help of a colleague from civil engineering, André Leblanc, who gave advice to test new geotextile tested by them to protect tropical plants from dying in cold winters.
Yvan worked with engineers from Texel, the Québec geotextile manufacturer, to test and develop different weavings to keep the vines not colder than -20ᵒC.
In 2008, he tested viniferas (Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer, Riesling and Chardonnay) with geotextiles and kept improving the materials and methods to perform very efficiently and bring to full maturity all the viniferas tested.
He was president of the Conseil des Vins du Québec from 2015 to 2020 and brought the Indication Géographique Protégée (IGP Vin du Québec) in 2018 with approval of the provincial government and established the different IGP regions for the province of Québec with all his colleagues.
The vineyard has 23 hectares today, all organic certified by Ecocert Canada, mainly planted with Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Riesling, Gamay and Vidal.
With a business degree, Sarah, the younger daughter of the family, and Gabriel, her husband who has a mechanical engineering degree, are now partners in the business. Sarah is involved in sales and marketing and Gabriel is operations manager in viticulture and winemaking.

Why We're Cool

With harsh winters as a Canadian cold climate region, Domaine St-Jacques in St-Jacques-le-Mineur, Québec, has initiated in 2006 a winter protection method using geotextiles. The method was tested, adapted and developed in our vineyard and is known today as the “Domaine St-Jacques technique”. Some wineries in other cold climate regions, like Ontario, states like Ohio and Michigan and even in Japan, now utilize the geotextiles to protect their vines in the winter. Yvan has start sharing information and data on his technique in 2010, and over the years with Jim Willwerth from Brock University (Biological Sciences and Researcher at CCOVI).
We have worked with Texel, a Quebec manufacturer of geotextiles, manly for construction and nurseries , to develop different profiles and textures, to increase efficiency and performance to keep the primary buds no lower than -20ᵒC to prevent balances and to produce only on primary buds, which is an issue in cold climate viticulture.
With a growing season shorter by a few weeks and degree days, comparable with regions like Burgundy and the Loire Valley, we assure full maturity and quality producing on primary buds with geotextiles. But we need to balance the vines and control crops to optimize the lignification of the canes, that will produce the following season and increase the capacity to resist cold days/nights that will be colder than -20ᵒC.
We use cover crops to feed naturally our soils and to facilitate the installation, in November, and to pick up, in April, the geotextiles.
Over the last sixteen seasons, we have designed and build effective equipment, to install and pick up 100km geotextiles in 6 days only.
Last February 4th of 2023, we have experienced a -31ᵒC, early in the morning, with a good snow cover on geotextiles, and the minimum temperature under was -14ᵒC. With an isolation radiant of more than 17ᵒC. It is very performing!