A big St. Albert warehouse seems the wrong place to have a drink of wine. The concrete floors and the business-like cans of paint at Doric Painting don't quite have the ambience you might expect to find at a wine-tasting party.
But using plain glass tumblers, each filled with a small drop of red wine, brothers Modesto and Gates Abella do it right. They swirl the richly-coloured liquid in the bottom of their glasses. Delicately they pass their glasses under their noses and sniff the wine. They sip it and in doing so, they taste the centuries of tradition that helped them perfect the process they use to make wine, not just for themselves, but for 12 sons, sons-in-law and cousins.
The smell of thousands of freshly-crushed grapes is in the air, and so perhaps the perfume is in the wine too. Nonetheless, Abella wine has a gentle taste that's like grape juice – with a kick.
The Abella brothers have been making wine since they were boys in Montreal, when their father, Giovanni Abella used to make wine.
"This was Dad's tradition," said Modesto, 59, as he explained that Giovanni still comes to supervise the making of the wine.
A few years ago, the Abella brothers moved the messiest stage of wine making from their home garages to the company shop. At about the same time, more family members became involved and making larger quantities of wine became a fall tradition shared by all.
No one in the Abella family grows grapes and all the fruit comes from California. Something in the grapes themselves tastes of heat and sunshine, as if through a summer of growing, the grapes have absorbed flavours and nuances that are entirely Californian.
"Even in Italy we didn't grow our own grapes. I believe in Sicily the family bought the grapes at the local co-op. You need rolling hills to grow good grapes. Here it's too cold. The grapes grown here aren't sweet enough, and our grapes come from the Napa Valley, where the ocean air makes them better," said Gates, 56.
This fall, through the Italian Centre Shop in Edmonton, the Abellas imported 225 cases, holding 8,100 pounds of California-grown Zinfandel grapes. The grapes have purple skins and clear pulp, and they are the preferred fruit for this family. The quantity they import changes every year.
"Some years we've brought in 300 cases," Modesto said. "It just depends how many family members want to make wine. I think our family group is one of the largest to make wine in the Edmonton area."
Many hands, no feet
Though no feet are involved here, it takes many sets of hands to process the grapes on crushing day. This year 24 Abellas gathered in the brothers' shop.
"Mostly the men do the work. It's a family feast. We're Italian, so of course we eat pasta and sausage and cheese. I do the cooking and this is the time when we taste last year's wine for the first time," said Modesto.
The hard work isn't so much the five hours it takes the men to crush the grapes, Modesto explained, but instead it's all the cleaning that is required.
"We have to clean all the grapes and all the vats have to be pressure washed and sterilized," he said, as he pointed to 20 plastic, 45-gallon containers.
"In Dad's day it was wooden barrels. I remember when we were kids in Montreal, we had to put all the barrels outside to let them swell. It seemed to take days," said Gates.
After crushing day, the wine is allowed to ferment before it is syphoned and put into glass demijohn containers, which each family takes home to place in their own basements for a year. When it is bottled, every family's wine tastes slightly different, and there is some kibbitzing involved in deciding whose is best.
"It's strange because everybody makes the same here, and there are no differences when it leaves the shop, but everybody's house is different and so everybody's wine is different," said Modesto, adding that he believes temperature plays a part in determining how the wine will taste.
He has a special wine cellar in his basement. The outside wall of the room is not insulated, so the wine is kept cooler. He doesn't keep vegetables in this cold room and he constantly monitors the temperature and the condition of the wine.
"We've been lucky. We've never had a bad batch. But you have to take care of wine. You have to check it at least every two weeks," Modesto said.
The brothers are pleased that their children have also taken up this hobby and are carrying on the family tradition.
"We're the masters now. There are always new people taking part as we get new family members – new sons-in-law. Our sons have their own wine cellars now. And among our friends, Abella wine is considered very special. Abella means beautiful, so it's beautiful wine," Gates said.
