Stir Pairing: Vancouver International Jazz Festival 2023 meets La Fabrique St-George Winery
Concerts at the urban winery are part of the fest’s Club Series, which features several other cool venues
Sharon Minemoto.
Every week, Stir Wine Pairing suggests BC wine and food to go with a local arts event.
The event
Vancouver International Jazz Festival’s Club Series
The food and wine
La Fabrique St.-George Winery
Steve Kaldestad.
The lowdown
Stir Pairing matches up local arts events with food and drink, typically each being a separate entity. Sometimes, however, life delivers things in perfect little packages. Such is the case with Vancouver International Jazz Festival’s concerts at La Fabrique St. George Winery, part of its Club Series.
The Fabrique lineup is mighty and spans six dates: Bill Coon Trio on June 23, featuring Coon on archtop guitar, Conrad Good acoustic bass, and Joe Poole drums; Brad Turner Trio on June 24, the band’s namesake being a three-time Juno Award winner for his work in the internationally acclaimed electric-jazz group Metalwood; and Steve Kalestad Trio on June 25, with Kaldestad on sax, Steve Holy on bass and Dave Sikula guitar. Jocelyn Waugh Trio hits the floor with Waugh on trumpet, Wynston Minckler on bass and Chris Fraser guitar on June 29; while James Danderfer Trio, which has a focus on the Great American Songbook, is made up of Danderfer on bass clarinet, Sharon Minemoto on piano, and Jeff Gammon bass on June 30. Vancouver composer-pianist Sharon Minemoto Trio, with Darren Radtke bass and Dave Robbins drums, performs on July 1.
There’s no cover charge for the Jazz Fest x FSG concerts.
The Jazz Fest’s Club Series also includes shows at Guilt & Co, 2nd Floor Gastown (Water Street Café), Frankie’s Jazz Club, and Osita on Commercial Drive. There’s just as much musical, gustatory, and quaffable variety at all of those venues throughout the festival.
La Fabrique St-George Winery
The pairing
The natural wine bar in Mount Pleasant is home to Buvette St-George, a standing bar area for wines by the glass. The team makes its wines on-site in qvevri, an ancient style of clay amphora, out of hand-picked grapes from the Okanagan. Those grapes are foot stomped and fermented with naturally occurring yeasts.
Founder Pascal Roy, who is co-owner of Le Marché St. George, created the winery out of love—and it’s unique in a few ways.
“I was reading the book For the love of wine by Alice Feiring and it got me curious about Georgian wines,” Roy tells Stir. “A few months later I went to visit Georgia and I literally fell in love with the country and its wines. I had been thinking of opening a winery in Vancouver for many years but it was the Georgian wines that gave me the impetus to open La Fabrique St-George.
“I hope that we can give a good representation of the Georgian philosophy of making and drinking wine: Respect of the land and the grapes, reverence to the methods and traditions of making wine, and gratefulness while drinking it,” he says.
The team makes its wines in Georgian clay amphoras called qvervris. “This is the oldest method of making wine in the world that is over 8,000 years old,” Roy says. “Our wines are made naturally with as little intervention as possible. The Georgians say that they don't make wine, and that they let the grapes turn into wine. In the west we call this natural wines.
“We make red, white, rosé, and sparkling wines but our specialty are amber wines, sometimes also called orange wines due to their colour,” he says. “This is a Georgian style of wine that involves an extended period of skin contact while fermenting and aging white grapes. The amber colour of the wine is derived from this process.
The food is meant for the perfect in-house picnics. It’s all set up market-style, meaning you pick up a shopping basket and walk around selecting your favourite goods, then pay at the counter and find a table with cutting boards, cutlery, and plates.
Think charcuteries from D Original Sausage in Vancouver, cheese from Farmhouse Cheese in Agassiz, bread from Fife Bakery, and other little items meant for noshing on.
“I love jazz and being part of the Vancouver International Jazz Festival is such a privilege for us,” Roy says. “Wine is the best accompaniment to jazz!”
La Fabrique St-George Winery
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