Incredible facts
Can tomato wine become more popular than traditional grape wine in one day? One Canadian wine lover is very hopeful.
Pascal Miche, a former butcher who immigrated to Canada from Belgium, said his tomato product was the first wine of its kind to be commercially successful. Since he launched his project three years ago, he has been selling 34,000 bottles a year.
The Canadian used his great-grandfather's family recipe, which had been kept secret for four generations.
The winemaker is extremely enthusiastic about his work, choosing tomatoes with the same care as winemakers select grapes. Tomatoes then go through the same stages as crushing, soaking , fermentation and pressing. It produces two types of wine: dry and velvety, which can be compared to the sweet Pinot de Charente.
However, in order for Misha to be called wine, he needs to convince the authorities that the tomato is a fruit. By the way, this is confirmed by science. Botanically speaking, a tomato is a fruit, mainly because it contains plant seeds. But its use in cooking has led to the fact that many consider it a vegetable.
Misha tested 16 tomato varieties to select six that grew well in cooler temperatures and the heights in Quebec where he grows them.
In his wine, named “Omerto”, he uses subarctic, yellow and black cherry tomatoes for their yield and taste.
The process of turning a tomato into wine takes about 9 months. The unusual wine looks and smells like tomatoes, and looks like a transparent white wine with 18 percent alcohol content.
Those who have tasted the wine describe its taste as “a fruity taste, slightly spicy, slightly honey-sweet” that goes well with desserts and spicy products.
Omerto wine now sells for $25 per 375 ml bottle and can only be found in a few stores in Quebec and Manitoba. The winemaker himself is going to expand sales in the US, France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.