Chef Alexandre Vachon and beverage director Joanie Métivier bring Québec terroir and a world-reaching cellar together at Le Hatley, recipient of VineRoutes’ Vine Award for Best in Distinction in 2026
At Le Hatley, the sense of place starts close to home. One of its signature dishes begins with something as small as a duck egg.
Chef Alexandre Vachon’s oeuf de la canne blanche begins in Stukely-Sud, Québec, with a duck egg sabayon made with Domaine de Bergeville sparkling wine, joined by wild Saint-Pierre caviar and, depending on the iteration, snow crab. The egg comes from À la canne blanche, a farm run by Maryse Sauvé and Daniel Bonin, both visually impaired; even its name — “with the white cane” — speaks to their story. The connection carries onto the plate, which Vachon developed with a local woodworker, incorporating an inverted cut bottle as its base and Braille etched into the wood.
Then Joanie Métivier pours the wine.
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She might keep you very close indeed, with a sparkling wine also from Domaine Bergeville, just five kilometres from Manoir Hovey. Métivier collaborated with the winery on an exclusive cuvée for the property, its extended lees ageing chosen specifically to meet the creamy richness of the dish. Or she might travel considerably farther, to Champagne, with Geoffroy Expression Premier Cru Cumières Extra Brut.
Same plate. Two completely different conversations. “Alexandre’s plate tells you where you are,” says Métivier. “The wine can deepen that sense of place or open a door to somewhere else.”
Le Hatley is located within Manoir Hovey, in North Hatley, Quebec.
That exchange plays out across Le Hatley, the fine-dining restaurant inside Manoir Hovey on the shores of Lake Massawippi in North Hatley. Vachon’s cooking draws tightly around Québec — its seasons, farms, forests, waterways and producers — while Métivier’s cellar reaches across the wine world. And the two are in constant conversation.
Before the plate
“The process often begins with a memory or a connection to the land and tradition,” Vachon says. “For me, cooking is about telling the story of where we come from.”
Chef Alexandre Vachon.
Sometimes that memory is remarkably simple: eating a warm tomato straight from the garden as a child. Vachon, the grandson of farmers, grew up in Saint-Albert, Ontario, and his career later took him through the Fairmont Château Lake Louise, restaurants in Australia and Maison Boulud at Montréal’s Ritz-Carlton before Manoir Hovey. Today, his cooking draws those experiences into what he describes as a “semi-nordic cuisine,” shaped by a mix of cultures and techniques adapted to the landscape and climate, and built around short supply chains and close relationships with local artisans and producers.
You can read that geography right on the menu. During my dining experience, trout came from Montebello, guinea fowl from Cookshire-Eaton and Wagyu beef from Marieville; raspberries were grown in the Eastern Townships and Flavora yogurt came from Compton. The vegetarian menu was equally specific: herbs from Manoir Hovey’s own gardens, carrots from Ferme Sanders in Compton and local greenhouse raspberries. Provenance is printed beneath the principal ingredient of each course.
That specificity carries beyond the tasting menus. The larger menu moves through Québec and Canada with tomatoes from Compton, Gaspésie tuna and halibut, foie gras from La Canardière in Carignan and lamb from Ferme Péché Mouton in Bonsecours.
Vachon sees that localism as more than proximity. He talks about Québec through its history and geography, but also as a meeting of cultures and ideas — a cuisine that has evolved in response to its environment. Knowing where those techniques, dishes and feelings come from, he says, gives him the vocabulary to express them at Le Hatley.
“The food always leads,” Métivier says. “Our menu is deeply shaped by seasonality, availability, and the work of our producers, so in many ways, a dish begins on the farms before it reaches the kitchen.”
Métivier generally knows what Vachon is developing before a dish is finished. They talk through its ingredients, textures and intention; then she considers what the wine might bring to it. “I look for wines that can elevate the dish rather than simply complement it,” she says. “The food provides the starting point, but the wine can reveal another dimension of the dish and influence how the guest experiences it.”
A ‘Vine Award’ winning cellar shaped by history and curiosity
Le Hatley’s current program encompasses more than 900 wine selections and 8,000 total bottles, with Canadian wines representing 10 percent of the list. Across Le Hatley and Manoir Hovey’s restaurants, approximately 50 wines are offered by the glass, about 15 percent of them Canadian, according to Métivier.
Wine Director and Head Sommelier Joanie Metivier.
Métivier arrived at Le Hatley after working across several corners of the wine industry — restaurants, writing, tourism and importing — with an ambition to build what she calls “an exceptional cellar”: established names alongside rising talents, passionate winemakers and genuine trailblazers, with each selection guided by quality, authenticity and the story behind the bottle.
“I inherited a cellar with a rich history and a strong sense of place; one already carrying the signatures of several different philosophies,” she says. Because the entire cellar is available to guests, however, it is constantly evolving. Métivier says its identity can change considerably in the space of a year.
Her approach has been to preserve the great classics that form its foundation while introducing “rare, surprising, and difficult to access wines that reflect what is happening in the wine world today.”
There are treasures here. Métivier singles out the 1982 Salon Le Mesnil Blanc de Blancs, currently listed at $2,500, alongside Bordeaux First Growths, Cepparello verticals, older Penfolds Grange and Vega Sicilia Único, Clos Rougeard and an extensive collection of Burgundy. Page after page of Burgundy moves from regional bottlings through Chablis and the Côte de Beaune to multiple premiers crus from Puligny-Montrachet alone. Champagne stretches from growers and grandes marques to mature prestige cuvées.
But the classics are only part of what interests her. Métivier is just as eager to talk about Jean Stodden Spätburgunder from Germany or Suertes del Marqués Vidonia, made from Listán Blanco on Tenerife, as Domaine Jean Grivot Vosne-Romanée Premier Cru Les Beaux Monts. “The cellar’s depth is not defined by prestige alone,” she says, “but by a collection of wines with provenance, character, and a story worth sharing.”
Her fingerprints on the cellar are perhaps clearest in that curiosity. Yet she is adamant that it shouldn’t simply reflect her own taste. She wants a program that inspires the entire sommelier team, giving them wines they are genuinely excited to put in front of guests — and, in her words, to “push the boundaries of what a hotel wine program can be.”
Oeuf de la canne blanche at Le Hatley (courtesy of Manoir Hovey).
That curiosity extends to the by-the-glass list. Québec pinot gris sits among Austrian grüner veltliner, Lebanese obeidi, South African chenin blanc, Burgundy and Jura among the whites; reds travel from Greece and Sicily to Prince Edward County, Beaujolais, Bordeaux, the Rhône and beyond. Québec also appears in sparkling, rosé and dessert pours.
Canadian wine has a strong presence here, but not simply because it is local.
“The wines we select must earn their place on the list through quality, precision, character, and a genuine sense of place,” Métivier says, pointing to producers including Domaine de l’Espiègle, Domaine du Nival, Vignoble Camy and Les Pervenches in Québec, alongside Pearl Morissette, Bachelder, Closson Chase, Le Vieux Pin, LaStella and Martin’s Lane elsewhere in Canada.
“What excites me most is the opportunity to surprise guests and show them that Canadian wine deserves to be considered on its own merits, alongside great wines from anywhere in the world.”
The space between impeccable and warm
For all the precision behind the food, wine and service at Le Hatley, the experience itself never feels clinical.
The service is impeccable, but also warm and attentive — extraordinarily knowledgeable without ever making a show of it. Menus and pairings unfold together. Questions are welcomed. Knowledge is shared generously. And the local provenance isn’t an abstract philosophy delivered at the beginning of dinner; it keeps reappearing, ingredient after ingredient, producer after producer, course after course.
The impeccable grounds at Manoir Hovey.
Vachon describes their work together in terms of the whole dining experience: temperature, texture and taste, with Métivier’s wine selections highlighting different aspects of a dish. For Métivier, that experience begins with listening and understanding what a guest is looking for, then taking that expectation “one step further.” The wine program isn’t about displaying knowledge or simply offering prestigious bottles, but giving each guest the opportunity to experience something extraordinary, unexpected or simply right for that particular moment.
“If a guest leaves with a renewed curiosity for wine, a deeper appreciation for what they tasted, or simply the memory of a remarkable bottle,” she says, “then we have achieved our goal.”
Ask her to choose the one bottle that explains Le Hatley, though, and she doesn’t reach for the 1982 Salon. Her answer changes with what is exciting her in the cellar at that moment.
Right now, it’s Jean-François Ganevat’s 2021 Côtes du Jura Les Survivants Chardonnay, a rare wine from a vintage marked by devastating spring frosts — its very existence part of the story. Last week, it might have been a new allocation from Sicily’s I Vigneri di Salvo Foti; the week before, a magnum of Étienne Calsac’s L’Échappée Belle Blanc de Blancs Extra Brut Champagne.
“The bottle may change from one evening to the next, and that is precisely the point,” Métivier says. “Le Hatley is rooted in a remarkable cellar, but defined just as much by curiosity, discovery, and the pleasure of sharing what excites us right now.”
– Alana Lapierre is eastern Canada and international editor for VineRoutes
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