TERROIR

Our unique 34-acre organic winery is located in the sub-appellation of Niagara called St. Davids Bench. Although our neighbouring growers also enjoy the fortuitous 20 percent higher temperatures of this sub-appellation, this property is an anomaly; the soils are lighter, its airflow and water drainage more consistent, and its perch on the Bench is at its highest elevation.

The family farm sits atop the river channel of the ancestral Niagara River as it once raged, 22,800 years ago, as part of an ancient drainage system that drained melted water from the thick surrounding glaciers. The massive volume of water the river carried hollowed out a gorge over one kilometer long. When the third glacier retreated 12,500 years ago, it emptied into this gorge massive amounts of glacial silt, filling it to the shoreline and plugging it up so completely it would never reopen again. The river’s waters, not to be denied in their downward imperative to the sea, rerouted to the present channel where the Niagara River now flows as it empties into Lake Ontario. Geologists refer to the earth below our vineyard as part of The St. Davids Buried Gorge.