Place is everything when it comes to wine. It’s where the sun, the rain, the air and the soil all meet – one special and unique place, like nowhere else on Earth. Cool climates are said to produce the most elegant and exciting wines in the world. Our place is Ontario, and it is the epitome of cool climate. Learn more about our Latitude, Lakes and Limestone below.
While you might think Ontario is too far north for growing grapes, Ontario’s wine regions actually share the same latitude with other well-known wine regions including Tuscany and Oregon. Ontario’s angle to the sun allows us to soak up every drop of sunshine needed to ripen classic grape varieties. The fluctuations in daily temperature over the course of the growing season create conditions critical to achieving a fine balance between acidity, alcohol and fruit expression. Wines from cooler climates are more aromatic, lighter in body and higher in acidity than those from hotter areas, providing refreshment, harmony with food and good aging potential.
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Stretching across the southern part of the province, Ontario’s vineyards are located near three of the Great Lakes – Lake Ontario, Lake Erie and Lake Huron. The lakes moderate cold winter temperatures and cool the vineyards during Ontario’s hot summers. The Great Lakes have shaped Ontario’s wine regions and play a major role in moderating the extremes of the region’s continental climate. During the winter the lakes do not freeze, their warmer water helping protect their shoreline vineyards against vine-destroying deep freezes. During the summer their cooler waters moderate heat extremes; 30ºC temperatures are not uncommon.
Through the ages Ontario experienced glacial events that shaped and eroded the layers of sedimentary rock and ancient reef structures, creating the Niagara Escarpment, which forms a spine across southern Ontario between Lakes Huron and Ontario. Where it runs along the south shore of Lake Ontario – forming the Niagara Peninsula – there are very complex soil structures. There are gradations and pockets of sand, gravel and clay over limestone bedrock packed into a band between the lake shoreline and the crest of the escarpment. Supporting Niagara’s vineyards and orchards this band runs about 50kms east-west at varying widths. The same glacial events affected Prince Edward County but left a virtual island of limestone bedrock exposed in Lake Ontario, with topsoil less than a metre deep in some places, while on the shore of Lake Erie the limestone runs deeper below mixed sand and clay soils.
The soils in the Great Lakes basin vary from sand to clay to rock, with a high concentration of limestone from an ancient seabed that was exposed over a long period of glacial activity. Limestone is the same basic soil type also shared by Burgundy and other regions of northern France. Some of the vineyards lie flat on former seabed areas, while others are perched on hills and benches that formed the ancient shoreline. The topography is ideal for water drainage (too much moisture can dilute flavours), and provides nutrients and minerality to the grapes.
We acknowledge that our wineries and vineyards are on the traditional territories of the Anishinabewaki, Attiwonderonk, Haudenosaunee, Mississauga and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, Ojibwe, the Odawa, and the Potawatomi People. As guests of this land, we thank Indigenous Peoples for caring and protecting the lands and waters on which we work and live. In the spirit of peace, friendship and respect to all Indigenous Peoples who have and continue to live and work on these lands, we will continue to honour this place we call home.
