My Trip

Category Archives: My Niagara Profiles

Ann Sperling

If you’ve ever had the chance to experience Niagara-on-the-lake, you’ll know it as a picturesque paradise where less is more and where the lush green landscape and rolling hills are enough to enchant you on their own, even before you try the wine born out of this renowned grape-friendly microclimate. With that, a visit to one Niagara-on-the-Lake vineyard is a must—a winery that gets right down to basics and fully embraces the less is more philosophy that is so inherently Niagara. Meet Southbrook Vineyards, a local winery taking every effort to live in harmony with the beautiful land and soil that is uniquely Niagara. This winery proves that when you give back to the land that gives you so much to work with, there can be delicious rewards.

Organic Canadian Wine

Known as the first winery in Canada to earn an organic and biodynamic certification for their vineyard and winery, Southbrook Vineyards show us that creating award-winning wines doesn’t have to come at a price to the environment.

 

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When asked why a green approach to winemaking is important to her, Director of Winemaking and Viticulture Ann Sperling responds with “thoughtfulness.” Why? Because their commitment to biodynamic and organic farming at Southbrook Vineyards relies on careful attention to detail—something that doesn’t come easily, but is worth it for all involved—the earth, animals and of course, the best quality wine for us wine drinkers to enjoy too.

“We farm each vine individually and our primary goal is to hand-harvest our crop to make special wines. We use regenerative farming practices that remove CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester carbon in the soil thus contributing positively to the planet. We do not use synthetic chemicals or fossil fuel-derived fertilizers or herbicides, so our soils and environment are alive with soil microbes, insects, birds, and other wildlife. We also have a forested reserve of 10% of our property to provide habitat for wild species from frogs to wild turkeys and geese to foxes, deer, and many other critters,” explains Ann.

Setting itself apart from the rest, being biodynamic is a step above organic as it an approach to agriculture that is self-sufficient and addresses the interrelationship between soil, plants, and animals, just as Southbrook Winery has done.

 

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Vineyard Life

Perhaps Ann’s deep commitment to Niagara’s land comes from knowing what it’s like to call wine country, home. No stranger to vineyard life at a young age, Ann grew up on a family vineyard in B.C.’s Okanagan Valley. Drawn to a career that would involve the use of all senses, winemaking was something she was always drawn to.

Today Ann is known as a leader in organic and biodynamic fine winemaking in Canada. Recognized highly for her work in the industry, she’s been awarded with Winemaker of the Year at the Ontario Wine Awards as well as having taken home the Lieutenant Governor Award.

Initially brought on as a winemaking consultant at Southbrook Winery in 2005, Ann played a key role in the winery’s transition from winemaker to winegrower. She is credited for introducing winery owner Bill Redelmeier and his wife Marilyn to the winery’s now home on the Four Mile Creek sub-appellation on Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Bill and Ann connected immediately as both are passionate about living in harmony with the land and making every effort to do so. Bill a third-generation farmer, is driven by his love for celebrating local products that are a true testament to the land they’re from—just as his grandfather taught him.

While Bill may have come to the region for love of supporting local, and to continue his family’s long agricultural history in the province, Ann came out to Niagara for a different reason.

“I first came to Niagara because I fell in love,”

“My husband who is also a winemaker is from the Niagara region.”

After 25 years in her adopted home, Ann shares “Niagara has grown on me and working in vineyards has given me a chance to love the outdoor beauty of every season.”

Cutting Edge Winemaking Techniques

To this day, even at the leading edge of viticulture in the world, she still finds interacting with real people “who literally have their hands in every part of the Niagara region,” as one of the most rewarding parts of her role at Southbrook Winery.

“There’s a term: ‘honest wines’ that reflects my goals in winemaking: these should truly reflect the terroir of Niagara and the subtle differences of each growing season; they should be vibrant and lively as well as have the ability to age and reflect this place for many years to come,” shares Ann.

Through her honest work with Southbrook Winery, Ann has proven that biodynamics can be successful in the region’s cool climate. Their small-batch, barrel lot wines and are full of flavor and can be aged for years to come thanks to the clay-rich soils of the Four Mile Creek sub-appellation.

 

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“Southbrook is located in the warmest sub-appellation of the Niagara Peninsula, so it’s a great spot for red wines like Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot,”

Having helped Bill establish the vineyards starting in 2006, she shares that she knows each plating in a detailed and special way.

If you’re going to try the best of the best, their top-notch vintages include their Estate Vineyard Small Lots and Poetica. In a 2007 Ontario vs Bordeaux tasting, the $49.95 little-known Niagara red (Poetica), beat world-renowned trophy labels worth hundreds of dollars.

A trip to Southbrook wouldn’t be complete without a sip (or two) in their sleek and striking “hospitality pavilion.” Commissioned by architect Jack Diamond (Toronto’s Four Seasons for the Performing Arts, La Maison Symphonique de Montréal) the building is eco-friendly, using fifty per cent less energy than an average building of the same size and LEED Gold Certification, the first winery to ever achieve this.

Clearly Southbrook believes in being lean and green, from the inside out—and it’s paid off. Truly unlike any other winery in Canada, their approach to getting all parts of a winery’s living system working in harmony makes for better vines and better wines you simply have to sip and see to believe.

 

• • • • •

CONTACT/VISIT

Southbrook Organic Vineyards
Website: https://www.southbrook.com/
581 Niagara Stone Rd, Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON L0S 1J0

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Nicole & Jason Sawatsky

Nicole Sawatsky’s aversion to eggs was so strong in culinary school that she used to have her classmate — and future husband — handle them for her.

Jason Sawatsky did it with pleasure. Sure, cooking Nicole’s eggs in class was part of the wooing process. But it would also provide the kind of training he needed to eventually run one of Niagara’s most notable brunch spots.

“He had my back in school,” Nicole said with a laugh. “He loved me.”

It would take more than breaking a few eggs for a girl he adored, however, before the two would open The Yellow Pear in St. Catharines, where Jason runs the kitchen and Nicole handles the hospitality side of the business.

For starters, they had to become partners in life, something fate seemed to be pointing them toward when the duo met up again after graduation in the kitchen at Inn on the Twenty. Still, they didn’t clue in to messages the universe — or poached eggs — seemed to be sending them until the late 2000’s when they reconnected on social media.

 

Nicole, a Burlington native, was making a name for herself in Toronto, working at an Oliver & Bonacini Café Grill. Jason, who hailed from Niagara, was perfecting his craft at the Prince of Wales Hotel in Niagara-on-the-Lake. But it would ultimately be Niagara where the couple, who married in 2010, would carve out their careers together.

“It’s almost been half my life that I’ve lived here. I’m no longer from Burlington. I’m from Niagara, I wouldn’t want my business anywhere else.”

Still, the couple took the scenic route before opening their beacon of all things breakfast and brunch in a nondescript strip mall. They honed their skills as a husband-wife team at Thorold’s historic Keefer Mansion, and established the food program at Mahtay Café, one of downtown St. Catharines’ most popular places to gather for a coffee klatsch.

 

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After that, Jason clocked time cooking in a retirement home, opting for income stability over career satisfaction. The experience took a toll, though, on his creativity behind the burner, and eventually his mental health.“I came home one night, and I was fed up opening bags of food and cooking like that,” he recalled.

At Nicole’s urging, the couple reassessed their careers. Jason began working part-time with Chef Adam Hynam-Smith, helping turn out fish tacos and tostadas from the tiny galley that was El Gastronomo Vagabundo, a gourmet food truck Hynam-Smith ran with his wife Tamara Jensen.

That experience gave Jason new direction, and in 2013, he and Nicole bought their own converted courier van, and launched the mobile version of The Yellow Pear.

 

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They would drive the region’s backroads in their solar-powered food truck, buying local ingredients directly from farmers. They’d list those suppliers on a chalkboard menu alongside fresh wine country dishes they made to be eaten curbside at local supper markets and events.

The business, named after a variety of heirloom tomato, developed a following quickly. It was just as food trucks were gaining traction in Ontario and Niagara. But more than capitalizing on a trend, their roving kitchen helped the Sawatskys bring their food to people in a way that a bricks and mortar establishment couldn’t.

The Yellow Pear became a staple at corporate shindigs, during food and drink passport events at wineries, and even at weddings.
“It was ‘How can we go and feed as many people as possible?’ ” Nicole recalled. “Not all decisions were successful, but we learned from it.”

No matter where they took their meals on wheels, though, Jason still dreamed of a proper restaurant. Coming from a fine dining background, he had visions of a large, pristine place with no detail forgotten. Nicole, on the other hand, simply wanted a permanent kitchen to support The Yellow Pear’s burgeoning catering business.

They looked at vacant restaurants in downtown St. Catharines, which was on steady upswing. Port Dalhousie was a consideration, too, but some serious questions needed asking before anyone signed a lease.

“We’d gone through everything and it always came down to two questions,” Nicole said. “Can our business survive? And can you answer that question properly?”

In the end, the prospective properties had too much overhead and their plans for a restaurant were put in park until July 2015 when a former hot pot joint came up for grabs in a north end plaza.

 

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Originally, they were going to use the small space to store supplies and prep for events they catered with their truck during the busy spring through fall schedule. The question was what to do come winter? They could pay rent for a spot that would largely go unused or they could open a restaurant that operated earlier in the day to enable some work-life balance and maintain their steady roster of 30 weddings a year.

Brunch was served officially at The Yellow Pear on Lake Street in October 2015 with the help of family — no one was more surprised by the meal choice than Nicole’s family. Jason was assigned egg duty once again. The couple thought they’d do 30 seatings a day, at most, but now find they can do ten times that in one weekend.

“When the Bleu Turtle (in west St. Catharines) closed down, we felt there was a void,” Jason explained. “ There were a lot of Asian spots, a lot of pizza spots and a lot of wing spots. We wanted to do breakfast like you couldn’t get at home.”

They’ve succeeded, largely by sticking to their original MO of serving what’s in season, sometimes changing the menu each day because of availability of ingredients. Their takes on Eggs Benedict, served with brisket, smoked salmon, peameal bacon or as a vegetarian version along with other upscale spins on the most important meal of the day have developed such a fanbase that The Yellow Pear won OpenTable’s Diners’ Choice Award in 2018.

The couple has also achieved another coup together. Nicole doesn’t hate eggs anymore. In fact, you may catch her eating one once in a while.

Still, her focus running The Yellow Pear with Jason is ensuring others really love theirs.

“Whatever we make, we’re going to make it good and, hopefully, it works and people would see a side of us like what we’d serve to our family,”

Nicole said. “It’s nice to make food for people and have it be a special moment, not just in and out.”

 

• • • • •

526 Lake St, St. Catharines, ON L2N 4H4

CONTACT

The Yellow Pear Kitchen
Website: http://www.farmtotruck.ca/
526 Lake St, St. Catharines, ON L2N 4H4

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Justin Duc & Scott White

Coming home to roost at oddBird

Justin Duc and Scott White want to eat certain foods when they go out.

“If there’s paté or tortière on the menu and something else, I’m getting that,” Duc said.

“With extra baguette,” White interjected.

But until the chefs opened their oddBird bistro in downtown St. Catharines in 2017, they had to head to Hamilton for such meals. There was no place in Niagara the business partners could wear track pants to dine on a fried chicken sandwich while sitting next to a couple on a milestone date eating lobster funnel.

They decided to fix that when they took over a former — and oh, so tiny — shuttered burger joint next to the city’s main hockey arena. There, they opened the kind of place where they like to spend their days off and that served the sort of food they wanted to eat.
Foie gras in various forms would get prominence on an ever-changing chalkboard menu. So, too, would the fruit grown on Duc’s family farm in Niagara-on-the-Lake, or the vegetables from the market garden tended by his brother, Jeff, along with anything else the duo wanted to cook.

 

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And, of course, despite the hole-in-the-wall size of the place, there would be plenty of room for the track pants-wearing, Pabst-drinking patrons and the lobster funnel-eating crowd.

“It’s everything we wanted, and more,” White said.

It wasn’t a clear path for oddBird to take flight, though.

White didn’t grow up always wanting to be a chef. At 23, the Niagara Falls native was working in a local casino when he decided he wanted to try cooking as a profession.

“I told my mom and she said ‘Why? You never cook anything,’ ” White recalled.

He was undeterred. White landed an apprenticeship at Niagara Parks’ Elements on the Falls, followed by more training at Niagara College’s Benchmark restaurant. There were stints at Ravine Vineyard in Niagara-on-the-Lake, then Rise Above, St. Catharines’ vegan restaurant, where he mastered cooking without butter before further fine-tuning his skills with omnivorous chef Cory Linkson at AG Inspired Cuisine in Niagara Falls.

Next came stints at Martin Picard’s renowned Au Pied de Cochon and Normand Laprise’s Toqué! in Montreal — dream gigs for an aspiring chef.

“It was quite different because it was something I didn’t know,” White said about cooking. “It seemed like a really transferable skill and I really enjoyed it. I’m still learning. You’re never really a master of it and that’s cool.”

Meanwhile, back in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Duc didn’t want to work on the family farm one summer as a teen so his father, Ray, marched him over to a rental house on the property occupied by a chef at Peller Estates.

“He said ‘Justin needs a job,’ ” Duc recalled. Peller, it turned out, needed a dishwasher.

Duc stayed for a year before moving on to the dish pit at Zees Wine Bar & Grill in Old Town Niagara-on-the-Lake. There he met wine country chef Ross Midgley and became his protégé for the next 10 years.

During that time and at his parents’ behest, he also studied business at Brock University. But Duc knew his career path would lead to chef’s whites, not business suits.

“When I graduated from business school, I realized all I knew how to do was cook,” he said.

White became obsessed with seafood in Montreal and made a shortlist of restaurants he wanted to work when he returned to Niagara in 2016. He landed at Tide and Vine Oyster House in Niagara Falls where a chef with a business degree also happened to cook.

Duc and White hit it off, and within six months of meeting, they were making plans to open their own place.

Opening oddBird

 

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“We wanted to take food in directions we couldn’t do at Tide and Vine,” Duc said.

Their initial idea was to open something small, staffed entirely by them — with that other necessary prerequisite:

“We wanted it to be a place we would go and hang out,”

Duc explained.

They would have easily modified blackboard menus to keep waste to a minimum. In addition to food they enjoyed eating, Duc and White would offer dishes that challenged them behind the burner: lamb’s brains, horse heart, Wagyu beef, a bumper crop of zucchini from Jeff’s garden, often cooked with a French influence.

When its offal on offer, they’ll serve it in a familiar situation, like sweetbreads with Buffalo sauce and bleu cheese, before doing a more classical French preparation.

“We both push ourselves,” White said. “We’re at the point of always trying to learn something new and modifying it to work for the menu.”

 

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They promote their menus on social media, and if they forget to update the blackboard in the restaurant itself, patrons remind them of what they showcased online and ask for it anyway. There are some mainstays that never get erased, including the salmon tartare and fried chicken, however just as there are some foods, like chicken breast, which will never be featured.

Duc and White also opened oddBird in the only Niagara city they were sure the concept would fly. Downtown St. Catharines was on an upswing thanks to significant investment from the city that beckoned crowds to the core. The true test of the oddBird business plan came when Bolete, run by chef Andrew McLeod, opened a few blocks down on St. Paul Street.

“I would say Bolete was the turning point for downtown St. Catharines,” Duc said. “Wellington Court was here and has always been amazing… but if something like Bolete can work, we thought we can make a go of this.”

They have. Two years in, locals flock to oddBird for lunch and dinner. The bistro has become so popular, its initial staff of two have grown to 15. Duc and White marvel as diners gush over their Buffalo sweetbreads.

 

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“I don’t think it would have taken off anywhere else in the region,” Duc added. “And Niagara makes this possible as well because of the farm and the wineries.”

The appreciation for what they do is so strong, the duo are opening an offshoot one block away on nearby King Street. oddBar will serve pizza and wings in a space with a skate park feel. At twice the size of the mothership oddBird, it will also boast such chef luxuries as a walk-in fridge and a larger line in the kitchen.

With their December opening looming, Duc and White admit it’s a bit of an odd feeling taking stock of their success.

“It’s still very surreal,” Duc said about the second location. “It’s very surreal we (even) have one place. It’s terrifying.”

 

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52 St Paul St, St. Catharines, ON L2R 3M2
(905) 322-4043

CONTACT

OddBird
Phone: (905) 322-4043
Website: https://oddbird.ca/
52 St Paul St, St. Catharines, ON L2R 3M2

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Matt Giffen

The Beer Brewed in Wine Country, From Wine Country

Sure, many people know Niagara region for its wine, but far fewer know about the area’s hopping ‘ale trail.’ Take a quick detour off the QEW, and amongst Ontario’s best orchards and vineyards, you’ll be sure to spot what locals knew for decades as Maple Grove Public School.

Today, the striking façade of the historic schoolhouse makes it hard to miss, but on the inside a beer lover’s paradise awaits. Welcome to Bench Brewing Company, where beer and wine collide.

Located in Twenty Valley, one of the many sub-appellations of Niagara’s wine-producing region, the brewery sits at the base of the Beamsville and Twenty Mile Bench. The 20,000-square-foot-craft brewery is a dream turned reality for Founder Matt Giffen.

After 25 years spent working in big cities, Giffen was drawn to follow his passion for farming and agriculture, a lifestyle he knew and loved being raised in London, Ontario.

With this, Giffen envisioned creating a unique craft brewery in the heart of Ontario’s wine county, and had a feeling that Niagara was where he was destined to see this vision through.

“My wife Erin, our 3 daughters and I have been part of Twenty Valley for years as part of the local farming community,” reflects Giffen. “At the end of the day, it was a feeling in my gut that this was the perfect place to create a farmhouse brewery. The people are the nicest and most authentic people that my wife Erin and I have met in our travels, I knew this was the place.”

So, what is a farmhouse brewery?

Farmhouse Brewery

“The farmhouse style is actually a broad spectrum of beers, pioneered by farmers who would use the ingredients from their land to make beer,” explains Giffen.

Bench strives to use as many local ingredients as possible in their brews. “We’re blessed to be situated in the tender fruit and grape belt in Ontario that’s producing some of the best cherries, peaches, strawberries and grapes across Canada,” says Giffen.

“Our home inspires us in each and every beer we make. We really get to work hand-in-hand with our farming neighbours every season to showcase some of the best fruit grown right here in our home through our beers,” continues Giffen.

It is clear Giffen and his team emphasize “connecting to place,” paying homage to their local roots (quite literally), while brewing quality beer.

As a result, he shares,

“It’s not just a beer that’s brewed in wine country, but a beer that’s from wine country. It’s singular and indigenous to the area.”

Highlighting the fact that Bench Brewing lives in wine country, Giffen and his team are all about creating “beer with personality” by integrating the terroir into their brewing process. This is the inspiration behind Bench Brewing and what makes its offerings truly one-of-a-kind.

“I’ve always been fascinated with the influence climate and soil have on growing wine grapes, so I started wondering why only a few beers were focusing on the concept of terroir in their brewing process,” Giffen says.

This is achieved through the use of a coolship, an open-top stainless-steel vessel in which 5,000L of wort is cooled and inoculated with wild yeast and bacteria from the surrounding Twenty Valley area, thus creating a unique and tasteful terroir component to their brews.

Craft Beer Coolship

“Beer made with our coolship is unique to our valley and different from any other beer in the world,” he continues. In all of Canada there are less than a dozen coolships, with the largest being at Bench Brewing—the epitome of old-world tradition mixed with new age technique.

Also unique to Bench is their barrel cellar, the heart of every winery in the region. Carrying on the brewery’s theme of fully connecting to their surroundings, it features warm wood sourced exclusively from their winery neighbours in Twenty Valley. Outside of the brewery. You can stand and awe over their three-acre hops field, where the team grows four varieties of hops used in their beers.

For beer aficionados and those new to brews, their Community Range Series of beers are staples in their portfolio and are available year-round. Their beers are playfully named after moments in history and landmarks in the Twenty Valley area that they wish to pay tribute to. These tasty brews include the Vineland Station Pale Ale made from ripe local cherries, peaches, apples and pears, or the more bitter Ball’s Falls Session IPA, both of which Matt jokingly points out aren’t beers you’ll find at a hockey rink. Not yet at least!

 

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The brewery itself is the best spot to give their one-of-a-kind offerings a taste, as currently only a handful of Bench brews can be found in the LCBO and on tap at bars throughout southern Ontario. Perhaps even more reason to visit the brewery itself? Who better to share a beer with, than the very team who dreamed up what’s on tap and can whole heartedly share the story behind.

It is this very team that Giffen credits for making him feel so passionate about Bench and what they have worked to create to date. Noting he is not only grateful for what they have all achieved, but for what they continue to strive for through teamwork and resilience.

“I am proud that we are accomplishing what we said we were going to do at the beginning. That sounds simple but a lot can happen between business case and activation. We are walking the walk and I couldn’t be prouder of the team and what we have accomplished in such a short time,” says Giffen.

Of course, having a team behind your dream helps make their operation so special, but Giffen emphasizes there are a few key components that come together to make up the heart and soul of Bench Brewing: the people, the place, and the brewing process.

“If you take away any of those three distinct but equally important pieces, Bench just wouldn’t be Bench.”

 

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3991 King St, Beamsville, ON L0R 1B1
(905)-562-3991

CONTACT

Bench Brewing
Phone: (905)-562-3991
Website: https://benchbrewing.com/
3991 King St, Beamsville, ON L0R 1B1

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Carolyn Hurst

“We took open fields and created a wonderful vineyard”

Just an hour away from Toronto can seem like a world away in Niagara’s Twenty Valley. Just ask Grant Westcott and Carolyn Hurst, owners of Westcott Vineyards. Amongst the natural beauty of the Niagara escarpment, on top of the picturesque Twenty Mile Bench in Jordan, you’ll find their slice of paradise. One look and it’s easy to see why they “gave up retirement” to set up a whole new way of life with their family-owned and run small-batch winery—welcome to Westcott.

With their children in tow, the former corporate IT professionals took the plunge and left their city lives behind in 2006 to make their foray into the world of winemaking. Knowing very little about wine, those closest to them were baffled, but they were determined to make their dream a reality and say goodbye to the stress of the city.

“I grew up here, but I didn’t appreciate the beauty of Twenty Valley until I came back as an adult”

says Carolyn. “We lovingly call this region ‘Niagara-off-the-Lake’ as we’re situated off Lake Ontario and also off the beaten path.”

On a typical day, you’ll find Carolyn and Grant walking their dogs through the vineyards. “We breathe in the clean fresh air, expand our minds to wide-open blue skies and drink in all the atmosphere. The stress of the world and noise disappears,” shares Carolyn.

It’s not just Carolyn and Grant who are drawn to the magic of Twenty Valley, it’s all in the family. Their son Garett joins them in the vineyard to help guide their viticulture practices, while daughter Victoria leads customer experience. The newest addition to their family, Golden Retriever Nellie also plays perhaps the most important role in the business—welcoming guests with tail-a-wagging. Don’t be surprised if you spot a few other puppies playing while you sip on your Pinot, as dog lovers Grant and Carolyn welcome all friends to Westcott—including your furry ones too!

While Carolyn admits running a business with family has its joys and challenges, it’s their shared philosophy that life is to be lived, to push boundaries and to find comfort in the discomfort that keeps them going.

Although the couple’s original plan was to grow grapes and sell them to other wineries, they became inspired by their fellow winemaking neighbours and their cool-climate Chardonnays and Pinots. Twenty-eight acres of grapes later, they too were on their way to making bottles of their own.

Today, Wescott Vineyards produces award-winning wines, most of which are featured in Michelin Star restaurants in the United Kingdom and independent wine shops. Their signature offerings include Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Not only are these Carolyn and Grant’s two favourite varietals, but there’s even more method to their madness— the microclimates of the Niagara escarpment create the best place in the world to grow these grapes.

Just a brief browse through their website and it’s no surprise many of their wine offerings are sold out. Their 2016 Westcott Vineyard Estate Chardonnay, for instance, highlights pit fruits, honeycomb and a touch of caramel. Perfect for anyone who revels in a buttery Sonoma Chardonnay, don’t be shy to ask for a full glass from the Westcott’s themselves, who will often be pouring these mouth-watering tasters for you.

Situated in a 200-year-old Mennonite barn, their tasting room is cozy with windows that open to extraordinary views of their vineyards that once upon a time, were bare fields. It is this view that makes Carolyn most proud— “we took open fields and created a wonderful vineyard, built a beautiful winery and our wines are well-loved by people that understand how hard it was to do all that,” she says.

After a day of tasting, close the evening at their unique Fireside Friday Dinner Series. Running from October until the end of March, indulge in decadent delights prepared over the fire by visiting chefs while sipping on award-winning wines. Selections like smoked duck and brisket ravioli served around harvest tables make this an experience you won’t forget.

Carolyn and Grant love watching the connections and relationships that blossom during Fireside Fridays. “Guests start their meals seated next to strangers, but usually by the end of the evening they’re laughing together like family or old friends,” she tells us. “It’s really special to see.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRMOnEaEMjg&feature=emb_title

It’s extraordinary moments like that which make it all worthwhile. Although new to winemaking when they started, Carolyn and Grant soon found it’s a labour of love that takes year-round dedication to hand tending grapes and vines.

“The work is hard at times— in fact, heart breaking,” says Grant. “During harvest season we work through the days and into the night and barrels start to fill up and the wine begins to take shape. It’s the payoff for all the hard work of the season. The team is tired but happy, and another vintage is stored in the cellar. We take a sip of our latest vintage and the smiles break on our faces and it all makes sense again.”

The payoff doesn’t just come in the form of wine, but also in being surrounded by the natural beauty of their surroundings. Carolyn explains, “The best thing about living and working here is that we wake up every morning in this beautiful place. We live a healthy lifestyle with plenty of fresh air and locally produced foods. Our commute to work is just five minutes, seven if we get stuck behind a tractor.”

Once the chaos of the harvest season begins to settle, Carolyn and Grant enjoy the calm and stillness in the early mornings while they wait for spring to come.

“We love the Valley”

Carolyn says. “But really the best way for us to share why we love it here so much is to have you come and visit.”

Even if you’re just packing up your life in the city for a weekend or the day, come experience “Niagara-off-the-lake” at Westcott, and savour many a stress-free moment as you melt into a glass of dreamy Chardonnay and take in life at a slower pace.

 

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3180 Seventeenth St, Jordan Station, ON L0R 1S0
(905) 562-7517

CONTACT

Westcott Vineyards
Phone: (905) 562-7517
Website: https://www.westcottvineyards.com/
3180 Seventeenth St, Jordan Station, ON L0R 1S0

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Paul Speck

From Soil to Shelf, Six Generations Strong: Paul Speck and Henry of Pelham

On a visit to the Short Hills Bench sub-appellation within the Niagara Escarpment, you’ll find a family-run winery with roots as deep as their vines and history as rich as their award-winning wines. Known to have grown some of the first grapes planted in Canada, the Speck family of Henry of Pelham has lived on their 300-acre vineyard in St. Catharines Ontario for generations —
six generations to be exact — and have plenty of stories to share of times past and present.

Today Paul Speck Jr. and his brothers continue their generations strong history of winemaking as owners of Henry of Pelham. It’s no surprise then, that winery President Paul insists he didn’t choose life in Niagara, but rather, it chose him. Unlike most teens, Paul and his two younger brothers Matthew and Daniel, spent their spare time planting grapes on the family vineyard. Back then there were only eight wineries in the Niagara region and a whole lot of naysayers.

Little did they know, digging into their roots would plant the seeds of their future. The brothers spent backbreaking summers and weekends in the hot, dry sun planting grapes. Eventually, they moved to the Twenty Valley to help run the business full-time, and the rest is history.

Reflecting on his humble teen years spent knee-deep in soil, Paul jokes that he wished he and his brothers planted hops to make beer. As young men, they knew very little about winemaking but were expert beer drinkers!

Today, Henry of Pelham has a team of 70 employees, produces an impressive 750,000 cases of VQA wine per year, and ships the taste of the Twenty Valley landscape to 18 countries around the world. Even with their various roles within the winery, all three brothers still are very much a part of the winemaking process helping to determine each variety’s final composition with their winemakers. “We started Henry of Pelham before VQA, the wine route and any worldly acclaim for the wines.

“We have a great sense of being here from the beginning which guides us through the amazing success of Niagara wines that we know today”

Their wine offerings reflect the classic Niagara style of winemaking that they were very much a part of creating, with a nod to old-world traditions. All of the grapes at Henry of Pelham are grown in the Short Hills Bench sub-appellation, where the sunny days and cool nights are ideal for cultivating the most perfect grapes derived from complex soils.

“The whites are crisp and aromatic while the reds are fine and bright, leaning towards red berry flavours,” shares Paul.

Although not necessarily deliberate, Paul explains that it was their Baco Noir that put them on the map, a grape that Paul and his brothers know all too well, having spent those long summer days planting them.

“Baco is a medium to full-bodied red wine that is rich and full of flavour. It’s also very consistent and hearty in the vineyard so it produces a red wine year in and year out that many people thought was not possible for the region,” says Paul. Henry of Pelham played a big role in having it become Niagara and Canada’s signature red grape.

Try a glass (or bottle) of Baco Noir with strawberries rolled in ground pepper, Henry of Pelham’s rendition of a tequila shot, a combination the brothers swear by. Don’t believe them? Try it for yourself.

Cuveé Catharine Brut

96 Score, Gold Medal

Decanter World Wine Awards

Another signature offering at Henry of Pelham is their Cuveé Catharine Brut, lovingly named after Henry’s wife and family matriarch, Catharine Smith. This bottle was certainly not created by accident, having earned a score of 96 and a gold medal at the Decanter World Wine Awards this summer.

“The Cuveé Catharine is a traditional method, Champagne-style sparkling wine,” says Paul. “Made from Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes, it has led the charge in Niagara of what is now a well-established wine category and one we are becoming famous for around the world.”

Even with the acclaim Henry of Pelham has received for their wine selections both regionally and worldwide, Paul humbly notes what’s really at the heart of their success and everything that they do– “Every bottle we make captures this unique connection to our corner of the Twenty Valley, but really, the winery is about family,” says Paul. “We’re trying to preserve our long family history and its relationship with the land all the while trying to make new history.”

When asked if his children share the same passion for the family business, Paul laughs while explaining, “My brothers’ children and my own are all at various levels of school, but they have all worked or are working at the winery in various ways or some capacity. I think it’s a bit too early to tell if they’ll make a career out of winemaking, but it’s a big commitment. If they choose to come into the business, they need to be all in!”

To visit Henry of Pelham is to truly go back in time. Perhaps that’s the charm of it all, to go back in time is to go back to simpler times, when the simple things in life meant the most.

Guests taking a trip to Henry of Pelham get the best of old-world charm and new world winemaking. Literally step into history with original buildings from their United Empire Loyalist forefathers, including their tasting room and wine store in Henry’s carriage house.

For a truly unique experience, enjoy an intimate evening and candlelit tasting experience in the underground working barrel cellar—Canada’s largest. While you sip on Henry’s finest Speck family Reserve vintages, listen to the rich stories of the Speck history.

How fitting then, that the Speck brothers like to say the best thing you can find in a vineyard is a footprint. And the only way to add your own is by coming out to visit Henry of Pelham yourself to leave your mark on history.

 

• • • • •

1469 Pelham Rd, St. Catharines, ON L2R 6P7
(905) 684-8423

CONTACT

Henry of Pelham Estate Winery
Phone: 905-684-8423
Website: HenryofPelham.com
1469 Pelham Rd, St. Catharines, ON L2R 6P7

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Ryan Crawford

Once a year, Chef Ryan Crawford cranks Roxanne by The Police and takes a shot of bourbon in honour of his most loyal and longest running help in the kitchen.

Her name, fittingly, is Roxanne, and she’s been with Crawford, proprietor of Backhouse in Niagara-on-the-Lake, since he graduated culinary school in Stratford in 1999. The duo have travelled Canada together, journeying to Fogo Island and Prince Edward Island to work magic in kitchens there. And they’ve forged a strong partnership here in Niagara, where Crawford has garnered national and international accolades over the past 15 years  — the last four at Backhouse — for his innovative approach to regional, seasonal cuisine.

No matter the attention he gets, Crawford always honours his tireless kitchen aid with a course of wood oven-baked sourdough on both his chef’s menu and à la carte. Roxanne, you see, is his 20-year-old sourdough starter, figuring prominently in baking at Backhouse, and in the homes of diners gifted some of the fermented flour that makes up Roxanne’s being.

“Roxanne is a mom and she has babies all over North America,” Crawford said proudly. “I’ll get pictures once a month of (other people’s) sourdough. It’s very exciting.”

Crawford is the father of cool climate cuisine here in Niagara

As much as Roxanne is the prolific mother of bread loaves everywhere, Crawford is the father of cool climate cuisine here in Niagara. It’s his unique take on using Ontario — and Niagara — produce almost exclusively, save for the lemons required by Backhouse’s bartenders, or the chocolate that appears in the petits fours. Even the salt Crawford uses to season dishes, such as wood-fired squab with rutabaga gratin, 90-day dry aged beef, or the duck liver mousse beignet with apricot compote, comes from close to home. He sources it from Goderich, Ont., which boasts the world’s largest underground salt mine, or from New York’s Finger Lakes.

Crawford’s dedication to showcasing local never wavers, even during dessert when many bakers reach for vanilla from far-flung places to flavour nearly anything sweet that follows dinner. Backhouse’s vanilla ice cream? It’s only eggs, cream and sugar but they come together to produce intense, authentic flavour, Crawford explained.

“Take vanilla out of your baking and you’ll taste what everything should taste like,” he said. “It’s not making things with other flavours. It’s letting things speak for themselves.”

That’s easy to do here in Niagara. Crawford cooks in the cradle of the region’s finest farmland. He has connections galore to local producers, but he also has a farmer on staff, Ashley Burnie, who grows fruit and vegetables on three acres behind Crawford’s home, a two-minute drive from Backhouse.

Crawford and Burnie sit down together in the winter to map out planting and harvest schedules, which helps the kitchen with menu planning. An additional unheated greenhouse starts the growing season early and prolongs it come fall. The goal is to get nearly all of the restaurant’s produce from the Backhouse farm, which grows everything from peas, bok choy and asparagus in spring to berries, apricots, cherries, and tomatoes from 800 plants in summer, and squash, rutabaga and other storage vegetables in autumn.

What isn’t served fresh is preserved to see the restaurant through winter.

“We planted everything we could. It was ‘Hey, what do you want to cook? We’ll plant it,’” Crawford said.

It’s not as though farm and restaurant only meet in the kitchen when harvests are ready. Everyone who works in the restaurant spends time on the land, learning about the ebb and flow of the bounty through the year.

“You’re sitting there with your hands in the dirt and feeling the energy and life of what’s growing there,” Crawford explained.

That desire to put in such effort comes from when Crawford helmed the kitchen of the former Stone Road Grille, under different ownership but in the same unassuming strip mall location that’s home to Backhouse. Back then, Crawford got his hands dirty raising heritage pigs with Paul Harber at Ravine Vineyard Estate Winery.

“It is so much work,” he said about the endeavour. “It taught us a lot about how much work farmers really put in. It really got me thinking about sustainability and waste. My thing about sustainability here, I’m giving Ashley, a young farmer, a job. It’s helping the restaurant. If it all works out, it’s less money for us in vegetables, it’s fresher, and it’s giving younger chefs and apprentices the opportunity to respect the vegetables because they know Ashley grows it.”

It’s also giving Backhouse diners an experience. They hear the story of 4 o’clock asparagus — quite literally harvested at 4 p.m. the day it’s served — with 24-month house-cured prosciutto and Ontario-grown saffron. They’re exposed to flavours like white asparagus and rhubarb in a savoury soft serve garnished with seed asparagus and served as an amuse bouche.

“They want to hear the story. We’re trying to tell the story of food in Niagara,” Crawford said. “It’s having that interaction with people and giving them something special.”

There was a time when it looked like Crawford would fulfill his dreams of such an endeavour elsewhere. He spent three years searching for the perfect location to open a Canadian version of an agritourismo, those farmhouses that combine gastronomy and overnight stays in Italy, after he left Stone Road Grille. He was close to inking a deal on land elsewhere in Ontario when his former bosses let him know they were closing the restaurant.

Coming back to the location where he repeatedly earned praise from out-of-town media for his inventive take on fine dining made sense. The relationships and his reputation were established in Niagara, but it’s also where Crawford could work with grape growers and vintners to make his own wine, a hobby he hopes to pick up again this fall after a few years’ break.

Really, though, cooking with local produce — and, of course, baking sourdough bread starring Roxanne — over wood fire in a space that belies its strip mall location is about something else, something more intrinsic.

“For me, it’s being true to my world, Crawford said. “It’s teaching the general public about respect (for the ingredients) and giving people jobs and and opportunities. Profitability, for me, is rooted in happiness. It makes me happy serving people. My staff comes first, making them happy and energized to be here, excited to be and work, and that comes through in the food.”

 

• • • • •

CONTACT

Backhouse Restaurant
Phone: 289-272-1242
Website: backhouse.xyz
242 Mary St, Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON L0S 1J0

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Nicolette Novak

Nicolette Novak has an amazing ability to strike up a conversation with anyone. It can be your first time meeting her but you immediately feel at ease, like with an old friend. There’s no formality, but a sense of familiarity instead.

Take the cool, wet day in early June when two women sat down at a table under the covered patio in the bistro of Novak’s Good Earth Food and Wine Co. in Beamsville. They started wrapping themselves in fleece blankets when Novak cut in to empathize — even apologize. It’s June, after all, but one that could easily be confused with late October for its lack of sunny, warm weather that normally makes Niagara shine at this time of year.

The women shrugged at Mother Nature’s confused ways. It’s cosy, they assured, which led Novak to ask the obvious: “Where are you from?”

“Georgia,” one woman answered. It was the perfect segue into Novak telling them peaches grow here, though the growing season is about a month behind this year. She points to the swath of trees beside the bistro.

“Those are all peach trees,” Novak said, sensing the women’s disbelief that peaches grow in Canada. They marvel. But that’s typical. Marvelling is what happens at The Good Earth — as Novak intended — the moment a visitor turns down the gravel laneway, through a welcome mat of vineyards and orchards, to the winery, bistro and cooking school that borders Beamsville. It serves as a bucolic reminder that, despite the promise of condo high-rises being built around the corner, this is still Niagara farm country.

It’s also still Novak’s home. The bistro table where those women sat was little more than a 100 metres from her front door.

“One of the things I set out to do to differentiate from other places… I really think of this as an extension of my own home,” Novak said. “It has that feel of someone’s places. It still has warts, there are weeds, our driveway isn’t paved. But once you turn onto that driveway, you really are transported somewhere different.”

Ultimately, that’s what happened to Novak when she returned home after her father had been killed in a car accident 32 years ago. A twenty-something at the time, Novak had been carving a career path in Toronto, working for a Member of Provincial Parliament. But with news of her dad’s death coming on the first day of peach harvest, she knew she had to return to Beamsville to help the farm and her family — it was Novak, her mother, Betty, and her grandmother — carry on.

“There were no options,” Novak recalled.

The farm was 220 acres at the time, a mammoth swath by Niagara standards. But she enjoyed it until a streak of bad years compelled her to sell most of it. She kept 55 acres, which she leased out, and returned to the city to work in public relations.

But in 1998, she was beckoned back to Beamsville. Niagara was on the cusp of something new and more convivial than the hotels with their expansive and formal dining rooms in Niagara-on-the-Lake that had been serving as the region’s calling card for tourists seeking something more refined than waterfalls and wax museums.

Wineries with inviting tasting rooms and restaurants were opening and a new culinary identity was being forged for the region, thanks to a crop of big city chefs who’d come here seeing the potential of cooking in the middle of one of Canada’s most unique agricultural areas.

 

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Novak contributed to the effort by opening a cooking school on the property.

“It was so long ago, there were only five wineries,” she recalled.

That eventually led to catering events, and in 2008, the next natural progression in rural Niagara: a winery.

“I made the fateful decision to make wine, which was an awful decision,” Novak said. “It’s hard. It’s very capital intensive and there’s still a threshold of what people are willing to spend. And in Toronto, there’s still a perception that Ontario wines suck.”

Still, The Good Earth is clearly a good place to be, even on a cold, rainy June day.

People come, and when the first sunny days that hint at summer and stone fruit harvests arrive, they come in droves. They come to attend a session at the cooking school that’s more edutainment than hands-on. They come to sample some of The Good Earth’s vintages, made by winemaker Ilya Senchuk, who has a talent for teasing out the best in Niagara grapes. And they come to wrap themselves in a fleece blanket and eat lunch on the bistro patio.

 

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Despite the challenges, Novak admitted it’s been a successful venture. She has a classically trained chef, St. Catharines native Andrew Thorne, doing monthly seasonal menus in the kitchen. She’s surrounded herself with staff with the same salt-of-the-earth vibe as their boss.

“I’m really fortunate. They all have personality and they’re not afraid of showing it with people. They’re real,” Novak said. “I can say with confidence the food is excellent and we try to keep it as seasonal as possible. It’s a wine and food environment that isn’t foreboding. It isn’t pretentious. And it’s pretty. We work hard to make it pretty.”

All that’s changed over the years is the audience. Novak sees more twenty- and thirty-somethings attending the themed cooking classes, or arranging private dos, that run three hours, feature three courses plus an amuse bouche, and wine.

“It’s laid back and there for you to enjoy,” she said. “You take away from it as much as you want. We don’t like to micromanage it because the idea behind (the culinary school) is to expose people to what they might not normally have ordered (to eat).”

They’re still Novak’s favourite part of her entire endeavour. Within moments of gathering in the small outbuilding dedicated to the instructional sessions, strangers become friends. It’s also not uncommon to find Novak cleaning up afterward instead of relegating the task to her staff. But then, that’s all in keeping with The Good Earth’s MO of feeling like a visit to someone’s home.

“To me, it’s like after a really good dinner party,” Novak said. “It gives me time to reflect, to come down.”

And perhaps remember that there’s only one place she can do this.

“The driver for this whole business was that this is home,” Novak said. “I had a strong foundation in agriculture and an understanding of what this place called Niagara has here.”

• • • • •

CONTACT

Good Earth Food & Wine
Phone: 905-563-6333
Website: https://goodearthfoodandwine.com/
4556 Lincoln Ave, Beamsville, ON L0R 1B3

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Barb Honsberger

Meet Barb Honsberger, Owner of Honsberger Estate Winery, one of Ontario’s smallest boutique wineries, known for producing nationally award-winning wines. Nestled in the quaint Jordan village along the Niagara Escarpment, Honsberger’s family-run farm showcases the unique agriculture and welcoming hospitality of the Niagara Region.

Amidst blooming orchards, lush vineyards, wandering livestock and tail-wagging rescue dogs, Honsberger Estate Winery is a rural oasis set on farmlands exuding charm and family tradition. With Honsberger’s farming roots dating back to 1811, the land’s heritage and history are very much a part of now-owner Barb, a sixth-generation farmer.

“The bounty that Niagara has to offer is embedded in me,” she said. “It comes from generations of farmers loving this land before me and seeing the care for the generations ahead of me.”

Having grown up in Jordan watching her father tend diligently to their family farm from sunrise to sunset, Barb credits her upbringing for instilling her with the passion she has for her work today.

“I spent my childhood just like generations before me, running between fruit trees and riding the tractor on my father’s lap,” said Barb. Eventually, Barb’s past would lead her to her future calling—“after stumbling through a variety of careers, opening Honsberger Estate Winery is exactly what I was meant to do.”

 

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Initially only selling barrels of grapes to other wineries, in 2002, they began planting Riesling and Cabernet Franc vines. Only in 2012, did Honsberger Estate eventually start keeping a small portion of grapes for their own label, simply for the love of winemaking.

While the art of making wine is far from easy, being backed by heart, history and the support of the local winemaking industry confirmed their decision to become a small-batch winery.

“Even though Honsberger Estate is one of the oldest farms in Niagara, I’m always humbled by the support of the community and how we were welcomed into the industry,” she said. “The community has a common goal. We all want to see Niagara at its best. When we all work hard in our own backyard, yet also lift and support our neighbours, everyone becomes inspired.”

 

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Today Honsberger Estate Winery continues to be steadfast in their decision to remain small and craft offerings that are a testament to the quality farm-grown grapes they are made from.

“By working with the motto of ‘quality over quantity’, we can offer a product that we are proud of,” said Barb. “That’s why we put ‘from our roots to your table’ on every bottle of wine.” Their philosophy has enabled the winery to stand confidently on its own, alongside fellow award-winning wineries in the area.

Whether you stop by Honsberger Estate Winery for a sip or a bite from one of their two restaurants, or simply to say hello, one thing’s for sure—there’s no doubt it’s a uniquely Niagara experience that will make you feel right at home, no matter where you’re from.

“Niagara is home. It’s family, it’s friends, it’s giving and it’s a gift to all of us,” Barb shares. She invites guests to the region the same way she would invite someone into her home – with a smile and with outstanding hospitality.

For more on Honsberger Estate Winery, visit www.honsbergerestate.com

• • • • •

CONTACT

Honsberger Estate Winery
Phone: (905) 562-4339
Website: honsbergerestate.com
4060 Jordan Rd, Jordan Station
ON L0R 1S0

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Cory Linkson

Cory Linkson knows he’s going to be judged when he’s at work today.

It won’t be for anything he says. It certainly won’t be for his outfit — Linkson wears the mandatory chef’s whites every day. Instead, strong opinions will be cast about what the executive chef does behind the burner at AG Cuisine in Niagara Falls, which is to be expected when yours is a four diamond-rated restaurant 11 years running.

“Who goes to work every day and gets judged on everything they do?” Linkson asked rhetorically. “Not too many people. You can’t have an off day in a restaurant. It’s not an easy environment to work in, for sure.”

Still, it’s one he loves. The proof is in that consistently high rating Linkson and AG Cuisine, set in the Sterling Inn just off the well-worn tourist path, have received every year since the restaurant opened in 2007. Not only are there four diamonds, awarded by CAA/AAA, to live up to, there are other reputations to uphold, including being one of OpenTable’s 100 most romantic restaurants in Canada, or residing on the reservation app’s best overall list.

 

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That success is rooted in Linkson’s talent as a chef, which he began honing as a teen while working in the commissary of his parents’ St. Catharines pizzeria. But it can also be attributed to something else: Linkson’s passion for showcasing Niagara du jour on a plate.

“We try to take seasonal and local to a hyper-extent,” Linkson explained.

 

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The reason is simple. It’s not only because Linkson cooks in one of the most fertile regions in Canada, whose microclimates make it easy for almost anything to grow here. It’s because ingredients from far-flung places have passed their four-diamond prime by the time they make it to a professional kitchen.

They simply aren’t good enough for Linkson’s calibre of cooking.

“All food in the grocery store is designed for you to eat in the last 30 per cent of its life,” he said. “By the time it gets to a restaurant, there’s really no life left in the stuff. We wanted to get closer to farmers. I wanted to change the paradigm of how we eat our food.”

He does that by having land and a staff farmer who uses permaculture, farming that “goes in the way of nature,” to grow vegetables harvested the same day they appear on an AG menu.

Linkson’s drive to be a good steward of nature led to the addition of bee hives at the farm three years ago, and with it, the birth of the AG Busy Bee Honey Factory. The honey and pollen the bees provide inspire creativity in the kitchen, but they also do the heavy lifting during a growing season that no farmer can: they pollinate crops on the AG farm and those surrounding it.

“It’s sort of a circle of life that we’re trying to develop,” Linkson said. “It’s not just singular. It’s many things that we’re doing to be good stewards to the land and planet.”

What they don’t grow themselves is easily sourced on other local farms whose names and stories are shared with diners, he noted.

“We should be highlighting the farmers in this area. The terroir of this soil is really special in this area and this is why we should be doing it.”

It was also the next logical step after 30 years working in an industry with a black eye for being wasteful.

Linkson, who travelled throughout North America to climb the ranks in a professional kitchen, could have taken his cues from some of those mentors in the early days of his career, who called suppliers across the globe for ingredients. That was when imported was de rigueur, and little thought was given to how food was grown in other countries, or farm labour conditions.

The years spent in kitchens operating this way wore on him, and Linkson didn’t want to be part of what he saw as a significant problem.

He was struck by a chef he worked with out West who did “Rocky Mountain cuisine,” featuring local bison and berries on the menu. Returning to Niagara in 1996 to help usher in the farm-to-table movement that spawned the region’s wine country cuisine also inspired him to forge a solution to the restaurant industry’s largesse.

At that time, Niagara was importing chefs bringing a new approach to fine dining. The first winery restaurants were opening and big city cuisiniers, including Tony de Luca at Hillebrand in Niagara-on-the-Lake (now Trius), were hired to begin a shift away from the quantity over quality mentality that drove many kitchens in tourist hot spots here.

Linkson worked as de Luca’s sous chef for five years before moving down Niagara Stone Road to the restaurant at Peller Estates. In both winery kitchens, he fell into the rhythm of Niagara’s seasons and it moved him.

“You get into this rhythm year over year. You gravitate toward that rhythm of nature. I was really glad I could come (to AG Cuisine) and do the same. Maybe I was a farmer in another life,” he said with a laugh.

Those rhythms of the growing season set the tune for the daily menu changes that happen at AG to show diners “this is Niagara Falls right now.”

“Whatever is ready at the farm has to go on the menu, so we just change, change, change,” he explained. “We sort of fly by the seat of our pants. The goal is to keep the same quality level menu change after menu change. It doesn’t matter what you order, we try to have the same quality, the same freshness. We try to let the area speak to you.”

And then let diners speak about the experience — something that drives Linkson “to get to that level of expectation I need to meet.”

“It’s a creative endeavour,” he said. “You have to be a person who enjoys having a creative idea, turning it out on a plate and seeing guests’ reactions.”

Tiffany Mayer, My Niagara Profiles

• • • • •

CONTACT

AG Inspired Cuisine
Phone: 289.292.0005
Website: agcuisine.com
5195 Magdalen Ave.
Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
L2G 3S6

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Back to Experiences

Andrew McLeod

Andrew McLeod

Take a seat with a view of the kitchen at Bolete and chances are you’ll see chef and owner Andrew McLeod wearing a button-up shirt with the sleeves casually rolled up, jeans and a canvas apron to protect from the hazards of the job.

There are no starched and pressed chef’s whites, no towering, pleated hats. And yet, it was those formalities of kitchen life that captured McLeod’s attention as a teenager while dining at Toronto’s iconic Canoe, ultimately inspiring him to pursue a career behind the burner.

“I remember seeing the chefs with all their tall Bragard hats. I thought it was awesome,” McLeod recalled. “Everyone knew their jobs and what they were doing. It was just a really gorgeous room and I thought I’d like to explore that. It was a cool thing to watch.”

Now McLeod and his chef Jayde Burton are the ones to watch as they cook at Bolete, creating elegant dishes inspired by the seasons in an entirely casual atmosphere.

“Just the way the kitchen is set up, we want it to appear like we’re cooking in our house,” McLeod said. “It’s just like a house party. Everyone wants to be in the kitchen. It’s just where everyone ends up.”

 
 
 
 
 
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It’s where McLeod, who grew up in Whitby, found himself as a 15-year-old in need of a job. The aspiring culinarian took a gig washing dishes at a small Italian restaurant, and eventually worked his way into cooking. It wasn’t fine dining — McLeod was a short-order cook — but he learned to be fast and efficient, skills that would prove essential when what started as just a pay cheque morphed into a career after that fateful dinner at Canoe.

McLeod headed to cooking school at George Brown College. He stood out among his classmates, some of whom had no idea how to hold a chef’s knife never mind ever setting foot in a professional kitchen. It was the dawning of the age of the celebrity chef, brought about by the polished cooking shows on TV, and those drawn to culinary school by the prospect of fame rather than a passion for food saw their 15 minutes evaporate before the clock even started ticking.

“It was interesting to see. Then they found out it wasn’t what they expected, like on the cooking shows. They were dropping like flies,” McLeod recalled.

After graduation, McLeod stayed in Toronto, testing his skills as a newly minted cook at La Bodega, a highly rated French bistro on Baldwin Street. McLeod didn’t stay relegated to the entry-level garde manger, responsible for creating salads and cold dishes. He got to do dessert, trying his hand at classics like crème brulée, and had opportunities to practise butchery.

He also learned — perhaps the hard way — not to make mistakes. McLeod’s roommate was the restaurant’s chef. “If I did something wrong at work, I’d hear about it all night at home, so that pushed me to do everything right,” McLeod said.

From there, he graduated to coveted posts at the high-volume Auberge du Pommier in the Oliver & Bonacini restaurant family. There he worked under one of Canada’s most celebrated chefs, Jason Bangerter. They were intense jobs, but McLeod, set on being an executive chef, was keen to push himself professionally in those early days.

He was also eager to learn, so when he got thirsty for more than a cursory knowledge of pairing food and wine in 2005, McLeod, then 27, took to the Queen Elizabeth Way. His first few interviews at winery restaurants didn’t go as hoped. But then he knocked on the door at Peller Estates where Chef Jason Parsons, a fellow alumnus of an Oliver & Bonacini restaurant in Toronto, hired McLeod as sous chef. It was a busy job that he did and loved for six years, not only for the education in winemaking it provided, but also for everything else Niagara taught him. There were the farms producing stone fruit and vegetables, opportunities to raise animals, and a collaborative spirit among chefs in the region. And Parsons was the ultimate leader after which McLeod could model himself — constantly checking in on the morale of his kitchen staff.

“There are a million things you can get your hands into here,” he said. “We didn’t have access (in Toronto) to the products you have here. You can’t get in your car and be two minutes away from vegetables or beekeeping.”

McLeod has immersed himself in every opportunity to learn about food and wine production that has come his way in Niagara, either in those early days or since opening Bolete in 2016. He’s spent time with beekeepers at Rosewood Estates Winery in Beamsville, and has willingly stepped into the pen with Paul Harber at Ravine Vineyard Estate Winery to learn more about raising pigs.

Executive chef jobs presented themselves after Peller Estates but they took McLeod away from the region. He helmed the kitchen at Edgewater Manor in Stoney Creek, then at the landmark Spencer’s on the Waterfront in Burlington.

But being a boy from the ‘burbs in Toronto, McLeod didn’t want to hang around Burlington. He loved St. Catharines, being close to vineyards, and market gardens. He also dreamt of owning a restaurant.

He searched for a time before finding Bolete’s home on a stretch of St. Paul Street that was the epicentre of downtown revitalization in St. Catharines. Other restaurants serving beautiful, thoughtful food were opening along the artery and yet no one was stepping on anyone’s toes, McLeod noted.

All of those relationships he cultivated along the way are apparent at Bolete today, be it on the wine list, dominated by world-class Niagara vintages, or the roster of artists in residence whose work has hung on Bolete’s walls over the years.

And, of course, a menu that takes its cues from what’s available in Niagara, complemented by ingredients, such as East Coast oysters or Prince Edward Island beef, from elsewhere in Canada.

The spectacle of Burton and McLeod at work — even without those Bragard hats — makes the experience all the better.

“I love being here on a Saturday night, taking plates over to a table, saying ‘Hi’, telling people what we’re doing,” McLeod said. “I don’t like to create a pretentious atmosphere… . It’s more about making people feel comfortable and at home.”

Tiffany Mayer, My Niagara Profiles

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CONTACT

Bolete Restaurant
Phone: 905.641.9559
Website: bolete.ca
176 St. Paul St., St. Catharines, ON, Canada L2R 3M2

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My Niagara Profiles – James Treadwell

James Treadwell

Since 2006, James Treadwell, Sommelier and Owner at Treadwell Farm-to-Table Cuisine in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, has been delighting taste buds with flavours that are uniquely local, uniquely Niagara. Think dishes infused with seasonal ingredients from artisan producers within the region, paired with world class Ontario wine. Needless to say, there’s no better place to sink your teeth into all that Niagara has to offer.

Why did you choose to work and live in Niagara

Over the past 13 years, Niagara has been a wonderful place to have our business as it is a growing tourist market, especially for gastronomy, while providing easy access to Toronto.

My wife and I currently live in Grimsby and find it a terrific mid-point between the restaurant in Niagara-on-the-Lake and Toronto, where she works. There seem to be a lot of things changing around the region and there are now many activities and businesses that suit our lifestyle.

What makes you passionate about your role?

I’m equally passionate about wine and providing hospitality to guests at Treadwell. I’m inspired by the professionalism and work ethic of our team and feel positively challenged to go above and beyond our guests’ expectations. A lot has been made of how challenging the restaurant industry is (and it is), but I’m proud of what our business has accomplished up to this point and will continue to push myself and our team to be better.

 
 
 
 
 
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How does Niagara inspire what you do?

From day one, our restaurant has always tried to showcase the many artisanal producers of the region. Many of our suppliers from the area are listed on the back of our lunch and dinner menus and we’re delighted that we have been able to continue those relationships today. Seeing the quality and freshness of the product being produced just minutes from the restaurant inspires me the most.

Following the focus of the kitchen, our wine program has been built on showcasing what we felt was the very best of Ontario winemaking, with a specific focus on Niagara. Over the past 13 years, we have built what many believe to be the finest collection of Niagara wines in Canada. Seeing the success of the Niagara wine industry, both on a national and international level, inspires my team and I to continue promoting these diverse and exciting wines.

What does Niagara mean to you? What is ‘Your Niagara’?

Niagara has been my home, off and on, for the past 22 years. It’s an unbelievably beautiful region with an eclectic mix of individuals and businesses.

It’s safe, affordable and tolerant. While it has changed quite a bit over the past decade, I feel there is so much more potential and I’m excited by the opportunities being presented to not only my business, but other likeminded locals as well.

Why should people make a trip out to Niagara?

Niagara is unique in that it presents a diverse mix of experiences throughout the region. Whether that be sport, arts, wellness, gastronomy, or history— this region accommodates the interests of many. Its location from Toronto and the major cities of the Northeastern US, makes it accessible to those looking for a multiday vacation that is not too far from home and unlike any other.

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CONTACT

Treadwell Restaurant
Phone: 905.934.9797
Website: treadwellcuisine.com
114 Queen Street, Niagara-on-the-Lake, L0S 1J0, Canada

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