Southbrook on route to Somewhereness

NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE — Southbrook Vineyards was the first Canadian winery certified biodynamic in 2008, and the winery continues to evolve and innovate every year. 

Southbrook is part of a group of 11 wineries, dubbed Somewhereness, devoted to stewardship of the land. The name, borrowed from wine writer Matt Kramer, is an English translation of the concept of terroir or taste of place. 

In line with this idea, Southbrook created its Witness Block, a section of the farm intended to reflect the fullest expression of the vineyard’s biodynamic principles.  

While most modern vineyard blocks are planted to a single clone of a given grape variety, explained director of marketing and sales Paul DeCampo, the Witness Block is a planting of a mixture of three different Cabernet Sauvignon clones.

“The plant material was selected from an earlier planting on the site, with cuttings taken from the best performing vines, and sent to a nursery for grafting onto rootstock,” DeCampo noted. 

Selections and planting were aligned with the biodynamic calendar and lunar cycles. 

The biodynamic principle of operating the farm as a self-sustaining organism with limited reliance on inputs from outside the farm is also reflected in this initiative. The first bottling from the Witness Block was the 2013 vintage, which will be available next spring.   

Director of winemaking and viticulture Ann Sperling experimented with orange wine last year and has quadrupled the batch for the 2015 vintage. 

Essentially, white wine grapes are treated more like red in a winemaking style dating back thousands of years. There are a handful of Ontario wineries that have dabbled in recent years. Instead of crushing the grapes and removing the juice from the skins for fermentation, orange wines are white wines that have had skin contact. 

At Southbrook, vidal grapes are hand-harvested and a portion of grapes are destemmed, a portion are left as whole bunches and 20 per cent are crushed to create enough liquid to submerge the fruit.      

After a month of maceration, the wine is pressed and will age until January when it will be bottled without filtration. The residue (or lees) will act as a preservative, as no sulphites will be added, giving the wine texture and flavour. 

The orange wine will also be available in the spring. 

“It was a good wine for us in the restaurant [channel] last year,” said Sperling. 

Dubbed the biodynamic duo, Southbrook owners Marilyn and Bill Redelmeier brought on chef Shawn Murphy to head up foodservice at the winery. 

Traditionally outsourced, the winery decided to bring food operations in house this summer with the creation of Farmers’ Table @Southbrook. The St. Catherine’s native set up an 80-seat restaurant outside with a large pizza oven and barbecue. 

Using the winery’s bioflavia, local red fife flour and a Canadian tipo 00, Murphy created a pizza crust for the full-service bistro.  

“We planted about a 50-metre-long by one-metre-wide garden with 75 heirloom tomato plants, about 36 different varieties, all different kinds of colours,” said Murphy. 

On the third Thursday of every month into November, Murphy hosted an Oak Room Dinner Series to showcase products or themes.

Spending time both front- and back-of-house during his career, Murphy creates his dishes using Southbrook’s wines as inspiration, sometimes as an ingredient. 

“When we have these Oak Room Series it’s as much about the local ingredients as me taking a particular wine and teaching people how to do food and wine pairings or how to show different sides of a wine or how to use ingredients differently; I try to integrate it,” he said.  

Southbrook also held an inaugural lamb fest in the fall, showcasing the organic lamb from onsite Linc Farm, run by Juliet Orazietti and her husband Martin Weber. 

In addition to breeding lamb for sale, the sheep fertilize the vineyard and promote biodiversity. 

At the back of Southbrook’s 150-acre property are more than 70 ewes, two rams, their lambs, chickens, a dog, two cats, and 10 heritage pigs, which arrived in October.