The Salmon, the Sheep & the Triple Crown Hand

The story of Southbrook begins with failure — or rather, with a realisation. In the early 2000s, a pair of investment bankers planted a vineyard on Niagara Stone Road in Niagara-on-the-Lake, completed a crash course in winemaking at the Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute, and drew up a business plan. They quickly discovered that wine farming would demand a lifestyle change they were unwilling to make. They sold. In 2005, Bill Redelmeier — a man who had grown up on a farm an hour from Toronto, whose mother was a botanist and geographer who taught him to identify every plant in Latin, and who had spent decades worrying about food sovereignty as pavement consumed Ontario's farmland — bought the property. His wine cultural background was European, even though he was Canadian, and he saw in the Four Mile Creek site something the bankers had missed: potential for greatness, if the land was treated as a living system rather than an asset.

The defining moment came in September 2008, shortly after the winery opened. Bill found a large salmon on the driveway — a fish that had swum up a creek to spawn, likely swept into a storm-water ditch. "If a salmon can come up river, all of the pollutants can go down river," he thought. The salmon became his totem: a reminder that the winery's responsibility was not just to make wine but to clean the water, heal the soil, and give more to the land than it took. In 2006, Southbrook began the transition to organic and biodynamic farming. In 2008, it became the first winery in Canada certified both organic (Ecocert) and biodynamic (Demeter). In 2025, it added Regenerative Organic Certification — becoming the nation's first and only triple-crown winery.

The winemaking lineage is equally storied. The first 2,000 cases were made by Derek Barnett, a renowned Ontario winemaker. Then came Ann Sperling — a British Columbia native whose family had farmed vines since the 1930s, who had worked with organics since 1998, and who would spend 17 years as Southbrook's director of winemaking and viticulture, mentoring a generation of Ontario winemakers. In 2019, she hired Casey Hogan as assistant winemaker — a man whose CV reads like a novel: baker, engineering-physics dropout, butcher, sommelier (Algonquin College), WSET diploma holder, Court of Master Sommeliers student, and Brock University oenology graduate with first-class standing. Hogan worked harvests in Margaret River, Central Otago, Willamette Valley, and the Okanagan before returning to Southbrook. When Sperling stepped back in 2021, Hogan took the helm — carrying forward her low-intervention ethos while adding his own spark. "Her style is my style," he says. "I've learned a lot from her, Peter Gamble, and Thomas Bachelder. They are my mentors."

Southbrook's winemaking philosophy is rooted in the belief that healthy grapes from living soils need minimal intervention in the cellar. Under Ann Sperling's 17-year tenure and now Casey Hogan's leadership, the estate has pursued a low-intervention, terroir-driven approach that lets the vineyard speak. Wild fermentation with indigenous yeasts is standard practice across the portfolio — from the entry-level Triomphe tier to the flagship Poetica wines. The reds are fermented in open-top oak vats and French oak barrels, with extended maceration periods (up to 31 days for Cabernet Sauvignon) that extract colour, tannin, and phenolic complexity without aggressive pumping over. The whites are aged on lees in French oak — 10 to 18 months depending on the tier — with a combination of new and neutral barrels that adds texture without masking the fruit.

The approach is structured around five distinct tiers, each with its own winemaking protocol. Connect (~$14) is the entry point — fresh, approachable, and designed for immediate enjoyment. Triomphe (~$20-30) is the workhorse tier, sourced from estate and trusted organic growers, wild-fermented, and aged in French oak. Whimsy! (~$35-45) is the experimental playground — small lots, skin-fermented orange wines, barrel-selected Pinot Noirs, and geek-friendly cuvées that push boundaries. Estate (~$45-55) is the single-vineyard expression — wines made exclusively from the home farm, barrel-selected, and built for aging. And Poetica (~$50-100) is the apex — flagship Chardonnay and Bordeaux-style red blends made only in the best vintages, from the best barrels, with original Canadian poetry on every label.

What emerges from this tiered, low-intervention approach is a portfolio that is both intellectually rigorous and emotionally resonant. The Poetica Chardonnay is rich, nutty, and mealy, with peach, pear, and integrated spice that evolves for decades. The Poetica Red — a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Petit Verdot — is powerful, layered, and built for 20+ years, with blackcurrant, cassis, violet, and fine oak spice. The Triomphe Chardonnay is concentrated and pure, with pear, quince, and flinty minerality. The Estate Cabernet Franc is elegant and seductive, with brambly raspberries, graphite, and herbs. And the Whimsy! Orange Riesling — skin-fermented for 2.5 weeks, unfiltered, with minimal sulphur — is tannic, savoury, and boundary-pushing. This is winemaking for both the poet and the scientist — for the drinker who wants to read Sarah Slean on the label and taste biodynamics in the glass.

Southbrook Vineyards is not merely a winery; it is a proof that a 150-acre farm in Niagara-on-the-Lake can become a model for global regenerative agriculture while producing wines that rank among the finest in Canada. In an era when the wine industry is still dominated by extractive farming, chemical inputs, and greenwashing, Bill and Marilyn Redelmeier — with Ann Sperling, Casey Hogan, and the animals of Linc Farm — demonstrate that the most profound wines come not from the most heavily manipulated vineyards but from the most carefully observed ecosystems. The same triple-crown certification that makes Southbrook unique in Canada — organic, biodynamic, and regenerative — is not a marketing badge but a moral operating system: a recognition that the soil, the water, the animals, and the workers are all part of the same living network, and that the wine is only as healthy as the land that produces it.

The legacy of Southbrook is the legacy of the regenerative hand in Canadian viticulture. Bill Redelmeier is not a typical winery owner: he did not inherit a château, he did not chase venture capital, and he did not build his brand on Instagram aesthetics. He is a farmer who bought a failed vineyard and spent 20 years turning it into a closed-loop ecosystem — a man who worries about food sovereignty, who pays his workers a living wage, who filters storm water through bio-swales until it is drinkable, and who believes that 100 small changes are more powerful than one magic bullet. The LEED Gold winery, the solar panels, the bio-swales, the 15-acre forest reserve, and the sheep that fertilise the vines are not separate initiatives; they are parts of a single organism — a farm that gives more than it takes.

The future of the project is tied to the future of regenerative agriculture in the global wine industry — to the growing recognition that the best wines come not from the most famous appellations but from the most committed stewards of the land. As the Poetica Red continues to prove that Niagara can produce Bordeaux-style blends of world-class aging potential, as the Poetica Chardonnay demonstrates that Ontario Chardonnay can evolve for decades, as the Whimsy! Orange Riesling expands the boundaries of what skin-fermented wine can be, and as the Estate Syrah returns to the portfolio after years of absence, Southbrook remains what the Redelmeiers have always intended it to be: a triple-crown, poetry-labeled, sheep-grazed, solar-powered, bio-swaled, LEED Gold-certified regenerative winery in the heart of Niagara — structured not by extraction or convention but by salmon, soil health, and the eternal reminder that a vineyard is not a factory but a living system, and that the wine in your glass is only as clean as the water that flows back to the lake. The story of this winery is the story of a farmer who found a dead salmon on his driveway and decided to change the world — one biodynamic preparation, one poem, and one glass at a time.