This is the story of how a family farm becomes a winery. Our host, Andrea Morris, visits Dim Winery and chats with Peter Dim about the history of the farm and of course, we taste some amazing wines. We are also treated to some wonderful stories about the labels and names for the wines. In addition, we also learn a lot about agriculture and weather and their affects on the grapes.

Produced by: Lukas Sluzar. Recorded July 31, 2024

Show notes: Dim Wine Co. : www.dimwineco.ca

Wines sampled: 2017 Great Escape Chardonnay, 2019 Edgewater Riesling, Icarus Gewurztaimer, 202 Field Select Red, West Bank Cabernet Sauvignon, 2018 Old Press Cabernet Franc

This week, host Andrea Morris sits down at Dim Wine Co. with Peter, whose family has been farming in the Niagara region since 1973. If you think great wine has to be expensive, intimidating, or reserved for connoisseurs—think again!

What’s in this glass?

Peter shares stories from the vineyard’s fifty-year history, starting with his childhood planting Chardonnay vines by hand. Discover how the land’s unique, stratified soils shape the flavors in every bottle—from the buttery, citrus-kissed Great Escape Chardonnay (named after a cheeky childhood escape!) to the beautifully balanced, fruit-forward Edgewater Riesling that’s quickly becoming a fan favorite. Ever wondered about carbonic fermentation, stratified soils, or why a “stressed vine makes a fine wine”? Peter breaks it down for us, making wine knowledge accessible and fun.

Labels with a Legacy
Each Dim label tells a story—like the Icarus Gewurztraminer, inspired by Peter’s father’s days as an airplane mechanic, or the Lipizzan Merlot, named for the regal dancing horses beloved by Peter’s late mother (and the moving story of how her spirit might just have trotted through the vineyard one special morning).

Red, White, and Everything Nice
From smooth, chill-worthy Chardonnays and food-friendly Gewurztraminers (surprise: it’s perfect with Thai or Indian food!), to rich, complex reds that are just begging for a steak and a slow Sunday, Peter’s wine philosophy is all about authenticity, flavor, and down-to-earth hospitality.

Cozy Vibes & Future Sips
Dim Wine Co. isn’t just about great bottles—it’s a warm, wood-accented space where you’re welcomed like family. Patio dreams, expansion plans, and that famous “hug in a glass” means now’s the time to visit if you’re in Niagara.

Quick Sips: Fast Facts from Peter

• The most satisfying compliment? “Your wines are so smooth—they’re like a blanket, a hug, a welcome mat!”
• Why small wineries matter: Attention to each block of vines, perfectly timed harvests, and a personal passion you can taste.
• Insider tip: 2020 was a “vintage of the century,” but keep an eye out for 2023—Peter’s betting it’ll rival the best.

Andrea Morris [00:00:00]:
Hello, friends. I’m Andrea Morris, and here we are with another episode of Spill the Wine, the podcast that is obviously about wine and also about debunking myths about wine. Like, you can’t enjoy it unless you know something about it, or it has to be expensive for it to taste good. Today’s episode, we are here with Peter from Dim Winery, which, is a relatively new winery in the, Bent area. And what have you been in? Like, three or four months now?

Peter [00:00:30]:
Six months now.

Andrea Morris [00:00:31]:
Six months. Wow. Time flies, doesn’t it?

Peter [00:00:32]:
Retail wise, anyway.

Andrea Morris [00:00:34]:
Yeah. But have you been selling wine before that?

Peter [00:00:36]:
We’ve been selling to licensees, restaurants, since 2018. Yeah.

Andrea Morris [00:00:43]:
Wow. Okay. But your your actual winery store has only been open for six months.

Peter [00:00:49]:
Yeah. We opened in the beginning of twenty twenty four. Perfect.

Andrea Morris [00:00:52]:
And, you know, I have been here previously, just a a caveat to the listeners, and I am a big fan of your wines. So, Peter, tell me and, and and inform my audience about a little bit about your winery. How did you get started?

Peter [00:01:06]:
So we’ve been here actually for fifty years, since ’73. My father bought our first vineyard in ’73 just down the road and then we bought the second property here in about ’83. So we’ve been farming, selling our grapes to all the other wineries. And when my dad passed about ten years ago, my wife and I decided to move back here and start our label, and we started with one wine with twenty fifteen Riesling, and every year we added a few more and here we are.

Andrea Morris [00:01:36]:
That’s great. And so it’s a family run wine family this is hard. Family run winery.

Peter [00:01:42]:
I think you’ve had too much.

Andrea Morris [00:01:44]:
Family run winery. That’s exactly what it is.

Peter [00:01:48]:
It’s you know, my brothers help with the vineyard. My wife helps with the books, and, you know, we’re here every weekend. Now for the summer, we’re here o open five days a week selling our our love.

Andrea Morris [00:01:59]:
That’s fantastic. And you’re gonna be expanding a little bit soon, I hear, to a patio, maybe?

Peter [00:02:04]:
Yeah. Patio and finish the upstairs for, for sit down, and we’ll see where it goes, where it takes us.

Andrea Morris [00:02:10]:
What you your wines are fantastic, so I think that we should drink some wine and talk about Absolutely. And talk about the labels and talk about the wines. So what are we gonna start with, Peter? So why

Peter [00:02:20]:
don’t we start with the Chardonnay, which we call the great escape Chardonnay.

Andrea Morris [00:02:24]:
Why do you call it the great escape Chardonnay?

Peter [00:02:26]:
So all the labels come with a or all the labels are a result of a story, a memory, or something that happened to us on the farm. And that started with our marketing guy that I was working with at the time, and he came up with the chardonnay label actually, and he he’s like, you know Peter, you always talk about these stories, and he referenced this one story about me, this memory I had when I was a child. I was four years old, and I was helping my parents plant these chardonnay vines. So this was in 1976, and my memory was I had to hold the vine while my mom buried the roots. My dad, I remember, was up ahead digging the holes in front of us because this was all done by hand, an acre and a half of chardonnay as before we could even afford to hire a machine or anything to do it. So it was a hot summer day, and I remember I had enough. And when my mom turned to take the next shovel full, I bolted. And my memory was running away, and she’s screaming at me, come back here, we’re not done.

Peter [00:03:27]:
But I was running as fast as I could to get away from this, and we we called the wine the great escape chardonnay. That’s amazing.

Andrea Morris [00:03:37]:
So what year is this for now?

Peter [00:03:39]:
So this one is the 2017. So this is made in carbonic fermentation.

Andrea Morris [00:03:45]:
What does that mean?

Peter [00:03:46]:
So most regular white wine is made by pressing the juice off the grapes, and you ferment the juice in whatever vessel it’s gonna go into. With carbonic fermentation is you pick whole cluster, put that directly into the tank, close the tank, and it ferments under pressure in, purely c o two, so there’s no oxygen contact. You minimize that as much as possible, and you let the fermentation happen, whole cluster, so the fermentation pushes its way into the intact berries, and you get better extraction from the skin.

Andrea Morris [00:04:16]:
Oh, that’s interesting.

Peter [00:04:17]:
Depending on the variety, depending on the year, that could be, you know, anywhere between ten days and twenty days. And what you want, you wanna remove it off the off the stems at some point because you don’t wanna get that stringent flavor that the stems give you. But by doing that, you’re minimizing the oxygen contact during fermentation, which is what you really wanna do. You know, when you take a bite out of an apple, it turns brown right away. Grapes do the same thing. So you wanna minimize that as much as you can during fermentation, and you get a much fuller wine, a lot more flavors, a lot more extraction from the skin.

Andrea Morris [00:04:50]:
How does that differ from barrel fermentation then?

Peter [00:04:53]:
Well, barrel fermentation is basically you’re just talking about the vessel. So fermentation won’t be completed this way. They’ll remove Angie will remove it off the off that tank and and move the wine into whatever vessel we’re gonna finish fermentation in. So barrel fermentation is just where it’s happening.

Andrea Morris [00:05:13]:
Gotcha. Well, this has a really lovely nose.

Peter [00:05:17]:
It does.

Andrea Morris [00:05:18]:
It’s very buttery. It is. Which is interesting because normally I get that from an an oak barrel.

Peter [00:05:26]:
Well, it’s still it’s still aged in a thousand liter oak cask.

Andrea Morris [00:05:31]:
Oh that’s fantastic. It’s just a really buttery color.

Peter [00:05:35]:
But it’s very light.

Andrea Morris [00:05:36]:
Yeah very light. Not like that heavy oak, but not an overly oak taste to it, but kind of buttery with a little bit of citrus on the on the I find on the on the back of my tongue.

Peter [00:05:46]:
Yeah.

Andrea Morris [00:05:50]:
And I always find that there’s there’s a very soft feel as well. It’s very smooth. Yeah. It’s very smooth. Does that have to do with the, with the terrain?

Peter [00:06:02]:
I think we’re in a very good spot for wines like this. Cool climate wines, do very well paired with food. You get they they retain their acid. As long as you’ve got a decent summer, which we do nowadays, you get a very full bodied wine. Now where we’re growing our grapes, we’re Creek Shores is our Appalachian. We’re below the bench. We’re sitting on stratified soils. So this is an old lake bed, Lake Iroquois, and we’re actually on the shoreline of Lake Iroquois.

Peter [00:06:32]:
Highway 8, King Street is the old trail that ran along the shoreline. Now what we have here is because it’s a shoreline, we’ve got a mix soil of gravel, sand, and clay loam, and it’s stratified. So the best wines in the world, in my opinion, are grown on stratified soils. Now that’s what we’ve got here, and that’s why we went ahead and started the label because I totally believe in this location. And one thing I like about this spot is, we have a water table that is pretty shallow at the start of summer, spring, where it’s supposed to be. The vines have sufficient water to start growing, but as summer progresses that water table just drops and drops and drops and drops, and what that does is it forces the vines to look for water, so they’ll grow deeper and deeper roots and every layer of soil that we pass through, that’s a layer that provides a flavor to the wine.

Andrea Morris [00:07:23]:
That’s really interesting.

Peter [00:07:24]:
And that’s why we are here because we have that opportunity to have such a deep water table which gives us deep roots, which gives us magnificent wine.

Andrea Morris [00:07:35]:
What happens when you have, like, we had a couple weeks ago, tons and tons of rain. Does that affect that?

Peter [00:07:41]:
Well, as long as the rain passes through the soil quickly, which it does in this location, we don’t have a heavy heavy hay, clay content. We have a sandy gravelly soil here, so the water passes through quickly, which is exactly what you want. You don’t want your grapes to sit in in wet soil. Mhmm. You know if you got if you got a vine that’s happy, it’s it’s got sufficient water, I call that a lazy vine, and you know when you got a lazy vine you get a lousy wine. We we we like to stress out our vines so I don’t cultivate. We keep a grass cover in the vineyard, and that helps suck the water out. So in a wet summer like this this year is pretty wet, this year and last year, so our soil dries out pretty quick, so we stress out the vine by limiting how much water it can get, and a stressed out vine makes a fine wine.

Andrea Morris [00:08:32]:
You should write poetry.

Peter [00:08:33]:
I should.

Andrea Morris [00:08:35]:
Stressed out vine makes a fine wine. It’s really interesting to hear how much the agriculture really plays a part in winemaking.

Peter [00:08:43]:
You know, there’s two there’s a couple of different businesses going on here. You’ve got farming, marketing, wine production, and business admin. And a small wine company like this has to have it all A combo of all. Bundled into one little ball. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s it’s a crazy business to be in.

Andrea Morris [00:09:01]:
Well, that Chardonnay is spectacular.

Peter [00:09:03]:
It’s

Andrea Morris [00:09:03]:
just it’s got such a beautiful taste to it. Really love really I hesitate to say lovely because I use that too much in one podcast episode. It’s a really, really welcoming taste. Mhmm. Yeah.

Peter [00:09:18]:
I do adore it.

Andrea Morris [00:09:19]:
What do you pair that with when you everything? I would say everything. And do you prefer to, chilled or just slightly warm?

Peter [00:09:31]:
No. Chilled. Chilled? Yep. Yep. For red wines, I would say the old school of room temperature, which is 18 degrees, and I would say this is lower than that. So easily 16.

Andrea Morris [00:09:43]:
It’s really, really fantastic. I highly recommend this great escape chardonnay. So what are we moving on to next, Peter?

Peter [00:09:50]:
We are going to move on to the 2019 Riesling.

Andrea Morris [00:09:58]:
How is 2019 as a year for grapes? Because everyone talks about 2020 as being spectacular.

Peter [00:10:03]:
Twenty twenty was probably the year of or the, vintage of the century. ’19 wasn’t horrible at all by any stretch of the measuring book, but it wasn’t it wasn’t 2020, it wasn’t 2017, but taste it. So Niagara is either gonna be a red wine year or it’s gonna be a white wine year. Tell me what you think of this.

Andrea Morris [00:10:34]:
Well, the nose is lovely. It’s very fruity.

Peter [00:10:42]:
And that’s what you get out of a cool climate wine. Oh man.

Andrea Morris [00:10:46]:
So That’s so good.

Peter [00:10:48]:
Here in Niagara we have our hot days, but never too scorching hot, so this area never gets over 34 degrees because of the cool air coming off of the lake, and the escarpment holding that in it kind of acts like a little conveyor belt of air. So during the day it spins hot air off the soil, rises, moves over to the lake, the cool air over the lake drops it and we get that cool breeze coming in. At night it goes the other way around. So what happens is with a cool climate wine, we get those hot days and then we get the cool nights And that fluctuation in temperature, that’s what retains the acidity in the in the grapes, and when you got that combination, it pairs really well with food, and you get those floral aromas.

Andrea Morris [00:11:37]:
And it’s interesting with this riesling because it’s not it’s got a tiny little bit of sweetness to it, but it’s also got that citrus that I really like in a Riesling, but it’s not overpowering. Because I don’t like a Riesling that’s too lemony, but this is just actually, I think it’s the perfect blend. And again, that softness on the back of my tongue is just

Peter [00:11:59]:
So because we’re below the bench, benchland soils are high in limestone, which is what gives you that citrus aroma and that those flavors. Because we’re on the old lake bed, we’ve got a mixture of soil, we’ve got that stratification, and you know imagine thousands of years ago when we used to have 100 meters of water over our head. When that lake dropped, it exposed the bench land. All that bench land was had no, vegetation to hold the soil back, so it all washed down to this lake when right now if we were sitting right now we’d be sitting like four feet of water.

Andrea Morris [00:12:38]:
And we’d be very cool.

Peter [00:12:41]:
Super cold, I I would imagine, thirteen thirteen, 14 thousand years ago.

Andrea Morris [00:12:44]:
Yeah.

Peter [00:12:46]:
But it’s that, that soil that’s down here is what’s providing the aromas that you taste in the wines made from the Creek Shores Appalachian. So the stratification of the different types of soil, the gravel, you know when soil, when water travels down a creek and it picks up speed, it can carry a lot of material. When it hits a body of water, the first thing that happens is it drops the heaviest material. So the first thing that drops along the shoreline was the gravel, the heavier sand materials, and the the fine clay continued on. So So if you drive down to the next, concession down there, Fourth Avenue area, you won’t find a whole lot of vineyards. Right? The soil is way too hard. Mhmm. So all the vineyards are along here, and then they stretch down.

Peter [00:13:33]:
There’s a there’s a sand layer that stretches, kinda goes back and forth and you’ll find a couple of wineries that have that, but that’s it. That’s why in this location, this is why we look, we went through the trouble of starting the wine label because I believed in the soil here. Like when I went to school, I went to school for civil engineering, did a couple of soil courses, and then after that I went to Brock for geology, studied a little bit more about soil. So once once I started getting a little bit of knowledge, I started to realize what we had here, And ever since then, since my mid twenties, I always thought this was the location. Mhmm. And then over the years, excuse me, over the years, we’ve had so many winemakers come back to us and say, Ivan, you know, my dad, that was the best Chardonnay or that’s the best Cabernet. So if it wasn’t for all of that, I don’t think we’d be here.

Andrea Morris [00:14:24]:
Wow. That’s a great story.

Peter [00:14:27]:
Let me try. Yeah. So the results are coming in.

Andrea Morris [00:14:30]:
Their Riesling is fantastic. And it’s called Edgewater Riesling, and what’s the story behind that label?

Peter [00:14:35]:
So because we’re on the we’re actually on the shoreline of Lake Erie, this farm sits right on that shoreline. And because it’s Edgewater, right, we’re on the water’s edge, so we you know, that’s it worked for us.

Andrea Morris [00:14:51]:
That makes sense. Yeah. Lovely Riesling, and I have to say one of my favorites in the area as well. So good job, Peter. Now what are we gonna move on to?

Peter [00:15:04]:
So we’re gonna move on to something a little on the unique side for Niagara. There are Gewurzt demeanors out there, but I guarantee you I haven’t tasted a Gewurzt meter like this.

Andrea Morris [00:15:17]:
And it’s called the Icarus Gewurztraminer?

Peter [00:15:20]:
So this one is called the Icarus Gewurztraminer. So like I said before with the Chardonnay, most of our labels come with a story. So my dad, having grown up in Europe, everyone in Europe has to have a trade, and my dad’s trade was airplane mechanics. And when he was in the army, he was working as a mechanic on these, fighter planes, these World War two fighter planes. And you old this is old Yugoslavia. They got their, airframes from Russia, from Soviet Union, but they wouldn’t get the engines from them. Stalin was a little pissed off at Tito. So they had to go to the French, and they got these v 12, engines.

Peter [00:16:04]:
And the problem with these engines were probably why they gave them away. When the fighter pilot was going through a nosedive, the engine would stall and the plane would crash, and nobody could fix the problem. Nobody knew what was wrong, and my dad had an idea. So he tore apart the engine, figured out what it was, at least what he thought it was, put it back together, told the pilot to go back up, and he did all these nose dives. No problem. He solved it. About a month or two later, all these generals came out, met met up with my dad, and my dad’s like, what am I doing here? And all these generals are, congratulations, congratulations, congratulations. And my dad turned to his superior, and he goes, what’s going on? And he goes, Ivan, if you weren’t a if you were a civilian, you’d be the richest man in the country because he saved a 50 of these fighter planes from being, you know, destroyed.

Peter [00:16:54]:
So I always thought it was a kind of an interesting story, and what really turned me on to the story was the fact that they called the airplane Icarus c 40 nines. Do you know the story about Icarus?

Andrea Morris [00:17:07]:
Yeah. He flew too close to the sun.

Peter [00:17:10]:
So he flew too close to the sun Yeah. His wings melted. The rocks off

Andrea Morris [00:17:13]:
his wings and fell to his death. Exactly.

Peter [00:17:15]:
So that was exactly what was happening to these pilots.

Andrea Morris [00:17:18]:
So I thought it was ironic. Greek mythology. Yeah.

Peter [00:17:21]:
I thought it was ironic that they used that name. Wow. That’s crazy. So it’s just a story that, you know, was always part of my dad’s claim to fame.

Andrea Morris [00:17:28]:
That’s so awesome.

Peter [00:17:29]:
In the milk country.

Andrea Morris [00:17:30]:
And it’s a it’s a love it’s a really cool label. And I as a caveat, I am not a big Gewirtztraminer fan, because I’ve always found it too floral. This, however, doesn’t have a floral tone to it at all. It’s got the lychee smell, the lychee, like, no.

Peter [00:17:48]:
Yeah. So it’s not too sweet, and the aromas that you get off of it kind of trick you in thinking that it’s sweeter than it is.

Andrea Morris [00:17:56]:
It’s it is. Exactly. I mean, it’s got that it’s got a really nice lychee flavor to it, and I happen to know that this is actually great with Thai food. It works really well

Peter [00:18:07]:
with Thai food.

Andrea Morris [00:18:07]:
It works really well with Thai food. Anything spicy. Yeah. It’s just to me, as someone that’s not a Gewurztraminer fan, this is actually a perfect Gewurztraminer because it’s not overly floral, and it’s just got that really beautiful it doesn’t have that I find a lot of times with, for me, with Gewurztraminer, it has this awful aftertaste, but this doesn’t have that. It’s just fruit forward with the lychee, and it just blends so well with the spicy food. Mhmm. So cheers to you, Peter, because this is an absolutely fantastic Gewurztraminer.

Peter [00:18:42]:
Thank you. My dad planted this in 02/2007. I thought it was always thought it was an interesting plant.

Andrea Morris [00:18:50]:
I heard it’s very hardy.

Peter [00:18:52]:
It’s it’s there’s nothing wrong with this plant growing it in Niagara. It grows a little dense, so you gotta take a little bit extra care. The leaf canopy is very tight.

Andrea Morris [00:19:04]:
Is the softness on this because of the terrain?

Peter [00:19:08]:
Absolutely. So we’re not I I don’t wanna call other parts of Niagara a monoculture of soil, but I there is I have that feeling that if you’re not on the bed, the old lake bed, then your soil isn’t stratified. Now of course, you can say that that varies from acre to acre. All of Niagara varies from acre to acre but I really truly believe that you get that you get multiple aromas and flavors off this old lake bed because of that stratification. So it smooths out the wine, you don’t just get that citrus flavor that Niagara became known for at the start because we used varieties like Riesling that really emphasize that, But when you’re moving on to more complex wines and varieties, then you’re you’re gonna wake up every other every other flavor in that wine, and that’s because of the stratified soils. So I think Gourdstimieners does a very good job in expressing that.

Andrea Morris [00:20:08]:
It’s interesting that there aren’t that many wineries around here that do it.

Peter [00:20:12]:
It’s not a big cellar. It’s not a big known wine, and partly because of the the name. Right? Gorgstamena. Gorgstamena. It’s a difficult name to say. You know, it doesn’t sell amazing in Italian restaurants. It has to be a

Andrea Morris [00:20:28]:
But I don’t find it as

Peter [00:20:29]:
paired to something like that.

Andrea Morris [00:20:31]:
As a wine that would go well with Italian food.

Peter [00:20:33]:
No. And that’s why. So, you know, how many Thai restaurants are out there? Right? Or what what other restaurants are out there that Indian

Andrea Morris [00:20:40]:
I think an Indian food

Peter [00:20:41]:
would go well with. Yeah.

Andrea Morris [00:20:42]:
But I think Thai is Thai is the perfect food for it

Peter [00:20:45]:
Yes.

Andrea Morris [00:20:46]:
Because it’s just got that Thai has such delicate spices, and I think that that’s that’s the I know for a fact it’s a perfect food perfect wine for for Thai food. Mhmm. So Yep. There you go.

Peter [00:20:59]:
There you go.

Andrea Morris [00:21:00]:
But it is a really great Gewurztraminer, and I say that because I don’t like that wine, and I like this one. So there

Peter [00:21:09]:
you go. This one works.

Andrea Morris [00:21:11]:
So now are we moving on to reds?

Peter [00:21:13]:
Let’s start with

Andrea Morris [00:21:19]:
I will say, listener, you can’t see these glasses, but Peter has the most amazing glasses here. They’re just I would have to say to say it, but they’re almost, like, sexy in the way that they look. They’re sexy glasses.

Peter [00:21:31]:
These are wine wings.

Andrea Morris [00:21:32]:
They’re sexy glasses.

Peter [00:21:34]:
They work really well with with these wines. So I’m pouring a blended wine, Cabralot, called Field Select. It’s the 2020 vintage.

Andrea Morris [00:21:45]:
A great year for wines.

Peter [00:21:47]:
2020 will go down as Niagara so far. Niagara’s vintage of the century. Usually here in Niagara we have a nice hot summer and an okay fall, or we have an okay summer and a really hot nice fall. 2020 as far as I can remember, we’re talking forty years, where we had a perfect summer and a perfect fall. That almost never happens, at least not in the history of the Vennifer winemaking in Niagara.

Andrea Morris [00:22:20]:
Because let’s do it in a year when no one can go anywhere.

Peter [00:22:24]:
Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. Had to remind us of that day of that year.

Andrea Morris [00:22:29]:
But that’s okay because the the, like, the wine, you don’t make the 2020 wines, and they’re not available in 2020 anyway, so it’s fine.

Peter [00:22:35]:
Yeah. So, this is a Passimento, and it’s a blend of our Cab and Merlot. And it, actually, sorry. It’s not a Passimento. I’m I’m thinking about the other wine. It’s not a Passimento because in 2020, we didn’t have to do it. So it was just that perfect of a year. Wow.

Andrea Morris [00:22:59]:
Why do you call it Field Select?

Peter [00:23:03]:
Because it’s a blend of the different two fields, and we take the best fields, or the best blend, the best blocks for this one particular wine.

Andrea Morris [00:23:10]:
It’s a really fantastic red. The color is beautiful. It’s a nice deep, deep red with beautiful legs and kind of a cherry sort of nose. I can totally smell cherry on it.

Peter [00:23:26]:
Dark cherry?

Andrea Morris [00:23:26]:
Dark cherry for sure.

Peter [00:23:27]:
Blackberry, a little bit of fig and tobacco.

Andrea Morris [00:23:33]:
Not getting tobacco, but, oh, it’s absolutely fantastic. That’s the bread that I wanna just I just wanna sit and eat cheese and drink that wine. Mhmm. It’s fantastic. Yeah. It works.

Peter [00:23:50]:
I like it.

Andrea Morris [00:23:52]:
Yeah. You’re so you’re so like, yeah. It works. I like it. Yeah. Great. Yeah. It’s my wine.

Andrea Morris [00:23:56]:
Mhmm.

Peter [00:23:59]:
Well, you know, we wouldn’t be here if I didn’t know that this farm can produce a decent quality wine. You know, the the competition that we’re up against isn’t just Niagara wineries. It’s worldwide. The LCBO will bring in wines from the whole world of different qualities, a lot of good qualities, some mediocre, but so our consumers have a lot of choice here in Ontario. And, you know, if it wasn’t for the fact of where we’re located in the soil and the climate, I don’t think I’d be in this business. Right? It’s a difficult business to be in. But when you’ve got a, you know, perfect vineyard location with the right, soil types, the right microclimate, you know, the water table low, like how it’s supposed to be, everything just said go for it. So, you know, anything that comes off this farm.

Peter [00:24:51]:
You know, I don’t wanna pat myself on the back, but they’re fantastic wines.

Andrea Morris [00:24:54]:
It’s like an open invitation. Your land is saying, hey. Grow grow grapes on me.

Peter [00:24:58]:
Yeah.

Andrea Morris [00:25:00]:
Yeah. And I’ve asked many people during the course of this podcast why they started a winery, and they all said insanity.

Peter [00:25:08]:
Ignorance? I I couldn’t imagine not. I practically was born on this farm, So I I I personally know every vine. Right? I spent my entire life walking up and down, driving up and down every single one of these rows. I know what these what this farm can produce.

Andrea Morris [00:25:29]:
So your heart and soul was into it?

Peter [00:25:31]:
I couldn’t imagine not doing it. Right? Certainly wasn’t easy. Like, you know, there’s challenges every day, and I’m surprised I sleep at night sometimes.

Andrea Morris [00:25:42]:
But Will you have wine?

Peter [00:25:44]:
I got wine to help.

Andrea Morris [00:25:46]:
Just drink, open a bottle, drink it, and go like I can sleep now. It’s fine.

Peter [00:25:50]:
Yeah. But I just can’t imagine not doing it. You know, lots of people come in here and say how do you do it? It’s like I don’t know how not to do it.

Andrea Morris [00:25:59]:
Right. You know it’s in your blood, and that’s also you’re passionate about it.

Peter [00:26:03]:
Exactly.

Andrea Morris [00:26:04]:
And that’s the that’s the main thing. Being passionate will help you get to the next level.

Peter [00:26:09]:
Yeah. Yeah. If you if it was work, then it would fall apart.

Andrea Morris [00:26:14]:
But it’s also what level do you wanna get to? Because do you wanna be like the big, like, Trias or

Peter [00:26:21]:
No. Jackson’s.

Andrea Morris [00:26:21]:
I mean, do you wanna just

Peter [00:26:23]:
I couldn’t do it if I wanted to, and I don’t wanna do it because I don’t wanna I don’t wanna produce wine for that. I don’t want to say clientele. There’s two ways to make money in Ontario. Lower priced, good has to be obviously good wines.

Andrea Morris [00:26:38]:
Decent wine. I would say decent.

Peter [00:26:40]:
But at a low price point. And the consumer for the low price point, you would always have to be fighting for that new sale. They don’t come back. Mhmm. They go on to the next thing that they find. That cons that consumer. The other way is a premium product that fetches a premium price, but that clientele cares about what they’re buying. They care about the packaging, they care about the backstory, they care about where it came from, and that client will always come back.

Peter [00:27:08]:
And I don’t have the marketing budget for the first one because you’re always chasing a new buyer, but with the higher premium product, that buyer will always come back.

Andrea Morris [00:27:18]:
Exactly.

Peter [00:27:19]:
So I don’t have to spend as much in marketing or worry about trying to find consistently new consumers to sell to, and I couldn’t do it any other way. After 3,500 cases a year, this farm wouldn’t produce any more than that.

Andrea Morris [00:27:34]:
But you have a really nice welcoming atmosphere here as well.

Peter [00:27:37]:
Yeah. It’s a cute little place.

Andrea Morris [00:27:38]:
Yeah. It is. It’s just it’s warm. It’s it you just feel like a hug when you’re here. I’m not being sarcastic. I mean, you really do. It’s like the it’s like, listener, you can’t see it, but it’s like wood grain everywhere, and it’s just like it’s just warm and comforting, and and you just feel you feel instantly at home when you’re here.

Peter [00:28:00]:
It is cozy. It’s, you know, the old barn beans.

Andrea Morris [00:28:04]:
Still set, you know, like gives you a little bit of history. Something about the smell of the wood as well that just makes you feel like like you’re in a log cabin, and you’re way on vacation, and you’ve come off the busy highway, and you’re just like, here I am just instantly relaxed.

Peter [00:28:20]:
It’s the exact opposite of Toronto. Exactly.

Andrea Morris [00:28:23]:
Yeah. Yeah. So let’s move on, Peter. This is wine country. That’s right. Let’s have some more wine then.

Peter [00:28:30]:
So let’s move on to Cab Sauve Ah. Which we call the West Bank Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s 2018 vintage.

Andrea Morris [00:28:39]:
And I take it because it’s the Western Bank of your

Peter [00:28:43]:
Crete. So the story behind this is my dad’s our first farm that my dad bought, he bought with my uncle. 44 acres. And after just a couple years, they decided that they can’t work together, so they split the farm down the middle. And right down the middle just happened to be a creek, the 16 mile creek. And my when my uncle said, what side do you want? My dad said he wants the West Side of the creek. So I guess I called it I could’ve called it West Side, but

Andrea Morris [00:29:13]:
I went with Westbank. Because then it would be Westside story.

Peter [00:29:16]:
I I wouldn’t win with any version of this story. I could’ve called it Leftbank, but I didn’t wanna tie

Andrea Morris [00:29:22]:
us into Bordeaux. Right. Right? Westbank.

Peter [00:29:25]:
So I chose Westbank, but now there’s, you know, issues with that name. Yeah. But it’s not about politics or anything like that. It’s all about having the West side of this creek, which I like. I’m glad my dad got it because it’s higher. Elevation is higher than the east side. Mhmm. We’ve got rolling hills, so we’ve got a little bit of south southern exposure, which is perfect for the Cabernet spot where where it is planted, and the soil is fantastic.

Peter [00:29:52]:
So good drainage, good water drainage, good air drainage, and good sun exposure. Perfect for Cabernet.

Andrea Morris [00:29:57]:
The legs on this are beautiful.

Peter [00:29:59]:
The color is fantastic.

Andrea Morris [00:30:00]:
The color is absolutely fantastic. It’s just this beautiful deep red, and the nose is very black cherry.

Peter [00:30:07]:
Mhmm.

Andrea Morris [00:30:09]:
I’m getting so good at this.

Peter [00:30:10]:
So this is so this is a passamento. 2018 vintage, needed a little bit. And what we do with the passamento, what we’re using that for is to balance the wine. Because we’re cool climate, we have usually a high acid in our in our grapes and in years that aren’t like 2020 where it’s perfect all the way through, we need to give it a little bit of boost of sugar and the only reason we we do this is to balance it to the acid because acid is almost always high in the diaphragm.

Andrea Morris [00:30:41]:
So explain appascimento in case someone is just tuning into this tuning into this podcast for the first time. What is appascimento?

Peter [00:30:49]:
So what we’re doing is we’re drying the grapes almost like a raisin, and the reason we do that is because we want to reduce the moisture content. And by doing that you increase the sugar content. The brix level go up say, 24 to about 26. And the only reason we’re doing that is is to balance the high acid. And if you don’t balance the acid, it’s always gonna taste a little off. And there’s three things that makes a good wine. Sugar, acid, when sugar goes up acid comes down, and pH. And you really don’t want to mess with those things outside of the vineyard.

Peter [00:31:25]:
If you can get them perfect in in the vineyard then your wine’s going to be fantastic.

Andrea Morris [00:31:30]:
This is a fantastic wine. It’s just so rich and deep and fruit forward and just so flavorful. It’s it’s a really fantastic Cabernet Sauvignon.

Peter [00:31:43]:
It is. Yeah. Yep.

Andrea Morris [00:31:45]:
Pat yourself on the back for that one.

Peter [00:31:46]:
I’m I’m extremely happy with this one.

Andrea Morris [00:31:48]:
I think it’s wonderful. And you know what? I’ve taken this to people’s houses and said it was from this region, and they’re like, what? They’re like, how did how did someone do this here?

Peter [00:31:58]:
Mhmm.

Andrea Morris [00:31:59]:
Which is a testament to you because, like, it’s really fantastic.

Peter [00:32:04]:
I I think we’re lucky. The property is fantastic for growing for Cabernet. We’ve had plenty of winemakers over the forty something years that we’ve had Cabernet always come back and say, this is the location.

Andrea Morris [00:32:18]:
Yeah. I can see why because it’s absolutely spectacular. I’m a big fan, and there’s one little sip left in this glass that I’m gonna take. And now we have another wine to sample. We’ve got one more. Doesn’t listen there, doesn’t this make you want to come here and just like drink wines with us? Because Peter’s such

Peter [00:32:41]:
a great host. So we call this Cab Franc, Old Pressed Cabernet Franc, And the reason why we call it Old Press is a long, long story going all the way back to World War two.

Andrea Morris [00:32:57]:
Really?

Peter [00:32:58]:
So my both my parents come from vineyards in Europe. They both grew up on small hillside vineyards in Southern Slovenia, Dolenska. And the vineyard that my dad inherited when my grandfather passed was a vineyard that had its own little wine cellar dug into the hillside. And going all the way back to the war, a couple of partisan soldiers were being chased and they hid inside the wine cellar to get away from the Germans, and they lit the roof on fire to get them to come out. They came out, but we lost everything that was in the in the wine cellar, so the barrels and everything. But the big thing that we lost was the really old wine press that was in there. Massively huge wooden wine press. After the war my grandfather rebuilt it and my dad ended up inheriting it.

Peter [00:33:51]:
So we’ve got the wine press here in Canada now. I haven’t erected it yet but it’s going to go in the front of the winery, hopefully soon. So in honor of those soldiers that we lost that day and the old wine press, we decided to call this the old press Cabernet.

Andrea Morris [00:34:08]:
It’s a beautiful label.

Peter [00:34:12]:
So, again, this is 2018 vintage, passimento. Very, very rich.

Andrea Morris [00:34:18]:
Very rich smell or or nose as they would say. It’s like I I can’t even trying to figure out what fruit I’m smelling because it just everything is just hitting me. So

Peter [00:34:37]:
A little cassis?

Andrea Morris [00:34:38]:
Yeah. Like, blackcurrant, maybe? Mhmm. Mhmm. Oh it’s a bit Again

Peter [00:34:47]:
it’s a passamento, so it’s, you don’t get

Andrea Morris [00:34:49]:
green flavors. It’s a little thicker. Yeah, yeah. It’s really nice. Yeah.

Peter [00:34:54]:
For ‘eighteen it’s a fantastic wine.

Andrea Morris [00:34:56]:
Yeah, because ‘eighteen wasn’t a great year, right? It was okay. A little bit of plum on there. Yeah? Yeah, but that I can just have a stake with that. Oh, absolutely. And be very happy.

Peter [00:35:13]:
Yeah. With the with the tannin Mhmm. You know, you wanna open this a couple hours earlier or run it through a decanter?

Andrea Morris [00:35:19]:
No. Just open it a couple hours earlier. Let it sit. I have a nice steak with some blue cheese on it.

Peter [00:35:24]:
Oh, yeah. That’s Yep. I’m gonna have tenderloin tonight. You wanna join me?

Andrea Morris [00:35:28]:
Yes. This would be Yes. Thank you.

Peter [00:35:31]:
This would go really well.

Andrea Morris [00:35:35]:
Yeah. That would be perfect. Yeah.

Peter [00:35:36]:
It’s a fantastic wine.

Andrea Morris [00:35:37]:
Oh, absolutely stunning. And just, again, the softness on the back of my tongue with the all of your wines have that amazing softness. They’re just so beautiful. Thank you. I have to say that, like, the taste of your wines is just so different, and just I I find it very welcoming. You know? It’s just like a floor mat. I can just say a a welcome home mat. You know? Like, it’s just so they’re so great because they’re so smooth.

Peter [00:36:13]:
So since you’re enjoying the wines, why don’t we

Andrea Morris [00:36:17]:
We have a bonus wine.

Peter [00:36:19]:
Why don’t we open one more?

Andrea Morris [00:36:20]:
Oh. So this one This is the wine our producer Lucas had wanted to try from the get go.

Peter [00:36:26]:
This one is the 2018 Lipizzan Merlot.

Andrea Morris [00:36:30]:
And why the name Lipizzan? It’s just obviously a horse.

Peter [00:36:33]:
So the Lipizzan horse stallion. Comes it comes from the area that my parents grew up in. So Slovenia and Austria. This was the nobleman’s horse back in the day. If you know anything about them, they are born gray. They’re dancers. But they’re within seven years, they’re pure white, and they’re not stallions or racehorses, but they are in competitions for dancing and prancing. My mom’s favorite horse.

Peter [00:37:02]:
So my mom passed in 1997, and the morning of her funeral, my aunt looked out her window when she was getting ready to come to the funeral home that morning, and her neighbor’s horses broke free from their pen. They jumped that creek that that splits our farm, and the horses were running back and forth on the back of our vineyard dancing and prancing. So once my aunt showed up to the funeral, she’s like, Peter, I gotta tell you what I just saw. And because it was my mom’s favorite horse, and it was, you know, the back of our vineyard. We thought, you know, maybe she’s enjoying herself for the first time in a number of years.

Andrea Morris [00:37:42]:
Aw, that’s amazing. So that’s That’s a beautiful story.

Peter [00:37:46]:
Favorite wine was orange Merlot, so this story worked well with it.

Andrea Morris [00:37:49]:
Aw, that’s so sweet. And it’s then, again, another beautiful deep, deep red, almost purple.

Peter [00:37:56]:
So this is a passamento also, 2018 vintage.

Andrea Morris [00:38:00]:
It’s got almost a peppery little finish to it.

Peter [00:38:02]:
It’s yeah. A little bit of pepper, like dark pepper, dark cherry.

Andrea Morris [00:38:08]:
I was gonna say dark cherry. You beat me to it.

Peter [00:38:10]:
Very, very fruity. Very soft Merlot.

Andrea Morris [00:38:15]:
It is a very soft Merlot. Very well balanced. But and absolutely fantastic. I would I could drink this all night.

Peter [00:38:25]:
This one’s right out of the bottle. It’s so

Andrea Morris [00:38:28]:
good. It’s, again, that that softness. That Mhmm. Like, it’s like all of your wines have that beautiful softness to them.

Peter [00:38:37]:
It’s the soil.

Andrea Morris [00:38:37]:
Yeah. Yeah. Is sometimes you drink wine, it’s it’s kinda harsh. You can feel it at the back of your tongue. But all of your wines are, like, almost, like, open and inviting and just, like, just you feel like it’s a blanket of wine.

Peter [00:38:51]:
Like a hug?

Andrea Morris [00:38:52]:
Yeah. It’s like your wines are hugging me. That’s why I have to drink them. When I feel bad, I come to Dim. I have a blanket of wine.

Peter [00:39:00]:
I always come on a Sunday afternoon.

Andrea Morris [00:39:05]:
I don’t always come on a Sunday afternoon, but I’m trying to make a point of it. But it’s a

Peter [00:39:09]:
nice Sunday afternoon,

Andrea Morris [00:39:10]:
It is. It’s great, yeah. Absolutely. I’d bring my puppy, but he sleeps through everything, so it’s great. It’s curled up a little bottle. I know. Lucas, you can say what you think about that.

Ugo [00:39:23]:
It’s too cute.

Peter [00:39:24]:
It’s too cute.

Andrea Morris [00:39:25]:
No. About the wine. Oh, the wine. He wanted to try the wine.

Peter [00:39:30]:
Oh, it’s smooth. And, I mean, there’s nothing nothing that, like, pulls my palate too far one way or the other, though. It’s smooth. I mean, all of them, like you said, have been smooth. I mean, I’m not trying to just say that for saying it, but they all have been very, very, very smooth all the way from the beginning of the taste all the way to the aftertaste, the whole palate experience. Yeah.

Andrea Morris [00:39:54]:
See, listener, this is why why we have to have Lucas give us 2¢ because he wanted to try the Merlot from the get go, and now he’s very, very happy because it is absolutely spectacular. Like, Peter, I I’ve never had a bad wine here.

Peter [00:40:07]:
Because Merlot’s can be a little bit on the sharper on the aftertaste. As soon as you you you first taste it, you’re like, oh, it’s alright. And then once you swallow it, then it’s like then you might get hit with that sharpness or or that

Andrea Morris [00:40:19]:
That sideways, oh, I hate Merlot. Like, woah.

Peter [00:40:22]:
Yeah. But this doesn’t have that. It just we

Peter [00:40:24]:
It’s amazing what that movie did to Merlot. I always thought of Merlot as a very soft wine where Cab can be harsh, especially when it’s young. Caps capsule would be in between the two. But you’re right. These wines are easy drinking right out of the bottle. Right? Mhmm. They’re they are still very age worthy. These are our first cabs in Merlot, so, interesting to see how that plays out over the next ten to fifteen years.

Peter [00:40:52]:
But, yeah, they’re very smooth wines, and the Passamanteau helps with that. It keeps it from that typical Niagara green pepper flavor that Cabernets here in Niagara usually have.

Andrea Morris [00:41:04]:
Yes. But

Peter [00:41:04]:
it’s because of our cool climate. You know, our our grapes hang on to their acid with our cool nights, and our, you know, our hot days are there, but they’re not there every summer. And if with a passamento, it’s just another tool in our toolbox of things to do in winemaking for Niagara. And maybe if we get more years like 2020 with climate change, we maybe will move away from that.

Andrea Morris [00:41:28]:
Do you think that 2023 is gonna be a year like was last year? Was it a year like that?

Peter [00:41:32]:
Might be just as good as 2020. Different, but just as good. Twenty three twenty three turned out to be a it started off wet, which doesn’t matter in terms of grape grape production because it stayed hot, and then we ended up having a fantastic fall, And it just lasted and lasted and lasted. The only thing about last year was everything came in at once, so there was, like, a lack of tank space and stuff like that. But other than that, ’23 might go down as second to 2020.

Andrea Morris [00:42:05]:
How do you know until you you don’t know until you actually make the wines?

Peter [00:42:09]:
You you start to get a feeling once once verizon hits and you see how they turn and how they soften and come around. What we’re all aiming for are the brown seeds and the full body when you’re tasting the grapes. You know, a good winemaker won’t just pick on the numbers. He’ll he’ll go in the vineyard and taste the berries and and figure out when. What you’re what you’re trying to do is you pick that block when the acid and the sugar are balanced and the pH is just right. And when you’re a small winery, you have that luxury to pick each block on a on the day that is ideal as opposed to selling your grapes to a big winery and everyone’s picking on the same day, and it, you know, one vineyard might be overripe, one vineyard might be perfect, and one vineyard might be underripe. And then you throw it all together in a tank, and then you see what you get. Right? And then you gotta change your sugar and your acid, and your pH might be way off.

Peter [00:43:01]:
And that’s what makes just a mediocre wine. When you’re small, you get to pick the block on the day that it should be picked.

Andrea Morris [00:43:07]:
That’s awesome. Yeah. And this is why you should visit small lot wineries. Yep. Because there’s so much care and so much and and so much attention to the grapes.

Peter [00:43:20]:
You know, good winemakers know when to not touch the grapes, and the best thing to do is back in the day, it was all what what I can learn about winemaking in the cellar, but really it’s about what I can learn to make the perfect grape. And then the job in the cellar is simple, ideally, in a in a perfect world.

Andrea Morris [00:43:41]:
That’s so cool. So And it turned out to be absolutely fantastic wines.

Peter [00:43:45]:
Thank you.

Andrea Morris [00:43:45]:
That I am so happy that we came here today, and I’m so happy that we had the time that we that we did with you today.

Peter [00:43:52]:
Thank you.

Andrea Morris [00:43:53]:
I’m glad

Peter [00:43:53]:
you came.

Andrea Morris [00:43:54]:
So listener, I really hope that you enjoyed our visit with Peter at Dim Winery, or is it Dim Cellars? Dim Wine Co. Dim Wine Co. Dim Wine Co. Look it up online. Absolutely fantastic winery, fantastic wines, and a fantastic host, as you know. If you’re ever in the Niagara Region, come and visit him or the Bench region, and be sure to visit our show notes because then you can get more info on Dim Winery. There’ll be photos and photos of the wines, and also be sure to follow Spill the Wine as well. So you can follow us, and if you have suggestions or comments on anything you’d like to see on the show, then you can email us at podcastspillthewinegmail dot com.

Andrea Morris [00:44:38]:
That’s podcastspillthewinegmail dot com. So we’d like to say cheers. Thanks for being here, and we’ll see you on the next episode.

Peter [00:44:47]:
Ciao.