Ron Giesbrecht’s winemaking journey: From family dinner table to Canadian champion

Wending Home Estate Vineyards & Winery’s latest successful stop on Niagara winemaker’s trek through world of Niagara viniculture.

Originally Posted in The Standard, July 24, 2024. By John McTavish contributing columnistRead the original article here.

I have known Ron Giesbrecht for many years and have been a fan of his wines for a long time, too.

After seeing his win at the All Canadian Wine Championships, I knew I had to visit to try his new wines and interview him for the public to get to know more about the man behind the success.

The first thing I wanted to know was how Giesbrecht got into wine. He told me his parents came back to Canada from a European trip in the late 1960s and picked up the habit of drinking wine with dinner.

In the mid-1970s when the first Canadian commercial wineries started, his father was a local banker at Scotiabank in St. Catharines who had a sympathetic ear for winemakers and wine startups.

Karl Kaiser and Donald Ziraldo from Inniskillin, Paul Bosc from Château des Charmes, the Reif family and others would come meet his father at the dinner table to discuss business and wine would always be present.

Giesbrecht’s interest in wine led him to study microbiology at university and work with grape and wine research at Vineland Station. He also worked with Bosc at Château des Charmes, as well as with John Marynissen when he opened Marynissen Estates Winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

This connected him with the small but growing wine community in Niagara.

He planned to study winemaking abroad in California or Germany, but his mentors told him to stay in Canada where a fellowship study program was being created. This was before the wine schools at Brock University and Niagara College.

Grape Growers of Ontario, with Ontario Wine Council, University of Guelph and Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, came up with a special program as he completed his masters at Guelph while doing research at what is now called Vineland Research and Innovation Centre.

Therefore, Giesbrecht is the original wine graduate in Niagara, and admits wine education opportunities are easier and much better now compared to when he studied.

Giesbrecht started working as a winemaker in 1985 at a small winery in southwestern Ontario. A year later he moved on to Brights Winery, where he was the researcher and winemaker and could make hundreds of experimental batches of wines from many different grape varieties. This gave him insights into both small and large winemaking. Small on the research side and large because Brights was the largest winery in Ontario.

He moved on to Henry of Pelham in St. Catharines where he worked as winemaker for 23 years with the Speck brothers, and later moved to Niagara College in 2013 to teach a new generation of young students.

At the college Giesbrecht had an important role in training many of the current young winemakers who are active in the industry at so many wineries across Ontario.

He enjoys connecting with so many of them which makes a perfect circle in a wine world where he was a student, then became the professor and is now a mentor in the field.

Giesbrecht retired from the college and started collaborating with a former student of his who had purchased a grape farm and started Wending Home Estate Vineyards & Winery, on Ninth Street in St. Catharines.

He made his first vintage in 2020. The winery grows 11 grape varieties, which is a playground for Giesbrecht who loves to experiment with blends and different types of grapes.

Wending Home has become successful in a very short time with Giesbrecht’s winemaking expertise winning many awards in Canadian competitions. His 2021 Chardonnay and his 2020 Pinot Noir single vineyard wines both just won double gold at the All Canadian Wine Championships. Double gold means the wine was voted best in the category by all judges.

I tasted the winning wines and must say they are excellent. I highly recommend trying and buying them. Their price is very reasonable for the high quality they represent, and it makes me happy to say again Niagara can stand up to any wine region around the world.

Giesbrecht is always cheerful and happy to share a glass of wine and talk about winemaking with customers and friends alike.

I wish him many more years of health and strength to keep teaching us how to make high quality wines in Niagara.

Dr. John McTavish is a certified specialist of wine and a Niagara College professor. He is also a part time wine consultant at Lundy Manor Wine Cellars in Niagara Falls; doctormctavish.com.

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