Sustainability
Certified by Sustainable Winegrowing Ontario, Feast On, and VegeCert
Winery
We’re proud to preserve a small piece of the County by restoring and repurposing historic structures like the century-old Purple Barn and Hillier church. The church, originally built in 1840 then reconstructed in 1947, served the Hillier community until 1969. Nearly forty years later, Closson Chase relocated the structure and commissioned artist Helga Boelen to redesign the now-iconic roof in the style of Burgundy’s ‘Hospices de Beaune’.
The botanical gardens surrounding the barn are irrigated with captured rainwater. All other water usage is monitored and optimized with a flow meter.
Our winery and onsite restaurant are both Feast On certified by the Culinary Tourism Alliance.
Vineyard
Our 35-acre estate vineyard uses low intervention small-scale farming practices, favouring hand labour over mechanization. We use captured rainwater for our spray program, only applying commercial fungicides when necessary and we never use copper or any other heavy metal sprays in our vineyards.
The majority of our fruit is sourced from our own property and nearby vineyards. We exclusively use Ontario-grown grapes, and work with local suppliers to minimize our carbon footprint and improve our wine quality.
Soil health is carefully maintained through cover crops planted in each row. These cover crops rejuvenate the vineyard by creating a living biosphere for beneficial soil microbes. Vine cuttings are mulched back into the rows to build up organic matter and fortify the soil.
Cellar
The Ridge facility is designed for a gravity flow system, eliminating the use of mechanical pumps for our free run juice. The barrel cellar is housed in an underground geothermal concrete structure with natural temperature regulation. Our winemaking practices are certified vegan by VegeCert, ensuring there are no animal byproducts in the fining or clarifying of our wines.
Our cellar is free of harsh chemicals like caustic and bleach, instead using steam cleaning and potassium oxide for sanitizing. We’re also moving towards more sustainable packaging with all of our wines being bottled under screw cap, eliminating the need for plastic wine capsules.
All winemaking is done with minimal interventions, with as few additions and movements to the wine as possible. This maintains the integrity of the wine, while also reducing the use of mechanical equipment in the cellar.
All of our winery, vineyard, and cellar practices are audited annually through the Sustainable Winegrowing Ontario certification program.