How We Make Our Wine
Under the direction of wine expert David Eiberg, Creemore Hills Winery makes its wine in small batches using sustainable practices and low intervention techniques at our state-of-the-art facility.
Using pesticide-free grapes from our vineyards, and fruit sourced from sustainably farmed vineyards in the Niagara region, we combine time-honoured techniques with creative thinking in our approach.
The process for making white wine differs from the steps involved in making red wine.
The main steps include unloading grapes for the table sort, discarding those that are rotten or aren’t properly ripe, getting rid of leaves, conducting the stomping process with bare feet, putting the grapes in the press to squeeze them for juice, removing the skins, stems and seeds, leaving only the liquid, doing the pump over to maximize the level of oxygen in the grape juice which helps start the fermentation process to produce alcohol.
If it’s for white wine, the grapes go straight to the press for an hour or two before being put into a special vessel where they will spontaneously ferment in a few days’ time.
If it’s red wine, we want the juice to spend time on its skins in one of our plastic vessels. Then, we work those red grapes, increasing the skin contact which gives colour, flavour and tannin. They’ll ferment in those vessels after which we put them in the press so they can then press them into a vessel to age.
The entire process, from grape to bottle, typically takes between one and two years. It varies according to the nature of the fermentation and the kind of yeast.
On average, it takes about a month for the primary fermentation to be complete. Then, we put it in aging concrete or wooden oak vessels, where it ages for a minimum of six months and a maximum of 18 months, depending on the wine, and then you can bottle it. The concrete vessels offer a neutral taste whereas you get a wood barrel flavour in the wooden alternative.