For a couple months, Bill Redelmeier felt a little like Will Smith zooming around New York City in the post-apocalyptic I Am Legend.

“I discovered that if you do Adelaide Street in Toronto at 65 kph, you’ll never get a red light,” Redelmeier muses. “Of course, normally you’d never be able get up to that speed.”

As COVID-19 took hold and much of Ontario locked down, the owner of Southbrook Vineyards turned into Super Delivery Man, racking up the miles as his Niagara-on-the-Lake winery, like many in the province, quickly pivoted to ensure those who desired a bottle of wine amid the pandemic never had to leave the comfort of their homes.

Redelmeier calls it “Purple Glove Delivery”—direct delivery to your door, from Niagara to Toronto and from London to Newmarket—all done with strict safety protocols from purple-gloved staff—who were almost always Bill or his son Andrew.

And why has the proprietor himself added a whopping 70,000 kilometres of his company cars and rental vans since March, delivering as many as 50 parcels in a single day?

“Because I’m the least useful staff member,” he laughs.

Andrew, meanwhile, is enjoying a new face-to-face encounter with customers. “I can’t do trade tastings and events right now, and sales to restaurants has slowed down, so this has allowed me to connect to people in another way,” he says. “And those people smiling at you when you bring them wine—it’s pretty cool to be one of the highlights of someone’s week. But had the pandemic occurred 10 years ago, before e-commerce, it would have been a more difficult situation for us.”

For his part, the senior Redelmeier has been going to great lengths—figuratively and literally—not only to keep his customers well stocked, but well informed. The latter includes a regular, always thoughtfully articulated e-newsletter.

“We decided early on that we don’t need any more bad news. People are interested in what’s happening regarding agricultural issues,” he notes, as the two of us find a shady spot on a brilliant early September afternoon in advance of Southbrook’s Open House for members and special invitees. “We’re trying to get that feeling of community. And now more than ever we have to support our local community.”

And how is business? “As far as wineries go in Ontario, it’s been a mixed bag,” Redelmeier says. “If you were focused on weddings and that sort of thing, then obviously it’s been a disaster.”

With most of their wine in the $25+ category, Southbrook’s is not a traditional banquet/wedding market, although they have certainly been hurt by the pandemic’s pulverizing of the restaurant industry, which would typically absorb about 30% of their sales.

AU NATURAL

A growing market, however, has been Southbrook’s natural wines category. The winery is at the forefront of biodynamic winemaking, with chief winemaker Ann Sperling and Redelmeier having helped write the regulations for the Vintners Quality Alliance of Ontario (VQA) a few years ago for skin-contact whites, or ‘orange wine.’

“It has certainly been huge for Southbrook,” Redelmeier admits. “We have basically doubled our production every year since we first made it in 2014.”

While many Ontario tastes have begun to appreciate Southbrook’s environmentally friendly way of doing things, it’s nothing compared to Quebec. “We actually sell more to the SAQ (Quebec’s version of the LCBO), who are looking for more interesting wines,” Redelmeier explains. “And they really promote organics and biodynamics there. Last year we sold a pallet of orange wine to both the LCBO and the SAQ. In the LCBO, it didn’t sell. Five or six weeks after the SAQ got theirs, they ordered another five pallets. They wanted a thousand cases! I think Ontarians are more California-focused in their tastes, and the LCBO promotes that, and we don’t do California style. But the Quebec consumer is more European and French oriented—and our Cabernet Sauvignons and Merlots and Pinot Noirs are more European styled, so we fit a little better in Quebec.”

BY RESERVATION ONLY

But if tastes are changing, so are the physical tastings themselves. A big part of me hates this ‘new normal’ of pre-booking for visits. I always loved the spontaneous decision on a Saturday morning to go to Niagara and hit up a few wineries with whatever friends who could join us, or to venture to an undiscovered winery based on the recommendation of staff at a nearby facility. I am really missing the shoulder-to-shoulder camaraderie and energy of winery guests from around the province and around the world—“So where are you guys from?” “What other wineries have you visited so far?” “Hey, have you tried this—it’s amazing!”

And the increased tasting fees are not making the transition easier for me—$15-$25 per-person in Southbrook’s case; from $58/person at Megalomaniac (price includes a souvenir glass and a $40 wine credit redeemable on the day of tasting, so hopefully you like their wine); $15 at Kacaba; $15-$20 at Chateau Des Charmes; $20 at Colaneri Estate (where a five-wine tasting lasts 45 minutes, with the fee refunded with a $75+ purchase). The examples vary, with outdoor limits of up to 10 people (inside your bubble), and indoor limits typically four people.

But if there are drawbacks to the revised reality of wine tastings, there are certainly positives as well. Fact is, you get what you pay for. Every visitor is now getting the undivided, personalized attention of staff. And as places like Southbrook are being reminded, an educated consumer is often a better consumer.

“We started doing (reservation-only) tastings in June,” Redelmeier notes. “It’s a very different feeling. The staff and, I think, the consumer prefer it. The idea is that you don’t come in anymore and stand shoulder to shoulder, where it’s tough for us to talk to people and they are spending a relatively short time here, heading off to the next place they’re going to drink. Quite frankly, a lot of people came in here and no idea what Southbrook stood for. But now, because people have to prebook in Niagara, it means they do their research before they choose their handful of places to visit. And with Andrew doing more deliveries now, I get a chance to chat more with customers, and one of the questions I ask them is, ‘Why are you here?’ And the answer is almost always because we are organic. So we are now preaching to the choir.”

WINTER IS COMING

With the onset of autumn, Redelmeier knows the window is quickly closing on outdoor tastings, so has been exploring safe ways to get patrons inside Southbrook’s iconic pavilion, a unique, low-slung architectural design that melds into a 200-metre long landscape wall along Niagara Stone Road.

“I’ve been spending a lot of money at IKEA,” he laughs. “In our great room, which we would normally use for events, we have set up pods for seats and a coffee table so that we can seat six groups at a time. We’re looking forward to it. Staff are enjoying not being on your feet all the time.”

Southbrook is currently accepting groups of up to six for outdoor seatings, but will move indoors later in October, with plans to cap groups to four people.

While one would think the vastly diminished numbers of visitors must still surely be hurting the bottom line, as another Niagara winery noted, off the record, “Instead of dispensing samples to a busload of patrons looking to get buzzed and leaving with virtually no memory of what they sampled, much less what they learned, you’ve only got serious customers now.” Even better, these visitors “are now always on time too.”

Redelmeier appreciates the opportunity for more one-on-one chats and to bring more visitors into Southbrook’s email community. “The money that is being paid for tastings is going a lot further than it used to,” he says. And with the improved customer—and staff—experience, “We are still selling more wine.”