Southbrook Vineyards

The Free Bacchus Story

Southbrook began as a dairy farm. In 1941 William Redelmeier bought Don Head Farms north of Toronto, which the family says kept the largest herd of Jersey cattle in Canada, and in 1980 his son Bill turned it into a farm market. The first wine came in 1991: 2,000 cases, made in the farm’s century-old barns.

A year later the family made a raspberry dessert wine, a framboise, from surplus fruit. In 2007 the winery moved to Niagara-on-the-Lake, onto a 74-acre parcel in the Four Mile Creek sub-appellation, and in 2008 its new pavilion became the first winery building to earn LEED Gold from the Canada Green Building Council.

The farming changed at the same time. In 2008 Southbrook became the first wine estate in Canada certified both organic and biodynamic, and Canada’s first winery with a vineyard certified by Demeter. The manure and animal feed the vineyard needs are produced on the farm itself, and the organic certificate is now held with Ecocert. In March 2025 Southbrook added Regenerative Organic Certified, a standard built around measurable improvements in soil health, biodiversity, social fairness and ecosystem resilience.

Poetica Red is the flagship, made only in exceptional vintages from the finest barrels. The 2020 is mostly Cabernet Sauvignon, with Merlot, Petit Verdot and a little Cabernet Franc, and the winery says it was made with a Left Bank Bordeaux blend in mind. Its own note finds violets, wild blueberry, strawberry, currants, chocolate and fennel, and it expects the wine to cellar for 10 to 20 years.