D.I.Y. (Do-It-Yourself) projects are great when they work, but when they don't they're sometimes magnificent disasters. My family's wine-making experience is particularly embarrassing. We bought the equipment, picked and mashed the fruit (which were elderberries from our backyard, not grapes), decanted it through nylon gauze, and added sulphite preservatives and oak powder. Then we let it age in the master bedroom. After three years of fermentation, we managed to produce 9 litres of burgundy liquid that looks like a good sherry, but tastes like a mixture of cough syrup and vinegar. My step-dad strongly believes the medicinal-tasting liquid is "drinkable," which is why we continue to keep the rotten wine, unable to drink or chuck it, more than a decade after we first scaled that elderberry bush.

Eager to help other people avoid similar embarrassments, the De Miguels -- Jeronimo and his sister Alejandra -- and a third partner, documentary filmmaker Julian Pinder, have just started Vintage One Wines, a Toronto winery on Dundas West that sells the wine-making experience, complete with a grape stomping festival (and foot washing) to would-be vintners. They chatted with Yonge Street and explained how it all came about.

Alexandra Shimo: How did you get the idea for this new type of winery?

Alejandra: Our parents are both Argentinean oenologists. When we came to Canada in 1990 from Mendoza, Argentina, our family set up their own winery in Woodbridge, so we grew up making wine. I started working with my parents when I was 13 years old -- macerating (steeping) and crushing the grapes, and learning how to press and bottle the wine. Because we know the industry so well, we saw there was a market niche and decided to fill it.
    
It seems like there's been an emergence of a thriving wine culture in Toronto -- with independent wine consultants, meet-up groups, wine blogs and websites, such as Wine in Toronto or Winetasters Society of Toronto. Have you noticed anything similar?

Jeronimo: Yes, we have. We immigrated to Toronto because we saw there was so much opportunity here, and since then consumption has grown almost exponentially. There are lots of reasons for this -- Canadian wines have gotten a lot better and so people are interested in what their local industry is doing. And the introduction of high quality New World wines at affordable prices has really opened up the market.

What about your company makes you different from other wineries?

Jeronimo: When you come to Vintage One Wines, you don't buy the wine itself. Instead, you buy grapes and our wine-making expertise. And for that reason, you don't pay alcohol tax, which is a significant portion of the final price. We believe that we sell you better quality wines at a lower cost. More importantly, you get to talk about wine with experts and learn about the wine making process.

What stages can customers participate in the process?

Jeronimo: They can be involved in every stage, but if they don't have time, we ask that they are involved at least in the bottling and labeling part.

Alejandra: But if they want to take full advantage, then after the grapes have arrived and fermented for about 7 to 10 days, they can return to help us press them. We'll ask you to sieve the skins, and take them to the press to squeeze out any juice that's remaining. The next stage of the process is the racking, which happens on the fourth week of fermentation. That's where you move the liquid from one tank to the next, leaving the sediment behind. Week six, you can come in to help stabilize it. Week seven is when it's poured into barrels for oak aging or straight into the bottle. Then you take the bottles home, and they should be aged for at least 3-4 months before they're ready to drink.

Are there any other community events that you organize?

Alejandra: Every October, we have a traditional grape stomping festival. Last year, about 150 people came, and you can find the details on our web site. We all took off our shoes, got into the barrels, and stopped on the grapes. At one point, there were three little kids in there having a great time.

Do you have to wash your feet beforehand?

Alejandra: Yeah, but you don't have to sterilize your feet, you can just dip them into water. The fermentation process kills off any germs. Traditionally, that's how people did it in their back yards. Now we use a press, but back in the day, nobody ever died of being contaminated from dirty wine!

Where do your grapes come from?

Alejandra: We buy fresh grapes from Ontario and California, and frozen ones from Chile, Sicily, and Argentina. There's a long list of varieties.  We buy from around the world to give the consumer more choice. Last year, Ontario didn't have a great harvest -- there was too little sun and not enough rain so we weren't able to buy any red grapes, but we did buy some whites from the Niagara region, a Pinot Grigio for Chardonnay, and Vidal and Cabernet Franc for ice wine.

I live downtown so I don't have a lot of room to buy in bulk. Does Vintage One cater to someone like me?

Jeronimo: You have to buy the grapes and the wine in bulk, but you can double up with a friend and buy those bottles between you. And we've just reduced the minimum number of bottles per order from 26 to 24 bottles. The cost ranges from $90 - $470 for 24 bottles, depending on the type of grape that you buy.

Is it more environmentally friendly to buy wine this way?

Jeronimo: It's difficult to say which has the smaller carbon footprint - importing grapes or ready-make wine. However, we ask consumers to return their bottles, and we have a machine that washes and sterilizes them. We've set up a system similar to the plastic bag tax in Ontario, and you have to pay extra if you forget to return them.  

Are you going to expand province or nation-wide?

Jeronimo: No, because this model is about creating a community of wine-makers here in Toronto. It's not about exporting good wines across the country. You don't have to have a vineyard or a winery to be part of the wine-making process; you can do it right here in downtown Toronto.  


Alexandra Shimo is an author and journalist based on the Ossington strip. She has lived in several cities, including London, New York and  Washington D.C. and is now proud to call the T-dot her home.