Trail Estate Winery

About Trail Estate Winery

Situated in the heart of Prince Edward County, Ontario, where Benway Road meets the Millennium Trail, we focus on small-batch, single-vineyard wines of exceptional quality. We use grapes from our vineyard as well as from a select few growers in Niagara who grow premium grapes on outstanding sites.

Our wines are unique to each vintage and tell the story of their soils. Each wine is true to its terroir with strong individuality, structure and character. Made only in small batches – and most available exclusively at our winery.

Representative Biography

Mackenzie Brisebois, Winemaker

A native of Prince Edward County, Mackenzie graduated from Niagara College’s Winery and Viticulture Technician program. Learning, living and drinking in the culture of amazing Canadian wine while working with Norman Hardie and gaining experience during harvests in South African (Bouchard Finlayson and Sumaridge) and New Zealand (Central Otago Wine Company) shaped her style. Taking on a new project, Mackenzie moved from Prince Edward County to Nanaimo, British Columbia to teach friends how to grow and make wine for their small-batch winery, Chateau Wolff. Having sampled various wine regions, Mackenzie is confident that the limestone soils of PEC are where she wants to put down her roots.

Why We're Cool

Were a new winery, so were excited to be part of i4C this year! This is the third vintage of Chardonnay at Trail Estate and the first from our own vineyard. Niagara and PEC are both on limestone foundations — the Niagara Escarpment and a outcropping into Lake Ontario, respectively. Both are situated between 43° - 44° latitude. Our Niagara vineyards (Hughes and Foxcroft) benefit from full sun exposure at the base of the escarpment, for fuller, riper, flavours. Premium vineyard practices maintain natural acidity of the site, as well as promote vine health. Our PEC vineyard benefits from cooling breezes off the lake, with shallow clay soil over fractured limestone — combining to lend Chardonnay a leaner, stone-cut, minerally quality.

We don’t aim to make the same wine year-to-year. Our wines are very individual to the vintage with many aspects changing from season-to-season dictated by what is happening in the vineyard. Most of our wines are wild-fermented wherever possible (including all three featured at i4C), and we employ minimal intervention, old-world winemaking methodologies: hand-picked fruit, oxidization for long life in bottle and texture, wild ferments (to fully dry), a mix of oak sizes and ages to maintain delicacy in structure, minimal sulphurs, unfiltered wherever possible, and lots of tasting along the way!