With Lake Ontario protecting their site to the North and the Niagara Escarpment forming a limestone shield to the South of their vineyard, Heron Pond Benchland Vineyard provides Graham with the ability to craft site-specific Pinot Noir and Chardonnay to capture and reflect the unique terroir of the Rennie vineyard. Additionally, Graham hand-harvests select rows of the Rennie’s' best Bordeaux varietal fruit to produce rich, full-bodied "Super Niagara" wines utilizing a proprietary, natural Appassimento process. As a wine grower, Graham aspires to craft wines that possess all the elements of greatness – balance and power, combined with elegance, complexity and wines that have the ability to age and improve in the bottle. Importantly, we believe that our wines should reflect the unique terroir of our escarpment benchland vineyard site. To achieve these goals we practice sustainable viticulture, maintain low yields, hand harvest, apply innovative winemaking techniques and use premium oak barrels that are aged to our specifications and produced by select French cooperages. Heron Pond Benchland Vineyard is a fifty-acre site located on the Beamsville Bench, a sub appellation within the Niagara Peninsula Viticultural area. The Beamsville Bench is a naturally sloping benchland bordered on the south by the Niagara escarpment and to the north by Lake Ontario. The slope of the Bench and the constant air flow from Lake Ontario provides a unique micro climate which cools the vineyard during the hottest summer months and facilitates the removal of cold air during the winter months. The character of our wines is influenced by the considerable limestone deposits found within the calciferous clay and loam rich soils which are carved out of the escarpment and forests that surround the vineyard.