Years ago, in Verona, I sat near the top of an ancient Roman arena with a bottle of wine and a box of cannoli, watching an opera performed without a single modern speaker. I couldn’t tell you the name of the opera today. I can tell you everything else about that night.
That’s the whole idea behind Niagara Winery Weekly.
The problem I kept running into
I’ve lived in Niagara for more than 25 years, surrounded by wineries, restaurants, events, art, and food — and I still kept missing things.
I’d hear on Monday about something great that happened over the weekend and think, I would have gone to that if I’d known. Or I’d finally get a free afternoon and burn half of it just trying to figure out what there was to do.
The problem was never a shortage of things happening in Niagara. There’s an enormous amount going on, all the time. The problem was finding out about it before it happened, with enough time left to actually go.
I want to know what’s happening before it happens.
This isn’t my first attempt
Years ago I built a site called Niagara Grape Life. I knew almost nothing about SEO or driving traffic on purpose — and within a couple of months it had over 6,000 views anyway.
Wineries started reaching out, asking who I was and why I was doing this. That was the first sign people actually wanted someone to organize what was happening across Niagara wine country.
Then COVID hit, tourism and hospitality got turned upside down, and I shut it down.
Life moved on. I ran a modular home manufacturing consulting business, then built a hardwood lumber and furniture company that grew to serve customers across North America. Niagara Grape Life became one of those projects I’d loved building but never got back to.
The original problem never went away, though. It just waited.
Save time. Live life.
Free time gets more valuable the busier life gets. When you finally have a Saturday afternoon, a free evening, or a few unexpected hours to yourself, you shouldn’t have to spend a chunk of it just figuring out what to do with the rest.
Niagara Winery Weekly exists to give that time back — less searching, more experiencing.
Why wine country, specifically
I’ve spent a lot of Tuesday afternoons treating a Niagara winery like my conference room — laptop open, a view of the vineyards, a glass of wine, a few hours of real work. You don’t need a special occasion for wine country. Sometimes it’s just a Tuesday.
I’m an engineer by training and an entrepreneur by nature, and business has taken me all over the world. One trip to Italy, extended by about ten days almost on a whim, is where red wine actually clicked for me — not because of what was in the glass, but because of everything around it: the food, the countryside, the hospitality, the people.
Since then, wine country has shown up in nearly every chapter of my life: quiet Father’s Day lunches with my daughter that turned into some of my favourite memories. Watching her grow up and start having her own girls’ nights at the same wineries I used to visit. More recently, rediscovering a love of art with someone I love, returning to the gallery at 13th Street Winery every six weeks or so as the exhibits rotated.
Different chapters, same setting.
It’s not really about the wine
I once heard someone asked what their favourite place in the world was. Their answer: “Wherever I happen to be with the people I love and care about.”
That’s stuck with me. The places we go and the things we do aren’t usually what make an experience meaningful — it’s who we share them with. The wine gives us a reason to show up. The people are why we remember it.
That’s why Niagara Winery Weekly isn’t trying to be another wine-review site ranking Cabernet Francs. The questions we care about are simpler:
- What’s happening?
- Where should we go?
- What haven’t we tried yet?
- Who do we want to experience it with?
- What’s happening this week that we’ll wish we’d known about next week?
Who this is for
You don’t need to be a serious wine enthusiast to get something out of Niagara Winery Weekly. This is for:
- Locals wondering what to do this weekend
- Couples looking for a date idea
- Friends planning a night out, or a girls’ night
- Visitors spending a weekend in Niagara
- Wine lovers looking for something new
- Anyone with a few unexpected free hours and no plan
- Anyone who’s driven past the same winery a hundred times and never stopped