The Farm — choosing quality over quantity
Ask for its Pinot Noirs at restaurants
Today I have a bit of a conundrum.
It is unlikely you have come across the winery I will talk about, but the wine is worth tracking down.
I’m talking about The Farm, the result of the passion of Peter and Dora Neudorf and their family. The winery, which is not open to the public normally, is located on the Twenty Mile Bench and holds some of the most prized terroirs in the area.
The family recently opened its cellars for the first time giving wine lovers a chance to purchase the small quantity but high-quality wines.
And it was several weeks after that when I finally sat down with winemaker Kelly Mason who handcrafts the three Pinot Noirs at The Farm.
Mason vinifies the black label Pinot which is a blend along with two white label versions from Neudorf and Mason vineyards which are the top wines.
It’s the first chance the winemaker has had to slow down, putting in long days both in harvesting the grapes and fermenting for The Farm along with Honsberger Estate and the highly respected Domaine Queylus.
“I don’t have much of a social life right now, much like most winemakers,” admits Mason. “I don’t mess around when I get home I don’t watch Netflix or Instagram or send emails.”
Her routine is to get to sleep at a decent hour, although she says it can be broken up some nights.
“I wake up at 3 in the morning, I have this moment of clarity and think about the ferment.
“But I love what I do, I don’t ever wake up and go ‘Oh!’”
The holder of an MBA, Mason says her “ah ha” moment came in California during her first two weeks of being an intern.
She laughs that she was dressed in all the wrong harvest clothes, and what the winemakers must have thought.
“The second we started moving wine, I thought it was the coolest thing ever,” says Mason.
“I love the physicality of it. I’m always moving, between a vineyard, between a winery, I’m never sitting at a desk doing the same job.”
She is a self-professed perfectionist enjoying all the manual labour, especially on her own vineyard.
“I’m my worst critic, I think that’s why I wake up at 3 in the morning.
“Right now, if I don’t like a wine that I make, that’s not an option for me.
“I don’t make 35 wines, and I have pretty much full control from the vineyard, so there’s no excuse in my wine, there’s no reason that I shouldn’t be doing the best I can.
“For Honsberger and The Farm, I make what I want to make.
“At Queylus, we made the wine for the partners, and Thomas (Bachelder) was very involved as well, so I saw that as my learning ground to have this incredible mentor to learn from.”
At The Farm, she only makes Pinot Noir, with a Chardonnay planned for the future.
“Pinot is so high maintenance,” says Mason.
“It’s incredible. It’s so hard for wineries to buy Pinot from growers.
“For growers to make money with Pinot they have to up the crop, but you can’t increase your crop level to get your money back because as soon as you have one cluster of Pinot touching another cluster of Pinot, they start to fight and then disease starts.”
She explains that when cab franc shoots grow wildly, you just have to kind of slightly tuck them in.
“Not with Pinot,” says Mason. “It’s like, don’t even talk to me in the morning till I’ve had my coffee, bring me a croissant, lift me up and hold me up straight.
“You lift it straight, and Pinot says oh no I’m touching my neighbour and can you give me a little more space. Then it’s a little hot so take my leaves away I need some fanning a little more air. So you take all the leaves out and then as the clusters come it's give me elbow room I don’t want to touch so then you have to cut grapes onto the ground.
“So, a grower has a hard time making money on Pinot at prices paid.”
So as the owner of the “Mason vineyard” she takes particular pride having resurrected the vines most of which are 25 years old.
“I eat, sleep and breathe my vineyard, and now that I have my name on it I have to deliver really good grapes. It’s my reputation.”
Between the black-label and the two white-label single vineyards, they make about 600 cases, most of which makes its way into more exceptional restaurants in the Toronto area as well as local.
Maintaining quality at the price of quantity — which is how the Neudorf family wants to keep it.
I tasted all three of the Pinots that show off the deft hand that Kelly has with the wines.
She makes all her wines in the very dry style, something that I personally favour.
In fact, the Mason Vineyard Pinot Noir has less than 1 per cent residual sugar that I feel helps bring out the nuances of the wine.
The grapes are hand-picked with a wild fermentation and extended time on skins that brings out the deeper colour.
Still young, it shows some tannin but is very drinkable with a substantial presence of cherry fruit.
It has good length with a slight warmth at the end. The wine shows good structure that makes it suitable for tucking away in the cellar.
Back to the conundrum, while they develop their retail, you may have to look for this premium wine at a restaurant or wait until the next time The Farm opens its doors.