The history of Cattail Creek Estate Winery goes back to 1956 when Opa Epp had finally saved up enough money working odd jobs to purchase a farm in Niagara on the Lake. A true farmer at heart, he saw the potential for grape vines in the Niagara Region and planted his small, ten acre farm with grapes. Every day he worked his farm selling the grapes to the local grocery store. Gradually, he started planting more wine grapes and sold them to the local winery. His daughter, Renate, loved playing in the vineyards and quickly fell in love with farming. So it was just natural that after she married Ken Dyck they purchased their first farm in 1971. Planted entirely with peaches, they quickly replaced the trees with grape vines following Opa’s footsteps and selling the grapes to the small local wine industry starting to emerge in the Niagara Region at that time. In 1976, they became one of the first farmers to plant Riesling grape vines. While many nay-sayers believed that Riesling vines would not be able to survive the harsh Canadian climate, they proved them wrong and today Cattail Creek Estate Winery has some of the oldest Riesling vines in Ontario. Over the years, they have seen many wonderful changes to the Niagara wine industry as vineyards transitioned from Native North American grape varieties through to French Hybrids to what we have today, an industry focused on producing top-quality wines using classic European grape varieties. They were a part of the industry when VQA (Vintners Quality Alliance) was created – a benchmark that promoted using entirely Ontario-grown grapes to produce internationally award winning wines. Throughout the years of hard work, dedication and passion they grew the family vineyards to 100 acres, always focusing on wine grapes to create what we have today – a vineyard respected for producing top-quality wine grapes.

In 2006, the family dream became a reality with the creation of Cattail Creek Estate Winery. At Cattail Creek, we produce small-batch, artisinal wines that reflect the unique terroir, or growing environment, of our vineyards. By only using grapes that we grow ouselves, we are able to produce wines that reflect the uniqueness of our vineyards as well as the distinctive characteristics of each vintage. We are committed to making the best wine that we can from each vintage so our wine offerings vary every year with wines only being made in vintages where the quality of the grapes have earned their own bottling. And our committment to quality has been recognized. Cattail Creek Estate Winery was the first winery to be awarded a Gold Award for our first vintage of wines when our Barrel Fermented Vidal Icewine 2006 was awarded Best Limited Edition Sweet Wine at Cuveé 2008. Each bottle of wine made at Cattail Creek is filled with family passion, three generations of history and artisinal uniqueness.

We hope that you enjoy drinking our wines as much as we enjoy growing and making them.