Black Bank Hill

Black Bank Hill is a vineyard and craft winery in the Lincoln Lakeshore sub-appellation of the Niagara Escarpment wine region. We are focused on producing exceptional and distinctive wines made from estate-grown grapes, expressing the unique character of Black Bank Hill’s vineyard. Our mission is to combine the arts and practices of grape growing and winemaking at a single site with an uncompromising focus on quality, to produce singular wines that are unique to the place, climate, culture of the people who make it. Motivated by a passion for the elegance and expressiveness of cool-climate wines, Black Bank Hill embraces the Niagara escarpment as our winemaking home. Alongside our peers, we hope to contribute to the history of these wines and help establish the recognition of this special terroir on the world stage. The site was selected for the rare and specific combination of its attributes, including climate, location, and soil composition. Situated just north of King Street (the wine route) east of the town of Beamsville, the site is close enough to the escarpment to benefit from the warming lake-effect during the winter, and far enough away from it to enjoy full sunlight exposure and unimpeded air circulation. The ground of the vineyard is, in essence, the lakebed of the ancient glacial Lake Iroquois, gently sloping away from the escarpment toward Lake Ontario. The soils are predominately hard clay with areas of increasing silt, limiting vine vigour, and improving fruit quality. The hard clay pan retains essential nutrients and water for the vines while deeper layers of shale and gravels form an underground network of rivers and aquifers allowing for the drainage of water moving lakeward. This unique combination of attributes provides the conditions for an exceptional terroir of premium quality wine growing.