Wayne Gretzky adds his mighty moniker to winery

Homegrown celebrity wines make a splash on local plonk scene

IF WAYNE GRETZKY, Mike Weir and Dan Aykroyd walked into a wine bar, what would they order?

This is not the opening line of a joke. All three Canadian icons have their own wine label. Golfer Mike Weir was first in the field.

Mike Weir’s grandparents emigrated from Italy and settled in Niagara Falls, and like many Italian immigrants they made their own wines. The first wine Mike ever drank was a homemade wine at his grandfather’s table.

“I think he cut it with ginger ale,” says Mike. “The grapes came from Niagara even if they were a little rough back then.”

The Mike Weir wines are made at Château des Charmes.

The wine epiphany for Dan Aykroyd occurred in an L.A. nightclub in the 1980s. The erstwhile Blues Brother, Ghostbuster and Conehead was the opening act for Steve Martin.

That night his band’s guitarist Steve Cropper opened a bottle of wine for him. “It was a big Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon,” Dan recalls, although he doesn’t remember the winery or the vintage. “I changed my whole perception of what I wanted to taste for the rest of my life.”

Until that Proustian moment, he confesses that a big night out in his hometown Ottawa was a bottle of Mateus Rosé.

In 2005, Dan Aykroyd acquired the Canadian rights for the ultrapremium tequila Patrón.

The Canadian importing agent for this brand is Toronto-based Diamond Estates,a company that controls five wineries in the Niagara region — EastDell Estates, Lakeview Cellars, Birchwood Estate, 20 Bees and De Sousa. Dan sunk $1 million into Diamond Estates.

Given his international celebrity status, it was perhaps a no-brainer that Dan Aykroyd should have his name on the label. In addition to his VQA Ontario wines, Dan also has bottlings of a Sonoma Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon.

The first wine Wayne Gretzky ever tasted was a red made by his Russian grandfather in the 1960s when “the Great One” was growing up on a farm in Brantford, Ont.

Wine is not a beverage you would associate with hockey, but now that Wayne Gretzky is coaching behind the bench, rather than scoring on the ice, he can allow himself that indulgence. “Janet and I have, for many years, wanted to fulfill a dream of launching a winery that makes world-class wines,” he says.

Wayne’s wines are made by Creekside Estate winemakers Rob Power and Craig Macdonald at the former Willow Heights Winery, now Wayne Gretzky Estate.

While none of the three celebrity winery guys actually get their feet in the vat, they do select the final blends that end up in the bottle.

According to Mike Weir: “I have been fortunate to have been involved in every aspect of the wines.… I actually do the blending on the Cabernet Shiraz with the winemakers, although I wish that I had much more time to dedicate to that part of the process.”

Both Mike Weir and Wayne Gretzky donate proceeds to their own foundations.

And to go back to that question that opened this column: they would probably do the gentlemanly thing and order a glass of Bob Izumi’s Coyote’s Run Chardonnay — because that TV fisherman also has his own wines.

 

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