Niagara Without the Falls

What if Niagara Falls weren’t there? Would the trip up North still be worth it?

That’s a ludicrous question, of course. A legendary honeymoon destination, a world-class natural wonder, and host to a carnival-like maze of honkytonk tourist traps, Canada’s side of Niagara Falls is the region’s recreational Black Hole – a place where sightseers’ time and money usually disappear without a trace.

Then again, in geological time, at least, Niagara Falls is just passing through. When people first arrived here a mere 12,000 years ago, it was 7 miles farther downriver. And it’s still on the march.

So, what if Niagara Falls weren’t there at all?

The answer to that question is Niagara-on-the-Lake, a quaint town set in a gently sloping region near Canada’s southernmost point. Its climate tempered by Lake Ontario, the pleasant environs of Niagara-on-the-Lake have made the locale a destination for as long as humans have trekked this area.

And, yes, even without those falls that thunder just up the river, there’s plenty to see and do.

 

It goes without saying that a town with a whimsical name like Niagara-on-the-Lake had darned well better boast a main street that is downright adorable. The town does not disappoint – its three-block main drag, Picton Street, is punctuated by a Big Ben-like cenotaph, a century-old memorial to the town’s World War I veterans that stands smack in the middle of the roadway.

Behind the trees that line Picton Street, boutique hotels, wine tasting rooms, and gourmet restaurants abound. At Treadwell – named one of Canada’s best restaurants by enRoute magazine – you can sit at the bar and marvel at the mixologists’ skill while feasting on East Coast scallops in a cauliflower puree, nibbling ever smaller bites because you just don’t want it to end.

The dominant denizen of Picton Street is none other than George Bernard Shaw, whose imposing bronze statue casts an appropriately cynical glare up the sidewalk. There’s no record of Shaw ever setting foot in Niagara-on-the-Lake, but that does not stop the locals from mounting their annual Shaw Festival, which dates back to 1962. The festival – attended by such luminaries as Queen Elizabeth II and Indira Gandhi – runs April through December each year, featuring plays by and “in the spirit of” Shaw.

One cool late summer morning, after sipping coffee to the sound of fountains splashing in the courtyard of the intimate 124 on Queen Hotel, I amble down King Street toward Queen’s Royal Park, a sliver of waterfront greenery located where the Niagara River opens to the lake. The bank is peppered with repurposed water management structures – most notably the Pumphouse Arts Center, spotlighting local artists in a space that once housed the city’s water pumps.

Instinctively, I head for an imposing white gazebo, rising near the water at the upstream end of Queen’s Royal Park. It’s an irresistibly welcoming structure, one I could swear I’ve seen before. One minute of deft Googling explains that familiarity: The gazebo figures heavily in the 1983 Stephen King horror flick The Dead Zone. You can find it on YouTube – it’s the spot where Christopher Walken has a vision of a grisly murder.

The movie studio built the gazebo and then left it as a gift to the community. Now it’s a favorite wedding photo spot. Go figure.

 

It’s probably not a big deal to be late for an appointment at a distillery, but I’m getting a little antsy, anyway.

More than 10 minutes ago, the drawbridge on Lakeshore Road abruptly halted my 90-minute drive down from Toronto, and the freighter I’m stopped for, the rusty red Algoma Harvester, is maneuvering the Welland Canal – between the Great Lakes of Ontario and Erie – slower than I could backstroke it.

My frustration is evident when I finally arrive at Spirit in Niagara distillery, a stone’s throw from the shore of Ontario. But the staffer who’s agreed to meet up with me, a good-natured soul named Randy Ferguson, doesn’t blink an eye.

“We’re used to that,” he says. “The pace is a little slower around here.”

Then he offers me a blue plum sour, which is like a traditional whisky sour except for the additional detonation of a tangy fruit bomb in your mouth and the sense that you might be floating somewhere in Nirvana, suspended in a purple cloud.

“Nice, huh?” says Ferguson.

Nice doesn’t even begin to get to it. I shrug off the frustration laid upon me by that slowpoke ship and settle into the laid-back rhythms of Niagara-On-the-Lake, whose very name seems to whisper “take your time.”

Outside, Randy leads me through the 17-acre peach orchard that surrounds the distillery – part of a 200-acre family-owned spread that has stood here for four generations. Some years ago, Arnie Lepp, the current family caretaker of the property, was aghast to learn that some 10 percent of the Niagara area fruit — peaches, plums, pears, apricots, and cherries – was discarded each year because it either fell from the trees, got too ripe, or was sub-standard in appearance.

Well, Lepp reasoned, no one cares what the fruit in your alcohol spirit looked like before it was magically turned into booze. He calculated that one ton of spoiling fruit can yield more than 18 gallons of alcohol. And so an industry was born: Today his Spirit in Niagara small batch distillery operates out of a 10,000 square-foot facility, serving thirsty visitors and shipping its signature fruit-based gin, vodka, vermouth, bourbon, whisky, vodka, and brandies across the continent.

But you don’t have to be a drinker to drink in the peaceful, easy feeling you get wandering the orchards or gazing out toward Lake Ontario from the distillery’s second-floor tasting room balcony. And it’s easy to be impressed with the shiny copper distilling columns that soar toward the high ceiling, their round portholes lending them the appearance of enormous musical flutes.

And if the blue plum sour doesn’t seal the deal, perhaps the peach pit sour will.

 

If you want to worry about foreign countries aiming their weapons of war at the United States, you might want to start here at Fort George on the Canadian side of the Niagara River. From where I’m standing on a steep hill below the fort’s wooden palisade, I count at least three cannons pointing directly at the good people of Youngstown, New York.

Worse, the Youngstownians don’t seem to be aware of the peril. There’s a guy with his dog in a sailboat. Two people are rocking on their front porch, looking straight down a cannon’s barrel.

No one over there seems to remember the time, barely two centuries ago, when the Canadians and the Americans took turns marauding each other’s Niagara riverbanks, burning entire towns to the ground as they jostled for advantage during the War of 1812.

Sarah Kaufman hasn’t forgotten. The director of the Niagara-on-the-Lake Museum is walking me through 117-year-old Memorial Hall, the first purpose-built museum space in all of Ontario.

“Because, as you’ve seen, we are so close to the United States, a lot of British loyalists escaped to Niagara-on-the-Lake after the Revolution,” she says. “So, when the War of 1812 broke out, the Americans came over here and basically burned the town down – that’s why most of our older homes were built after 1812.”

I’m feeling a little guilty about all this, and I offer an official apology on behalf of the entire U.S.

“No apology necessary,” she smiles. “We went across the river and burned everything from Fort Niagara to Buffalo.”

I guess that makes us even. Plus, they got Celine Dion.

The museum houses a remarkable – and nicely bite-sized – collection of Canadian historical items, including period furniture, a heartbreaking exhibit about British orphans who were shipped to Canada as household help, and a bicycle that was ridden all the way here from Colombia in 1954 (the young cyclist was intent on attending the World Boy Scout Jamboree that year).

Right near the museum’s front door, in a glass case, sits its prize War of 1812 artifact: the hat of General Isaac Brock, one of Canada’s top dogs in the war (it was Brock who led the capture of Detroit, bluffing that he had thousands of Native American allies when really it was the same group of guys walking in and out of the trees in a big circle). His hat is a cool, Napoleonic model: felt with ostrich feathers, somewhat the worse for wear because during his funerals (he had two of them) militiamen kept trying it on.

The Niagara region is the nation’s fruit basket not only because it sits at the southernmost part of the country, but also thanks to the profile of a tall hill that stretches along the southern horizon. The rise, visible from just about everywhere along the lake, is unremarkable in height – less than 200 feet in most places – but astonishing in its length: 1,000 miles, curving in a nearly uninterrupted arc from New York State westward through Canada to Wisconsin.

It’s called the Niagara Escarpment – the cliff over which Niagara Falls falls – and it has a fortuitous way of holding warmer lake air close to the ground, enabling fruits trees to flourish longer than they would on an open plain. The rim of an ancient lake bed, the escarpment also marks a region of remarkably fertile farmland.

“When the escarpment was basically underwater, it left an incredible amount of glacial limestone beneath the soil,” says Emily Royal, the assistant winemaker at Two Sisters Vineyards near Niagara-on-the-Lake.

The density and makeup of minerals in the soil, however, can change within a matter of feet.

“Our rosé block alone has seven different kinds of soils in it!” she says.

Southern Ontario’s water-tempered climate and rich soil make it one of the continent’s more surprising wine regions; There are dozens of world-class wineries scattered all around Niagara-on-the-Lake. Pouring me a lovely 2016 Cabernet Franc, Royal acknowledges the inevitable challenges that nag at southeastern Ontario farmers: Occasional high humidity and torrential rains have become a problem as the climate heats up.

Wine glasses in hand, we wander out to the Two Sisters tasting room patio. Rows of grape vines, 72 acres in all, plunge into the distance, the green plants and blue sky interrupted by the startling sculpture – 15 feet high, at least – of an enormous blue rabbit.

“Yeah, the owners collect art,” she says, tilting her head a bit and squinting as she gazes toward it. “They just bought it last year.”

No matter. If the wine is good enough, even a big blue bunny makes perfect sense.

 

As I motor through the winding back roads of the Niagara-on-the-Lake region, the wineries and distilleries create endless, irresistible reasons to detour. With its sleek interior and funky wall décor – including a huge TV screen showing alcohol-themed movies – AMO Winery rivals the most edgy tasting rooms California has to offer. Hockey immortal Wayne Gretzky is a hands-on owner of Wayne Gretzky Estates, which at one end of its handsome facility creates premium wines and at the other distills powerful spirits – including a cream liquor that will change the way you think of coffee forever.

But wineries and distilleries are not my only distraction: Driving back to Toronto along Queen Elizabeth Highway, I can’t help but keep glancing over at the dark line of the Niagara Escarpment, which parallels my route. Finally, I can’t stand it anymore. I veer off and head for the hills.

Coming over a rise, I spot a sign for Hidden Bench Estate Winery. “Winery of the Year” an additional sign proclaims, so of course I have to visit.

As I pull into a parking space in the gravel lot, through my windshield I am faced with vine rows that stretch to a line of trees far in the distance. On the nearest wooden post of each row is fastened a metal plate engraved with information about that particular row’s grapes, including variety and year planted. Those numbers will follow these grapes all the way to their wine barrels, which will bear that same identifying data. Walking the perimeter of the lot, the plates identify rows of Pinot Noir, Riesling, and Cabernet Franc.

I am standing near the crest of the Niagara Escarpment. If you picture a beach and imagine those successive ledges of sand left behind as the tide retreats, you get some idea of how the Niagara Escarpment’s prehistoric lake shore is structured: From top to bottom, the receding water left a series of steplike shelves, or benches, of land. Hidden Bench occupies one of those shelves, a prime piece of agricultural real estate.

“There are several steps down the escarpment, and we’re the second from the top,” says the winery’s Matt Finn, his right hand sweeping across the 20 acres of vines that spread beyond the visitor’s center/tasting room. Through a break in the trees, far below, I can make out a blue patch of Lake Ontario – and beyond that, the towers of Toronto.

That elevation is great for grapes – sort of, because it makes them work harder to reach the water table, more than 20 feet below our feet.

“You want your vines to be a little stressed out every season,” says Finn. “In fact, we replanted about five acres of new vines really close together – twice as many vines per acre – so they have to fight the other vines for nutrients.

“And you’ll find the flavor of those grapes is much different than the ones grown at a traditional density. Because they like to be challenged.”

It seems a little cruel to set your grapes against each other like little purple gladiators, but I choose to accept Finn’s assertion that they like it. Plucky little guys, those grapes.

 

I am at last on the road to Toronto, and I’m not stopping this time. In the back seat, bottles of souvenir wine and spirits jangle merrily, causing me to wonder if I’m within Border Patrol limits (thankfully, I am, otherwise I’d still be sitting on the floor at Customs swilling Canadian Malbec).

Making the big turn at Hamilton, heading back east along Ontario’s north shore, it occurs to me that I’ve totally forgotten to visit, for old time’s sake, the rim of Niagara’s Horseshoe Falls. Ridiculous, because it’s just a few miles up the road from Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Then I remember the words of Sarah Kaufman at the Niagara-on-the-Lake History Museum.

“What we have down here, and what Niagara Falls doesn’t have, is this mix of history and heritage and culture and wine,” she said. “The Falls are beautiful, if waterfalls are your thing. This is a place that has something for almost everyone.”

I laugh to myself. Didn’t even miss it.