Flat Rock Cellars Part 2

Ange: So speaking of sustainable, we’re here on top of the green roof which is actually covered with grass so helps it with everything? Ed Madronich: Yeah no it’s part of the design and the grass is actually an insulator there’s obviously some soil underneath, and then acts as insulator. So couple of things that it does; one, it obviously helps reduce energy cost and like I say everything is done naturally so it really is no energy cost to the big room that’s underneath there. The other thing is it fits in naturally into the environment right? And so when you looked at it, really, the facility itself you can’t see that there’s a building under there. When we tell the people that there’s a building under there they go no way there’s can’t be it. It is actually very nice because it actually doesn’t look intrusive into the environment which is also very important to us; you know we have to have a relationship not only you know we can’t just plop a winery at least we don’t want to just plop a winery in the middle of this beautiful vineyard and not feel part of the natural community that’s here. And so it was important that when we design the facility and when we had all the space by putting it underground, we actually don’t noticed it and it’s not intrusive to the natural environment as well. Ange: Well it’s a massive cellar too; I mean it goes all the way around pretty much your entire winery. Ed Madronich: Definitely it wraps. What’s great about it is again just responsible by design is we’re actually utilizing the existing building for one of the wall so we actually wrap around, we’re not having to create something out of nothing we’re actually utilizing the existing walls of the winery, it provides better insulation and then it also reduces our construction foot print as well. So it helps for sure by having a design that utilizes the existing facility. Ange: How long did it take you create this all? Ed Madronich: That’s a tougher question to answer you know, it really started when we got the property about nine year ago so it’s an ever revolving process, it wasn’t like I woke up one night and said this is how the facility is going to be, it really was a vision of creating a sustainable environment, making a facility that’s going to make the best wine possible and doing all of those things together where the vision and it is one step at the time to be able to it, so it’s taken nine years and it’s been nine years of a lot of work but a lot of fun. Ange: Nine years? Ed Madronich: Yeah, well from when we first got the property right? So you can’t do anything until you have the property and you see the site, and the environment, and the place that you have and then it was probably in design for about three years in terms of the facility and what we’re going to doing, and then a year, initial construction and then you know, every year we do a little bit more so yeah. Ange: It’s just nice, like a little journey, a little wine journey. Ed Madronich: For sure, yeah. Ange: And I know that you guys are flat rock obviously Ed Madronich: Yup. Ange: And we seemed to have a lot of rocks in the property. Ed Madronich: Well. Ange: Is that something by the design as well that. Ed Madronich: Well again it comes a lot of it obviously comes from the rocks were here originally, we’re on the Niagara sacrament, we’re on the bench, it is, for me the best place to grow grapes here in Niagara we got a great limestone soils, very similar to burgundy, we’re on a beautiful slope which is great for air flow and drainage and all those types of things. But one of the things that we did, you know we were doing the landscaping was we didn’t bring in all these rocks from everywhere else, we’ve got a lots of rocks here we utilize the existing rocks, again its all part of fitting in with our environments so yeah. Ange: And then you produce some award wining Riesling. Ed Madronich: Well, we worked really hard at the wines at the end of the day the most important thing for me is making great quality wines, so here we have Nadja’s Vineyard, Nadja’s named after my mom, it’s a little block that we have on top of the property and it really sits on a really thin layer of soil then on this really nice hard limestone and so I was like to think you can, not think, I know you taste the rocks that Nadja’s Vineyard comes from so it makes it a very unique and riesling compelling Riesling which is great. Cheers. Ange: Cheers. Thanks and let’s get down to the cellar.