Ironically, it was during the 2019 memorial service for a male wine pioneer that the idea of writing a tribute to the women who shaped Ontario’s grape and wine industry came to author Jennifer Willhelm.
At the time, Willhelm was teaching in Niagara College,’s hospitality program, the same program she graduated from. The college was the site for the celebration of the life of Lloyd Schmidt, who in 1979 converted the Sumac Ridge Golf Course in B.C. to a vineyard, where two years later he produced some of the province’s first vinifera wines. Not too long after that, his sons Allan and Brian moved to Ontario where they became involved in Vineland Estates Winery.
“All of these industry greats were all gathered in one room,” Wilhelm remembers. “We were surrounded by incredible leaders and mentors, real pioneers, many of them women. I went up to Debi Pratt and suggested to her that someone needs to write down some of their stories.”
Pratt, the former director of hospitality at Inniskillin Winery who is the subject of chapter one of Wilhelm’s new book Sharing a Glass, remembers that day clearly.
“It was a simple comment and conversation,” Niagara-on-the-Lake resident Pratt tells The Local. “She came up to me that day, she was like a kid in a candy shop. She noticed how many women from the early days of the industry were in the room. I told her it was a great idea but a very time-consuming job.”
“I told Debi I was going to do it,” Wilhelm adds. “Then I called Linda Bramble, who was one of my mentors. I asked her if she thought I could do it and she said ‘absolutely’. When Elena (Galey-Pride of winestains.ca, a wine marketing expert who edited Sharing a Glass) agreed to be part of the project, it took off.”
A graduate of Lakeport High School in St. Catharines, Wilhelm herself is a veteran of over 25 years in wine and hospitality. As an educator at Niagara College, she often taught a course on the history of Ontario’s wine industry. She noticed that it was difficult for her students to remember dates and facts, but they responded more readily when she told stories about people.
“They immediately put their phones down and leaned forward,” she remembers. “That’s when they told me they couldn’t wait to hear the lessons about the people and their stories. A lot of it came from Linda’s book Niagara Wine Visionaries.”
Wilhelm had the advantage of having worked alongside the likes of noted wine writer and educator Bramble, as well as Pratt, viticulture research scientist Dr. Helen Fisher, NOTL grape grower and winery owner Donna Lailey, longtime editor of Wine Tidings magazine Barbara Leslie and Nicolette Novak, the former proprietor of The Good Earth Food and Wine Co.
Clearly, Wilhelm is a fan of all nine of her subjects in the 231-page book. She relates how she broke down in tears when Novak announced the sale of The Good Earth to new owners in 2021. And she describes Fisher as a “down-to-earth, extremely humble (to the point of self-deprecation), extraordinary human.”
Wilhelm was able to arrange either an in-person or telephone conversation with each woman profiled, other than the late Madame Andrée Bosc. With Pratt, she sat down in the Founders Hall at Inniskilln on a sunny February day. She shared lunch with Bramble and sat on the patio at a local pub with Fisher.
Each woman shares her life story, including details on the trials and tribulations of what it took to build up a burgeoning industry from its earliest years. Lailey reveals to Wilhelm that she was the one who convinced her husband David to plant vinifera grapes on land his family had been farming since 1945. Barbara Leslie tells of her struggles to promote Niagara wines to an often unreceptive audience.
Wilhelm says each woman she spoke to was very receptive and often humble, including Debbie Zimmerman.
“It was intimidating for me to call her,” Wilhelm remembers. “She was driving, and she pulled over and said that she really wanted to give the interview her full attention because she thought it was important for me to write the book.”
Most of the interviews were completed before the pandemic. Wilhelm made sure she approached each subject with the same set of basic questions. That tactic revealed some of the similarities between each woman’s story.
“One of the goals I had for the book was for it to pass along wisdom, knowledge and insights to other women facing similar challenges in any field,” says Wilhelm. “The questions I asked the women were specific to mine that advice. I tried to craft parts of each chapter that could speak to women universally.”
She also reached out to friends, colleagues and admirers of her subjects. Each chapter includes tributes to the woman profiled, written by the likes of Donald Ziraldo, Matthias Oppenlaender, Tony Aspler, Dr. Daniel J. Patterson and Albrecht Seeger.
Wilhelm shares a bit of her own story in the book’s prologue. A single mother during high school, she originally chose the hotel and restaurant management program at Niagara College because of its brevity compared to a university degree. She threw herself into every experiential learning opportunity she could find and fell in love with providing exceptional service.
She worked in local restaurants, where she picked the brains of experienced servers even though she admits she may have been a bit intimidated by them. Realizing the importance of pairing wine with food, she enrolled in a night class to learn more.
She eventually returned once again to the college to teach in the same program. Last year she worked on a contract position with the Town of Lincoln helping to develop and facilitate a customer service training program for tourism and hospitality across the region.
With the release of Sharing a Glass, Wilhelm is now concentrating full-time on getting the book into the retail rooms of Niagara wineries where it will be sold alongside the works of some of the pioneers profiled in its pages.
“The response from the industry has been absolutely wonderful,” says Wilhelm, fresh off a launch event at her alma mater attended by six of the women profiled and about 70 people in total. “With a break in employment right now I can focus on the book. The plan is to get it into bookstores and wineries to get as much awareness of it and to shine a light on the women featured in it.”
And with May 12 just around the corner, the timing couldn’t be better.
“It’s hopefully on a lot of people’s Mother's Day buying list,” Willhelm suggests. “It’s a celebration of women and mentorship. That’s a great thing to celebrate for Mother’s Day.”
