Joseph Pohorly, a founding father of the Niagara wine industry and pioneer of Canadian icewine, was said to be passionate about two things: agriculture and education.
Having led a life that was exemplary of both, Pohorly died at the Greater Niagara General Hospital on Sept. 12, 2020. He was 88.
Born in Vineland in 1932, his early life was rooted in agriculture, as the son of a farmer who worked 30 acres of land in Virgil. At 14, he was already learning how to make wine.
He switched out of the field and into the classroom in his pursuit of education, earning an engineering degree in 1975 from Columbus University, and teaching for the Lincoln County Board of Education for over two decades between 1959 and 1981.
At the beginning of his teaching career, Pohorly married Betty, with whom he would father three children: Joanne, and twins Caroline and Barbara — who all survive him. Betty died in 2008.
Together, he and Betty purchased a 10-acre peach tree orchard. The peach trees were torn up and replaced by wine grapes.
He would open his first winery, Newark Wines (later Hillebrand Wines, and then Trius Winery), in Virgil, in 1979.
One frozen evening in 1983, he hand-operated a basket grape presser, squeezing from Vidal grapes, the juice that was made into one of Canada’s earliest icewines.
It wouldn’t be long before he once again left the fields behind, selling the winery in 1986. He would design and operate the Colonel Butler Inn in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
But history would repeat itself in 1990 when he purchased and then ripped up 20 acres of peach trees to plant a vast range of wine grapes.
He opened his second winery, Joseph’s Estate Wines, six years later, in 1996 — later sold in 2014.
Kathy Reid, the winemaker at Joseph’s Estate, met him in the mid-1980s in a wine research lab. She’s been at the winery ever since its opening day.
“He was very proud of his Gewürztraminer back in the ’80s,” Reid said. “I think some of these pioneers that made these wines out of vinifera (grapes) really got the wine industry to where it is today.”
The two also volunteered together at St. Davids Lions Club in Niagara-on-the-Lake. Reid says a lot of Lions Club members worked at Joseph’s Estate.
“Joseph really loved the social aspect, and he loved doing the volunteer work,” she said of the club.
He donated money for the club’s pavilion, bearing his name.
“Joseph was a very social person, (he) loved being around people. He’d kind of be like the student who looked forward to lunch and recess,” she said.
Since learning of his death, Reid says she’s been in tears. “To be honest, he was like a second father.”
Not one for slowing down, he came up with the idea to turn pomace — the leftover “waste” from pressing grapes — into grapeseed oil and started Joseph’s Natural Products in 2003, which operates in Niagara-on-the-Lake today.
Using the idea for his thesis, he earned his PhD in environment engineering in his seventies from Columbus University.
His lifelong dedication to wine and agriculture made him no stranger to recognition.
As Niagara-on-the-Lake’s businessperson of the year in 2004, he was given the Christopher Newton Award for Extraordinary Vision in Business, and the year before that, he was given the Regional Innovation Award for Sustainable Development. In 2018, he was presented with a Niagara Agriculture Lifetime Achievement Award.
In his later years, he remained active as an engineering consultant, and continued to travel the globe spreading lore of a special place, home to world-class wines.
In a recent Facebook post, his nephew Michael Pohorly, memorialized him, saying, “He was an inspiration to me as a shining example of pursuing a life where all kinds of endeavours and interests are possible and a reminder that no matter what our age — our lives can be lived fully and we can enjoy every moment and never stop learning and challenging ourselves.”
In addition to a private funeral for family only, there will be a public celebration of his life on Sept. 20, at St. Davids Lions Club in Niagara-on-the-Lake, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
- Jordan Snobelen, Local Journalism Initiative, Niagara This Week
