Quitting Toronto to Build a Niagara Vineyard from Scratch — Corey Mio of Mio Vineyard

What happens when you leave Toronto, buy a neglected 17-acre farm in Niagara wine country, and plant a vineyard — with no formal training in viticulture or winemaking?

In this episode, I sit down with Corey Mio of Mio Vineyard and Sempre Mio Wines to talk about building a vineyard from scratch, learning to farm on the fly, and why he believes great wine starts long before the grapes reach the winery.

We discuss the realities of growing grapes in one of the world's most challenging wine regions, Corey’s obsession with Chardonnay clones, why he identifies as a farmer first and winemaker second, and the realities of building a vineyard business in Ontario, including selling grapes to established wineries while gradually growing their own label, Sempre Mio Wines.

We also dive into the future of Ontario wine, the pressures facing Niagara growers, the challenges of regulation and development, and why Corey believes supporting local wine requires more than just talking about it.

Whether you're a wine lover, aspiring farmer, or someone dreaming about building a life around something meaningful, this conversation offers a fascinating look at what it takes to turn a vineyard dream into reality.

Timestamps

Quitting Toronto to Build a Niagara Vineyard from Scratch — Corey Mio of Mio Vineyard 

00:00 – He Bought a Vineyard With No Experience

01:45 – Why Niagara Changed Everything

03:56 – Finding the Farm and Building Mio Vineyard
07:58 – Why Great Vineyards Take Decades
 10:06 – The Business of Farming, Selling Grapes & Sempre Mio
 12:19 – Farming Philosophy and Vine Longevity
 14:25 – The Chardonnay Obsession: Varieties, Clones & Quality
 20:07 – The Story Behind the Tantalus Mio Vineyard Chardonnay
 23:01 – The VQA Fight and Ontario Wine Regulations
 25:59 – Building Sempre Mio Wines
 28:29 – Niagara's Potential and Challenges
 31:09 – What's Holding Ontario Wine Back?
 37:19 – Niagara Recommendations & Where to Find Sempre Mio
 41:02 – Final Thoughts

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Creators and Guests

Host

Alex Abbott Boyd

Toronto based wine importer and podcaster with a passion for killer wines from under-the-radar wine regions. Also Chamapgne.

What is Tasting Notes Toronto by Insider Wine?

Hosted by a Toronto-based sommelier Tasting Notes Toronto explores the people shaping the city’s food and wine culture—from Michelin-starred chefs and master sommeliers to restaurant operators and winemakers. Each episode goes behind the scenes of hospitality careers, restaurant culture, and the decisions that shape what we eat and drink in Toronto today.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 00:00

A lot of people dream about selling their house, moving to wine country, buying a vineyard, but you actually did it. And not only that, you did it with no background in either winemaking or viticulture. Were you a little bit crazy?

Corey Mio: 00:16

I would say so. Well, at least I had somebody to go on the crazy train with, my wife. She certainly thought I I was when I first broached the idea to her. Ten years later, I'd say it's worked out.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 00:27

What was it that inspired you guys to make that leap together?

Corey Mio: 00:31

I'd say it's a confluence of factors. We first fell in love with each other when we were taking a wine trip out to Niagara and discovering both a place and each other for the first time. And we just like to go out there. So I would say that it kinda just grew on us. And when we were in a place where we were serious about our relationship and I think wanting to to get a place together, to have a life together, we I was like, instead of living in the suburbs, like, why don't we just move a little bit outside?

Corey Mio: 01:00

Why don't we why don't we start a vineyard? Get a farm. And Lina was like, are are you fucking crazy? Like, that's that's a little extreme. Right?

Corey Mio: 01:08

I know we like coming out here, but I'm like, maybe you'll warm up to it. Imagine having a family and getting get getting a lot of space and getting to grow up on a farm. Yeah. It could be idyllic. Right?

Corey Mio: 01:19

And, frankly, all of the crazy speculation hadn't necessarily reached farm country the way it is now. Right? So it was still quasi affordable to try and get a farm at that time in Southern Ontario. So at the end of the day, man, we went for it and we got lucky. The circumstances in which we were able to even get our farm to begin with were pretty wild.

Corey Mio: 01:40

I don't know, man. Maybe the the universe just helped us out a little bit too.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 01:45

What was it about some of those early experiences that really made you fall in love with Niagara?

Corey Mio: 01:51

I just I hadn't appreciated or realized that something like that was so close to home and home being Toronto, like born and raised. Right? So it just reminded me of a very European lifestyle. And I had been fortunate to have traveled to a bit of Italy in Spain when I was a teenager, and I always thought it was so beautiful. And I'd been to the falls, but I hadn't really explored wine country per se.

Corey Mio: 02:14

And, yeah, I mean, I had liked wine, but it wasn't the passion that that it is, I guess, even still today to a certain degree. But I was drawn to I was drawn to Niagara because we, like, took a leap for a romantic weekend and going there and trying wines that weren't things that me and my Nonno and my dad made in our basement was, like, an eye opener. Right?

Alex Abbott Boyd: 02:39

Yeah. So you guys, as a family growing up, you'd experimented with making wine in the basement?

Corey Mio: 02:43

I wouldn't say it's an experiment. I grew up, like, a block away from, like, my Nonno, who was an Italian immigrant, moved here in the fifties, but he's been making wine for seventy five years. I think he's probably learned a thing or two. He's still doing it. Still alive and kicking.

Corey Mio: 02:58

I think he's kinda passed the reins to Lina and I now.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 03:01

Yeah. So cool. So you had this magical romantic trips out to Niagara. You started to fall in love with the region, with your wife. What was your vision when you were trying to convince her, hey.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 03:14

We should buy a farm.

Corey Mio: 03:15

Oh, I think we both shared the same vision, which was like, why don't wouldn't it be nice to have like our own like little sort of like farm cottage winery hub out of our house. Like just it's like a tradition that you find in other countries. It doesn't have to be these like grand ornate massive modern sort of corporate wineries that you have proliferating all over North America. You could just have good grapes that you tend to in your backyard and then make something, like, really special and to have people over when you can and don't need to necessarily scale to have a big business. I think you can have something appreciable and delicious that you grew yourself, and it'd still be sustainable.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 03:56

When you were looking for land Yeah. How did you know when you found your current spot that you'd found the right place and your home?

Corey Mio: 04:03

We looked for a year. We toured probably four or five different properties in 2016. And we were, like, kinda, like, giving up because they they they weren't the most desirable. And, like, it's it was still expensive, like like, at the max of what our what we thought our budget would be. And, like, even then, man, like, there wasn't any like, we we like the bench areas.

Corey Mio: 04:21

We liked in Beamsville and in Vineland and in Jordan. And finding, like, bench land even then was, like, there's just not a lot of it. So it was still, like, way more expensive than it is, let's say, just downslope, which is where we live now. We looked for a year because we knew that we're not gonna move from here, man. This is, the one shot.

Corey Mio: 04:39

So we took our time and then just one day saw the listing for the place we're at. And I'm like, I knew it was the one, man. Dude, that's it. You know it when you see it. And I'm just like, okay.

Corey Mio: 04:50

We gotta go see this place. It just went up. She was traveling that week. So I was like, weekend when you're back, we have to get on this. It's out of our budget, but we'll see what happens.

Corey Mio: 04:57

It's right on the main wine route, which is King Street. And there's it's littered with wineries and you have tons of road frontage and eyeballs for anyone that's traveling there, any tourist too. So it just makes a lot of sense. And our neighbors grow grapes. We didn't have anywhere near the appreciable knowledge that we do now, but we could gather a few hypothesis.

Corey Mio: 05:15

Okay. This makes sense just from a business perspective as well because it blends both. It's our home, but it's also an income producing property, which we thought would be a more judicious use of our money than just to buy a condo at the time or a townhouse.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 05:29

A 100%. What was the state of the property when you found it?

Corey Mio: 05:32

Oh, it was fallow. Yeah. The land itself hadn't been farmed. There was parts of it without a four like an acre or two of forest. There was, like, 20,000 square foot chicken barn.

Corey Mio: 05:42

They had done maybe an acre of pumpkins here. There was maybe acres of weeds. Some of it was cash crop. It was just it was all over the place.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 05:49

How big was it?

Corey Mio: 05:51

The property is 17 acres, just a little over, and we knew it had potential. It just needed a lot of work. Right? And we were never obviously, we weren't in an afraid of going and doing the work. We decided to get a farm.

Corey Mio: 06:03

We kinda had some idea of what we were in for, especially one that was neglected. But we knew it was like the it was like a diamond in the rough, man. You just had to go and just get down dirty and polish it up.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 06:14

Yeah. On that subject, like, how did you go about figuring out how on earth to turn a fallow farm into a thriving vineyard if you didn't go to school for that?

Corey Mio: 06:24

No. My and this is this is my own hubris talking, but my my idea at the time was if the monks could figure it out in Burgundy in the sixteen hundreds, I have the Internet. I can

Alex Abbott Boyd: 06:35

Yeah.

Corey Mio: 06:35

I can make it work. Right? And besides, we had neighbors and stuff too that we could draw on for stuff. And there's also services that you can have to farm management and stuff like that that can come and do stuff. And that's what we do.

Corey Mio: 06:48

Now we have a lot more knowledge, and it's not just us doing literally every single job. It's grown to a point where we can't do it all anymore. You know? It was different during the pandemic because it was small. It was an acre, and we were home all the time.

Corey Mio: 06:59

Right? Yeah. Now it's 12, and we both have full time careers outside of us. We get we get some neighbors that will help us with our spray program and maybe some tractor work with implements that I don't have. Maybe anyway, few things like gray powing and stuff.

Corey Mio: 07:13

And and I have a hired labor service that I will hire people to come and help me for the day or the two or three that I need them. And they just you make it all work that way. The one thing that pretty much it's us and our family for the most part is harvest. That's that's always the most, I feel like, intimate, you know, time where it's kinda all on our shoulder. Yeah.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 07:36

If you're enjoying the episode, I have a quick ask. Ratings and reviews actually matter a lot more than most people think with how the show grows and how I can keep getting great guests like this. You can do it right now while you're listening. Leaving a rating takes about ten seconds, and I'd really appreciate it. And if you already have, thank you so much.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 07:58

Alright. Back to the show. So you mentioned during COVID, it was only one acre. Now there's 12. What did that progression look like?

Alex Abbott Boyd: 08:07

Like, how long did it take to even get it ready to plant that first acre? What did you plant? And then how has it expanded since then?

Corey Mio: 08:14

Yeah. I would say that there was just a year of prepping for the first part. We we just decided with this with the way that it was financially that the only way that we can do this is to chip away at it slowly. Right? So we we spent the first year cutting down trees, asking our neighbors if we can borrow some of their equipment to, like, plow over and till over this weeded mess that used to be a pumpkin patch and just prepping the first acre or so and getting our feet wet as to what we could expect.

Corey Mio: 08:47

Acquiring some of the just even the trellising stuff. Right? We would do everything an acre or two at a time. We're still not even done planting the vineyard now. It's been moved there in November 2017.

Corey Mio: 08:59

Right? Maybe next year or the year after. We'll see. We're taking our time slowly to build up to it. Right?

Corey Mio: 09:03

Yeah. I think that's a more prudent approach, especially coming in with no experience and very little money.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 09:10

Yeah. I love that because so many people want things that pay off quickly. Yeah. People in their careers wanna be promoted every two or three years when they're in their twenties and thirties and just see this constant progression. You signed up for something that it's gonna take potentially decades to fully realize.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 09:28

What what gives you that kind of patience?

Corey Mio: 09:36

I don't know, man. I'm not chasing instant gratification, and I don't think Lena is either. I think we want something more meaningful with our life. And whether or not that makes a ton of money per se, I feel like we take a lot of pride in in me, especially, I take a lot of meaning in my work. First and foremost, we were farmers now.

Corey Mio: 09:57

We feel like we're farmers, and it's true. It's what we do. Yeah. You've I feel like a sense of connection and there's always improvements to be made and yeah.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 10:08

Do you identify primarily as a farmer because you also make a little bit of wine from your vineyard, but you you sell the majority of the grapes to other wineries?

Corey Mio: 10:18

Yeah. Yeah. We're Could you share

Alex Abbott Boyd: 10:19

a little bit about, like, what the business looks like and what your own wines are called and just lay out the structure?

Corey Mio: 10:23

Percent. Yeah. So we're, like, a hybrid business. I feel like for a young establishing entrepreneurs, it's it seems to be a model that works when you you're wearing a lot of different hats. We're not the only ones, I think, that are doing a small wine label and maybe working at other wineries or farms and also selling maybe some of our excess scrapes and stuff like that.

Corey Mio: 10:44

I think scalability is like a big it's a big problem because our land is so expensive in Southern Ontario that and to to justify those investments, you need to make a lot of stuff right away. And that kind of model eliminates maybe a lot of young people from being able to participate. It's a huge barrier. Right? So I think, you know, where we at, where we're at, and maybe some of our other colleagues in our same maybe age and life brackets and stuff, where if we're lucky to own our land, we're both maybe making a small amount of wine for ourselves and selling the bulk of our production to work with other people.

Corey Mio: 11:23

I think it also helps if you're committed to a certain standard of farming practices and you're searching for quality, maybe yield control, I think aids in that tremendously in Niagara that you will you'll you'll find your community that way, and you'll also get name recognition. It's still it's really small, man. There's only what, 150 wineries in in Southern Ontario. Like, that's that's a lot of merry-go-rounds for a lot of people. So, yeah, I I see that being the model we're gonna be pursuing with the ambition of having our own place at our farm one day and transitioning from our outside careers into doing this full time, man.

Corey Mio: 12:04

I would love to just be on my farm every day and also make wine with and also have somebody to help me to to make wine too. It's not necessarily my vocation or my my job, really. You know? I mean, I fully embrace the farming, and I feel like that that will aid in making great wine too. Just getting some help to get you there.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 12:21

How would you describe the farming philosophy?

Corey Mio: 12:25

I would say that it's pragmatic. People like to throw around all these, like, overused words like, oh, we're sustained. I don't think that and this is just a personal opinion that organics or biodynamics and stuff like that works particularly well in Southern Ontario just because we have it's probably the most inhospitable place to try and grow vinifera grapes arguably in any major wine producing region in the world. We just have so much disease pressure and humidity issues and just climactic conditions, terrible winters, like every pest and problem you can think of. We're the birthplace of Phylloxera.

Corey Mio: 13:00

You have everything going against you. There's no good answers. I think if you're going organic, you're gonna have to spray probably three times as often. So how much and you're using a tractor to do that. So what's your carbon cost to to just to say that we're organic.

Corey Mio: 13:14

You know what I'm saying? I personally feel that there's no substitute for labor. And that's the most expensive thing. That's the truth. Labor costs so much money.

Corey Mio: 13:22

So if I can subsidize a lot of that with my own or with some of my family's when they're feeling generous, I think that you can truly be a lot more sustainable in that way. I think there's other approaches. I'm a big proponent of a specific pruning method. And that was like the one thing that I really researched really well. And when I was first starting, because I felt that was like the pivotal thing.

Corey Mio: 13:44

You're making this living sculpture. Wouldn't you want it to be as healthy as possible? And that starts with the very first cut that you make on a vine.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 13:49

What is the name of the pruning method?

Corey Mio: 13:51

It's a sap flow pruning method. The overarching philosophy is that the sap, like the carbohydrate reserve in the vine, it wants to push outwards and gravity pulls it down. So you don't wanna make big harsh cuts on the vine. If you do that in in a irresponsible manner, especially in a place that's inhospitable to growing grapes, then maybe your vines don't last more than fifteen or twenty years. And I think we can push longevity a lot longer than that.

Corey Mio: 14:17

And what is more sustainable than getting to use those vines for a lot longer period than maybe more commercial practices are getting out of them now. Right?

Alex Abbott Boyd: 14:26

Yeah. That makes sense. So what did you what mix of varieties did you end up planting?

Corey Mio: 14:32

My favorite grape is Chardonnay. So that was gonna be a huge focus for the vineyard, obviously. And it grows extremely well where we are too. I think it makes a interesting product. Lina's, my my wife and partner, is her favorite grape is Cabernet Franc.

Corey Mio: 14:46

So we kind of committed to trying to do a third of the vineyard Chardonnay, a third of the vineyard Cabernet Franc, and then maybe one acre blocks of a few other things that we thought could be interesting and could also grow well where we are in Niagara. So in saying that, my focus has really been on exploring clones within the context of that. My thought was always like, okay. These clones, they have different attributes. Either it's on the growing side or organoleptic.

Corey Mio: 15:14

And since I love this grape and I love it from not just Niagara, but I've had great Italian. I've had great French Australian. Right? Like, wouldn't it be cool to get clones from, like, all over the world and make a truer expression if if the grape is supposed to be this vector to express terroir or whatever, wouldn't you want as many different types of that same grape as possible to better express that? Yeah.

Corey Mio: 15:36

That was kinda like my thoughts. And we don't really have a big clone culture here like they do in France or Italy. Maisons isn't really a thing in Ontario. And the reason for that is for the reason that we have a lot of problems, government intervention and regulation and overregulation. For the longest time up until 2019, the government actually dictated what clones you could and could not plant of certain varieties.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 15:59

How wide was the spectrum that they allowed? Or is it like There was like there's two chardonnays you can have.

Corey Mio: 16:03

Pretty much four. Four or five, maybe. Like, two two or three of Cavalier de Franc and blah blah blah. That was it. That kinda changed.

Corey Mio: 16:10

And just pre pandemic. This is all regulated through the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. They relaxed the rules. So now all of a sudden, as long as it came from a certified nursery that, like, adhered to protocols that we allow for importing grapevines, then it was without variety and clone restrictions. So basically, any nursery in The US pretty much abides by this, and they have a much bigger repertoire of stuff.

Corey Mio: 16:35

So all of a sudden, had access to things that you never otherwise had. That was only in the last seven years, six years.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 16:40

So so to take your two biggest varieties, Chardonnay and Cap Franck, how many clones are in your vineyard, and how would you say that compares to the typical Niagara vineyard?

Corey Mio: 16:49

I would say that we have the most clonally diverse chardonnay plantings outside of a nursery in the entire country.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 16:58

Okay.

Corey Mio: 16:59

I would say so. We grow thirteen, fourteen different clones. Some of them are blended. Most blocks are blended. So like I always had the idea that like the way a winemaker likes to blend in the cellar, you have all these barrels and they're isolated and maybe they're from different clones or different blocks and stuff like that.

Corey Mio: 17:13

I wanted to reverse engineer that to have that complexity naturally inherent in the vineyard, which I think is also in the spirit of the Maisons selections in France. Right? These are clones that are like heritage clones. So they'll take a cutting from like whatever, Grand Paris vineyard, and this is what he was growing in Fleury for and what his great grandfather grew. And you have like little pockets of things like that there.

Corey Mio: 17:36

We don't have that culture here yet, but I figured let's start with a wide enough base as possible, and then we can go from there. Right? And I tried to keep the blocks at least proportional to where I thought where by by country or where I thought the ripening cycle would be. I don't like to go with let's say, have a couple we have a couple of California heritage clones. I'm not really blending that with the champagne clone or our French a Corte clone from Italy and things like that.

Corey Mio: 18:03

I like to keep some uniformity, but also maybe do a blend. Okay. I'm gonna have 5% of this block with chard mesquet. And I had read that any really high quality Grand Cru Burgundy vineyard always has a proportion of And it's just

Alex Abbott Boyd: 18:17

Mesquet is the name of a clone?

Corey Mio: 18:18

A chardonnay. So it's, let's say, an aromatic mutation of chardonnay. Right? So you'll have whatever. And then maybe 80% of this clone, 15%, five for Okay.

Corey Mio: 18:28

Getting to that effect.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 18:30

A basic question, but like how different when you taste these say eleven, thirteen clones of Chardonnay grown in the same year

Corey Mio: 18:37

Yeah.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 18:38

Basically the same vineyard. How different do they taste?

Corey Mio: 18:41

They definitely behave different in the cellar if you were to isolate by block. No doubt. It's not even taste. You can literally look at one block to the next and they grow differently. So it's it's noticeable.

Corey Mio: 18:49

There's a reason why these were selected to begin with. That's I feel like that's inherently human. We've been selecting since we invented agriculture. Right? We've been selecting things because they tasted different or grew different, and they satisfied one objective or the other since whatever, thirteen thousand years ago.

Corey Mio: 19:06

Right? I feel like it's no different with grapes. I'll just give one example. I have this one block and it's a special clone for me personally. It's an Italian clone of chardonnay, and it's from the Vivaille Coperitivo Rascheto, and that's the world's largest grapevine nursery.

Corey Mio: 19:20

And it's about fifteen, twenty kilometers away from, like, where all the Mio ancestors are from. I feel like in some way we're maybe reclaiming a bit of our roots and transplanting it back here. So that tastes completely different than if you were to have your typical French colonel blend of chardonnay here. Night and day. For our wine label, we made one of just that block last year in 2025.

Corey Mio: 19:44

It's in barrel right now. So it'll be called the the Cuvee Sante. Sante is my numeral. That's his name. So I thought it would be cool to so he gets a namesake bottle.

Corey Mio: 19:54

And, yeah, this doesn't taste like your typical rich chardonnay. It tastes like Bordeaux Blanc. It's like very super aromatic, so Blanc esque, and it has nothing to do with either terroir or it has nothing to do with the growing season. It's the clone.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 20:09

You brought a bottle of wine. Would you like to share? Cheers. Yeah. Cheers.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 20:14

Can you tell the story of this wine?

Corey Mio: 20:17

I don't know if I can speak to the entire story of the wine and the winemaking, but I can speak to the part that Lina and I played in our vineyard. I wanted to just share this because it was something that we were super proud of. It's it was made by our friends at Tantalus Vineyards in BC. And I'm not sure if you're familiar, but they had a terrible back to back deep freeze in the winters of 2023 and 2024. So the they it was so bad that the government allowed them a two year exception to be able to go out and make wine from anywhere to sell it just to kinda save the industry and not have all those crazy job losses and stuff like that.

Corey Mio: 20:59

I think to avert total collapse, they they were allowed to do this for two seasons. We we had a friend a mutual friend that was now the viticultural manager at Tantalus, and they were looking specifically they wanted to make a pan Canadian wine. They wanted to go across the country. They didn't necessarily wanna do what was convenient like so many of the other wineries took the opportunity to and just go south to Washington or Oregon. And I I understand the at the time, it made a lot of business sense.

Corey Mio: 21:27

That's like six hour drive. They can truck whatever they want back, and it's super convenient and easy and obviously a necessity for their business. Right? The reason I'm so proud of this is it was a challenging season just growing these grapes. And I can't imagine how logistically challenging it was for them to be able to just work with us at all and to have to truck that back, the expenses involved, the meticulous planning.

Corey Mio: 21:50

So I was super happy that now that this finally got released in the last month, a shout out to shout out to the team for sending me the care package. Thank you. And getting to try this and seeing the fruits of that labor and sharing it with people and sharing our our story and maybe changing the minds of a few consumers in British Columbia too about the quality that we can achieve here in Ontario. Yeah. I was super happy to share this.

Corey Mio: 22:12

So it's a 2024 Chardonnay. It's just single vineyard from the Mio vineyard, Lina and I's vineyard. And it's a blends of in varying proportions of all the different blocks of Chardonnay that we grow. So there's literally 13 different clones of Chardonnay that that comprise this wine right here. And I think it's delicious,

Alex Abbott Boyd: 22:32

and I'm just happy to share it. Yeah. It's exciting. Ontario Chardonnay will be hopefully pretty big in BC this year.

Corey Mio: 22:38

Yeah. Hopefully bigger than Washington and Oregon. It's in b in BC right now. But

Alex Abbott Boyd: 22:42

Yeah. Yeah? Do you feel like the government made it easy or hard to make this happen?

Corey Mio: 22:50

I would say that the BC government obviously tried very hard to help them, to to help their industry and gave them an out. Even though I know there were some other issues, like, basically due to sales. They only gave them a two like a basically, I think, two or three year exception. But if you're making red wines, some of those don't get released for a couple of years. How are you gonna make like a reserve or whatever?

Corey Mio: 23:13

Some of those and get it all sold out before that moratorium expires. Right? So that I think was a big oversight. And I don't know if they rectified that yet, but I know that was one problem. I don't want to point the finger too hard at our our institutions here in Ontario, but I think that they missed an opportunity to try to elevate the profile of Ontario wines across the rest of the country.

Corey Mio: 23:38

I know that there was some challenges for Tantalus to be able to use some of the regulated terms that we have here in Ontario, even though we know a 100 it came from this place. Right? That's it was You mean,

Alex Abbott Boyd: 23:52

like, Lincoln Lakeshore? Was that

Corey Mio: 23:54

Yeah. Like, v to use the VQA. This can't be a VQA wine because it was made in BC. Right? So even though there's a trail of where the grapes were harvested from, where they were processed, and where it went from there, because there's no oversight for VQA terms in British Columbia because that's the Ontario Wine Appalachian Authority, they were they were not going to be able to use those terminologies on their bottle, even though it's true.

Corey Mio: 24:20

What really aggravated me about the Appalachian authority is they were trying to forbid them from using a single vineyard from Ontario to use a named vineyard on a bottle. And I can't

Alex Abbott Boyd: 24:31

see your name. It's my

Corey Mio: 24:33

yeah. It's my name, my vineyard. I was right there growing it, and I trust that it is from my vineyard. And that's the whole point. It seems like there's such a disconnect.

Corey Mio: 24:43

Their whole point is to showcase the vineyard of the wine. Why are they gonna blend something else it? Why? Just to make a buck? That's not their business model.

Corey Mio: 24:49

And I understand what the government is trying to protect. They also need to be sensible and flexible. Yeah. And the fact that they're gonna try and extend their power over the license of my name is so infuriating. Yeah.

Corey Mio: 25:01

So they have obviously my permission and my full endorsement and support. But the problem with this is when they said kinda screw you, VQA. We're gonna put the vineyard on the bottle. Yeah. Don't care what you say.

Corey Mio: 25:11

It limits their ability to be able to sell this in the province of Ontario. Right? Because I think there's there could potentially be some challenges with labeling requirements if they were to try and sell this in the LCBO, for example, which adheres to the VQA standards and the v because it's codified in law. Right? Again, the whole structure, institutional structures that we have, I think, need a a serious overhaul.

Corey Mio: 25:38

And I think there's some massive oversights. And all we're doing is debilitating ourselves. And we see there's more drive and pride to support local, you know, more than ever. And it's just, can't we just fix structural problems? We can just have access and, like, have pride in our local products like like a normal country?

Corey Mio: 25:56

Or is that too much to ask? Are we 12 different countries masquerading as one?

Alex Abbott Boyd: 26:00

Yeah. Yeah. So shifting gears just slightly. You grow grapes for incredible wineries like Tantalus that make these beautiful wines. Can you tell me about the wines that you make under Sempre Mio?

Corey Mio: 26:12

Yeah. For sure. So, yeah, Lina and I, we were operating like a quasi virtual winery right now. We don't have our own on-site farm and production facility right now or our own wine license. We figured it's part of the model to use somebody else's.

Corey Mio: 26:30

Right? So we were able to network with our good our good friend Jeff at Divergence Wines, and he helps craft our wines. Our wine is called Sempre Mio wines. And we make our wines out of Mary Nissen under the Collab group, which has a couple other virtual wineries. And, yeah, it was just our opportunity to start our brand, and we really wanted to to make our own wines.

Corey Mio: 26:55

Right? Not the fun thing about having selling your grapes too is to see a lot of other people's different expressions and takes and styles. Right? And you get to have a lot of exposure. Okay.

Corey Mio: 27:05

Like, I'm learning this or maybe like, I I taste this thing that's seamless across like a few different people. Right? But we felt like it was the right time for us and the right opportunity to start our own to start our own small wine label and really put our name on the bottle too. Right? Yeah.

Corey Mio: 27:22

That was always the the end goal. So we started really small. We started with two wines. We ended up making three in our first vintage, which was 2023. Made a Marseille with a little bit of Vio in it and a Chardonnay.

Corey Mio: 27:35

And so we ended up making like a kind of reserve. That's like our take on a reserve is a single barrel chard. And we we were lucky we found a lot of support and here in Toronto as well as in the Niagara Region and sold through our wines. All three of those wines already. We're onto the new vintage of Marseille in 2024.

Corey Mio: 27:56

And that's the only wine we got coming out for six months, and we'll have a couple more things. We made a couple more wines in 2025. Again, we're talking, like, 50 to a 100 cases per skew. Yeah. So we made our first reds this last year, which was an unbelievable year.

Corey Mio: 28:10

We're growing those late ripening red varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon because we had to, like, a kinda, like, Napa or California type summer or Mediterranean summers. It was super hot and dry. And I'm really looking forward to those when they come out.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 28:24

Yeah. So what reds can we look forward to?

Corey Mio: 28:26

We made a Cabernet Franc and a Cabernet Sauvignon.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 28:31

What do you think Niagara has the potential to do really well? You mentioned Chardonnay. You've talked about Cabernet Franc. You also said, like, last year was a great year for Cabernet Sauvignon.

Corey Mio: 28:42

I think there's something for everybody in Niagara. I think there truly is. And every year presents a different opportunity to do something different with your wine. Right? So what we do well, and I I don't think people appreciate enough is like how resilient.

Corey Mio: 28:58

That's one thing to say. What's your what are you offering? What are you what's your angle? What's your marketing strategy? Right?

Corey Mio: 29:04

And it's just the fact that we can even grow grapes to this level at all in this tiny little fucking pocket just South Of Toronto is unbelievable. And I figured this out a long time ago. Don't know why other people can't.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 29:15

Like Yeah.

Corey Mio: 29:16

This like I said earlier, with the farming challenges and everything, it's we're right on the spectrum of nonviability, right at the extreme end of that.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 29:24

And Why is that?

Corey Mio: 29:26

Why is that?

Alex Abbott Boyd: 29:27

Is it climactic? You hinted also that people don't drink it. You've you've talked about government overregulation. What what makes you say that it's on the edge of viability?

Corey Mio: 29:37

On the edge? Land prices keep going up. Right? And the speculative nature of that will almost lead to only higher and higher prices. And if people already aren't buying 20 and $30 bottles of or less of Niagara wines, how many how many can you support if they're pushing $60.70, $100 a bottle?

Corey Mio: 29:56

Right? I think at the end of the day, more and more of the best land for it is getting swallowed up for development. And it's just the truth. Right? We basically have from the top of the escarpment just down to the water, and that's at its widest point, five, six kilometers, and it's a very narrow band.

Corey Mio: 30:11

Right? You already have crazy development from Stoney Creek pushing into Grimsby. And then on the other side, you're squished by Saint Catharines. And this is just on the bench lines. It's a bit of a maybe a bit different in Niagara On The Lake, but it's still happening there too.

Corey Mio: 30:25

Right? I think just like any other culture, man, all the creativity and all the interesting things always get pushed to the margins. I think in a generation or two, maybe all and not even the county, maybe all the cool lines will be made in, I don't know, Collingwood or Lake Huron. And there's gonna be this widespread adoption of whatever hybrids or some new varieties that we haven't even considered yet. Things are moving so fast.

Corey Mio: 30:47

And ten years ago, did you think that all the trendy restaurants in the city are serving a lot of hybrid wines like they are now or the wine bars in the city? No. I don't think that was necessarily the case ten or fifteen years ago. Now that's happening a lot with some of our colleagues in other parts of the province and into Quebec

Alex Abbott Boyd: 31:02

and

Corey Mio: 31:02

growing those and growing them well, more suited to those climates too. Right?

Alex Abbott Boyd: 31:07

Yeah. You say it's on the edge of viability, and it sounds like a lot of real struggles. Do you still love it? Are you still excited to wake up every day and be a farmer and make some wine?

Corey Mio: 31:16

Oh, man. Yeah. You should be like, yes. I love it every day in spite of its challenge. You know what, man?

Corey Mio: 31:22

I I don't know if I love parts of it anymore. I really don't know. I think that's the truth. I just I love what I do, and it brings me meaning just to be able to grow things. But I'm, like, real over the, I guess, the industry.

Corey Mio: 31:41

And I haven't even been doing it that long. It just

Alex Abbott Boyd: 31:44

What

Corey Mio: 31:44

There's parts of it that make me feel like a lot a lot of times it can I don't know, man? Maybe it's just clout chasing and clicks, and it can feel so vapid and hollow and transactional all the time. And my always thing was like, I'm just a farmer, man. I just wanna sit down and have a glass of wine. Yeah.

Corey Mio: 32:01

And I'm drinking my wine because I

Alex Abbott Boyd: 32:05

think for me and for so many people, it is we love wine because of that just simple connection to a place and a farmer that made it. That not what you're finding everyone else is into?

Corey Mio: 32:16

Maybe not in the city. Maybe not here. The stats don't lie. Right? It's shares of a 100% Ontario wines were at a his like, a historical low two years ago.

Corey Mio: 32:26

Right? As a as a percentage of market share. I think reality is that's maybe it's different for, you know, a nice wine agent such as yourself that can get appointments and serve exotic things that people seem to equate with quality as opposed to something that is, like, delicious and sustainable in this near backyard.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 32:48

Yeah. You haven't found that even, say, the trade war worth the banning of US wines. Has that has that been a help for Niagara?

Corey Mio: 32:54

I think it's just I I don't know if it's been a help in in the same way. Like, I I don't wanna come across as contrarian and bitter and cynical, but the truth is we've had other things like this before in the past, like 2020 with the COVID stuff, and people just went right back to what they loved, and that was California wines. I guarantee you once this is resolved, they'll be they'll go pretty close to right back where it was. Interesting. Yeah.

Corey Mio: 33:17

I don't know. I just feel like

Alex Abbott Boyd: 33:18

it's been lasting long enough, and there's so many good wines.

Corey Mio: 33:20

Shelf for a year.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 33:22

They've been off the shelf for a year. Especially everyone knew who's getting into wine at a time when

Corey Mio: 33:26

Yeah.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 33:27

California is not an option. Ontario has never been more promoted. I feel like

Corey Mio: 33:32

Yeah.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 33:33

I think it might set their habits in a way that's good for Ontario.

Corey Mio: 33:36

Yeah. But I I don't know. It's tough to say in, like, a macro. That's not really my area of expertise at all. Right?

Corey Mio: 33:41

But, like, I love just growing grapes. It's the core. And I love wine. Obviously, I wouldn't be growing grapes if I didn't. It's just there's other parts of it that just it's all the other stuff.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 33:49

What do you wish the wine industry and just the average wine drinker in Ontario knew or would understand about what people like you are doing?

Corey Mio: 34:02

That's not an on the spot question, man. I gotta I gotta dig deep for that. What do I wish they knew? Take a romantic weekend out to Niagara and take your partner or somebody you wanna impress and go out there and just have a meal, walk through a field. Maybe don't go to the big tourist place.

Corey Mio: 34:29

There's plenty of family owned businesses. Go and support one. Go try. I don't think it has to be more complicated than that. Right?

Corey Mio: 34:36

I think we just need to build community. And I think it starts by putting your money where your mouth is. Right? I think there's tons of restaurants that say, oh, we only support Ontario farmers. We're within 50 kilometers of our spot.

Corey Mio: 34:48

This is Dave's fucking gem lettuce or whatever. And I knew the the whatever. The all Ontario beer list. We only get Canadian spirits. But local wine, tough sell.

Corey Mio: 35:02

Tough sell, Al. It's what our it's what we wanna do for our customers. They come in. They wanna spend money, Al. They they they wanna drink Italian.

Corey Mio: 35:08

And it's up to they wanna drink Burgundy. Burgundy sells. Right? There's plenty of other restaurants that are featuring local wines and having success doing that. And there's a place for all of those things on the wine list.

Corey Mio: 35:22

Right? You you if there's a shooter that wants to come in and

Alex Abbott Boyd: 35:25

Yeah.

Corey Mio: 35:26

Spend $2,000 on a bottle of Burgundy, that's fine. You can have that. I'm telling you, if 20 per if every restaurant in the province of Ontario just carried that that served alcohol, carried percent of their wine list as local wines, we wouldn't have enough grapes in the ground to satisfy that demand. It's like it's not a big company.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 35:43

Yeah. And I've had people on the podcast who their entire By the Glass program is Ontario. Yeah. And I've had other places that are exactly like you described, where they're like, look, every everything on the plate is local or at least Canadian. With the wine list, our customers want more.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 36:00

They come in. They want France. They want Italy. Yeah. What would you say to them?

Alex Abbott Boyd: 36:05

Just try harder?

Corey Mio: 36:06

No. I would say don't be dishonest about what you're what you're actually doing then. Right? And I'm not the only one to call that out. Wish more people said it, but it's true.

Corey Mio: 36:14

Put money your where your mouth is. Plenty of good people to support that are doing that. And some of them have been on your podcast before. Right?

Alex Abbott Boyd: 36:19

Yeah.

Corey Mio: 36:19

Richmond Station, this is a classic example. They've been doing that. And look, they've been, like, how many years have they been around now? Fifteen, twenty years? Like, still doing it.

Corey Mio: 36:28

Right? And

Alex Abbott Boyd: 36:29

Yeah. And the way Ryan talked about it on the podcast was just he's this isn't a permanent decision. If our sales tanked, could always just go back, but we put it all on Ontario and bite the glass and everything was fine. Great. The world didn't end.

Corey Mio: 36:44

Yeah. Crazy. Do a little research into what's what's right there. Right? That's not far away, man.

Corey Mio: 36:50

And I guarantee you any person you reach out to in the province of Ontario will come to you. We're I think we're happy to meet we're happy to meet anyone that'll give us time today. Right? Like, met. Yeah.

Corey Mio: 37:00

You follow me on Instagram, that's it. Was like, hey. Do you wanna try do you wanna try some local wine?

Alex Abbott Boyd: 37:04

Drove out there. Had a great time. Yeah.

Corey Mio: 37:06

You never know where it's gonna lead. Right? Next thing, you're doing a podcast, and I'm on it. Right? Like, a year later.

Corey Mio: 37:12

So I think that's that's community building. It doesn't have to be like, are you am I gonna get the sale? It gets

Alex Abbott Boyd: 37:20

A 100%. On that topic Yeah. You want someone to drive out to Niagara, have a romantic weekend. Yeah. Obviously, they should visit you and your farm and try some Sempre Mio wines.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 37:31

What are what are some other

Corey Mio: 37:33

Sempre Mio. Yeah. There's some I mean, our farm, it's our home. Right? So anyone that just wants to come and sit on our table not dissimilarly from what we're doing here, I'm your guy.

Corey Mio: 37:42

Hey. You wanna take a Gatorade? Like, just go and see the actual vines. Maybe drink a bottle in the actual vineyards where we took care of them. By all means, that's that's the way I wanna be.

Corey Mio: 37:53

Yeah. And just share of our time. Right? Yeah. What other wineries should you check out?

Alex Abbott Boyd: 37:58

How does someone find those family owned small wineries to get those experiences?

Corey Mio: 38:02

Yeah. There's something for everybody. Right? If you wanted to go to a family owned big estate, you could go to Two Sisters. Right?

Corey Mio: 38:10

That's not a publicly traded winery. And at least they make, to my knowledge, only a 100% Ontario wines. But, yeah, small family owned places. Some of them are our clients. Obviously, I feel like I should

Alex Abbott Boyd: 38:22

And give them a shout out.

Corey Mio: 38:22

Shout out to shout out to some of our our friends in that way. But as soon as you turn the corner into Hamilton, you can go to Leaning Post. It's like the very first winery that you can go to. Right? And they're committed to a single vineyard and make a lot of interesting things.

Corey Mio: 38:36

And they were like one of Lina and I's first inspirations because they were young. They're in our age group, and they were doing what we did. Mind you, they were in the industry. They did it. They took the jump, bought a place, started a vineyard in a small unknown region, and built a much bigger business than ours over that time.

Corey Mio: 38:51

I would stop right there. It's the very first stop. And that's, what, not even an hour's drive

Alex Abbott Boyd: 38:56

Yeah.

Corey Mio: 38:56

Even with traffic from Downtown Toronto. I'll shout out my buddy, Thomas Bashelder and Mary all day. Husband and wife duo just killing it. We're traveling the world and spreading the good word about Niagara, and I think they have massive presence. And a a lot of people in the in the industry recognize the quality of their wines and the vision and what's what they've been able to to show the world.

Corey Mio: 39:19

What we can do in our in our little neck of the woods, and then there's there's some other virtual wineries and people without a home in that way. But their wines are accessible. So you can go online and they'll ship for free for a $100 worth of wine, and they make some excellent wines. Like I said, Jeff Moot, he's Divergence Wines, and he helps us make Sempre Mio wines. And, yeah, I think he's got some cool wines from our vineyard coming out soon, but you can't go wrong.

Corey Mio: 39:44

All the make great chardonnays, that's my favorite grape, but they do tons of things very well. And I I hope that also if you're super interested, why don't you go order a bottle of Tantalus mio vineyard? Tantalus will ship to you in Ontario. No no problem. Right?

Corey Mio: 39:58

So I know that there is restrictions with interprovincial trade, but some people don't care about that. And they'll ship to you anyway because they know the rules are ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. You can always try something that's Canadian, man.

Corey Mio: 40:10

Like, at the end of the day, you can make a choice. Like, I've made mine, and I choose to support more Canadian businesses and frequent only restaurants that carry local wines. And we you can have access. There there is that out there.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 40:25

Okay. And someone wants to get in touch, follow your winery, find your wines. What's the best way for them to do that?

Corey Mio: 40:32

We have a Google listing on the Google Maps. You can check out Sempre Mio wines and find out where we live. And there's a whole email on there. I'd say, like, our primary source of outreach is probably the Instagram. You can always you can always search Mio Vineyard or Sempre Mio wines, and they're both

Alex Abbott Boyd: 40:50

on m I o?

Corey Mio: 40:51

M I o. Yep. Yeah. Short and sweet. And, yeah, get in touch with that.

Corey Mio: 40:56

Like, we will answer any emails and messages, and we'll have anybody over, man. You wanna come and have a glass of wine with us. Perfect.

Alex Abbott Boyd: 41:04

Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap up?

Corey Mio: 41:10

No. I think I covered most of the things, man. Make a choice. Right?

Alex Abbott Boyd: 41:15

Yeah. 100%. Thank you so much for coming on the pod.

Corey Mio: 41:18

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it, man.