Reif Estate Winery up for sale

“I’m not selling the winery, I’m buying time.”

Those are the words of Klaus Reif, the lone shareholder of Reif Estates Winery, which was listed recently for sale with Peter Fischer of Engel and Völkers Niagara for $25 million.

With that statement, the 60-year-old thirteenth generation winemaker, who emigrated to Canada from Neaustadt, Germany in 1987, asserts that his reasons for listing the property are not at all financial. 

“I don’t need to sell the winery,” Reif insists. “But it’s time to move on. I have realized that I have neglected my family, I have neglected my friends. I have neglected my hobbies. Because I was here every day. The longest vacation I have ever taken was 12 days.”

That realization set in with the deaths of two people very close to him. 

First, his uncle Ewald, who came to Canada in 1977, bought Riverscourt Farm on the Niagara Parkway and started the winery in 1982, passed away six years ago after three months in hospital.

A 15-year-old Klaus first accompanied his father Gunter on a visit to his uncle in 1978. He immediately fell in love with the country. When they returned home, Klaus had his plan for the future. He knew he wanted to come back to Canada. 

“I finished high school then went to business school,” says Reif. ”Then I studied winemaking and viticulture. I finished university at (Hochschule Geisenheim University) in June, 1987 and came here two weeks later. Ewald retired from the winery business and I took it over then.”

Ewald continued to work the vineyards, but eventually retired from his role there when he turned 50. He had an active retirement, travelling often until his illness slowed him down. 

“I saw him almost every day,” Reif says of his uncle’s time in hospital, “and we had some deep conversations. One day he told me he was okay to go, because whatever he had wanted to do in his life, he had done. He saw every spot in the world he wanted to see. There was nothing left on his bucket list. He flew with the Concorde, he had a house in Arizona. He was happy.”

On the drive back to NOTL that day Reif contemplated his own bucket list. 

“My list is humongous,” he exclaims. “If something happened to me, I would not be happy, I would be furious. The next day I went back to talk to him and he told me I should consider retiring.” 

Reif pushed that notion to the back of his mind. But earlier this year his sister Marion, two years older than Klaus almost to the day, lost her battle with cancer. 

“She was taking care of my parents, who are 84 and 82,” he says of Gunter and Elli Reif, who ran their own winery in Neaustadt until just a few years ago. “It’s always been difficult for me to spend time with them. I figured if I sell, I will have more time to spend with my parents.”

He’s not in a hurry to give up Reif Estate’s 125 acres of vineyards and five buildings which facilitate the farming, production, administration and retail operations of the winery, as well as two homes, which are part of the $25 million listing. 

Reif proudly takes The Local on a tour of the winery. 

From outside the retail building he points out how the structure, built in 2008, was painstakingly designed to reflect and perfectly fit in with what is now the administration building, originally built in 1865. 

He shows off the various tasting rooms, including the upstairs board room, decorated and built along the arts and crafts design style, with wallpaper lining the vaulted ceiling. A large board table is flanked by 13 chairs, one representing each generation of the family in the wine business, going back as far as 1632. 

Awards line the mantle there. Some of his most cherished honours include the Best Dessert Wine and Best Canadian Winery Trophies from the 2017 International Wine and Spirit Competition, an event he likens to the industry’s Oscars. 

In the expansive bottling room he boasts of Reif being one of the few wineries that still runs its own bottling line. There, he describes how he and winemaker Roberto DiDomenico, whom he hired out of the University of Guelph in 1989 and has been at his side since that day, poured the cement themselves for the winery’s crush pad. 

Finally, he shows off the giant wooden barrels that his uncle imported from Germany and restored on site. 

Reif also reminisces about the early days of the VQA designation, when he met with neighbour Donald Ziraldo, Inniskillin winemaker Karl Kaiser and Paul Bosc Sr. of Chateau des Charmes winery to hatch out the genus of a plan to promote quality in the industry. 

“This community has been so good to us,” he says. “It won’t be easy to let this go. But I will probably be here for at least another two to three years. It’s a complex business. Whoever is interested in the winery, I will offer my services to help them ease into it.”  

He’s adamant that he wants to find the perfect buyer for Reif Estate. That means one who will hopefully maintain the employment of the 48 full time staff working there, and who will continue to honour the legacy of the family name. 

“My name is on the label,” he says, pointing to various Reif labels through the years, including the first one that moved away from the typical German style design to a more new world flavour. “It’s a long history that we have here.”

Besides spending more time with his parents in Germany, he looks forward to continuing to enjoy the happiness that his young grandchild Aubrey brings to him on a daily basis. Her tricycle sits at the door to the administration building as a testament to how much he loves to spend time with her. 

He envisions creating a foundation, an organization that would somehow provide guidance and mentorship to teenagers. 

“I don’t think we have enough support for that age group,” he says. “I don’t know exactly what to do, but that’s such an important age, and I want to do something to provide help and guidance.”

And the avid car collector looks forward to actually getting to drive something other than his everyday Ford F-150 pick-up truck. 

“My dream is to buy a Porsche 911 GT3 RS,” he says of the supercar that does 0 to 100km/h in just 3.9 seconds and maxes out at  320km/h.

And like his friend Ziraldo, he knows he will stay involved in the industry in some way. 

“I’m not running away, I’m not moving away,” he insists. “I’ve been in this business for 36 years. I have always learned from older people. Now I’m old, and I hope somebody picks my brain and learns from me.”