Ziraldo, Pratt take a walk down memory lane

The 47 boxes of documents, photographs, slides, awards, newspaper clippings and more donated by Donald Ziraldo to the Brock University Archives represent the history of the modern wine industry in Niagara. 

Inniskillin Wines co-founder Ziraldo joined with Debi Pratt, who handled the fledgling winery’s sales, tourism, hospitality and public relations through the years, to dig into some of the memories in the collection that has been deemed of important cultural significance. 

“This collection is Canadian Cultural Property,” explained Brock archivist David Sharron last week. “In 2013, we went through a process and identified everything in this collection and put in an application with the Department of Canadian Heritage. They certified this as important Canadian history. Not just local, not just Ontario, but all of Canada should know about this collection.”

Much of the credit for the collection’s existence can be given to Pratt, who worked for eight years sifting through material to determine what needed to be included. 

“I didn’t want to overlook anything that was key,” Pratt explained, “but I also didn’t want to overload David with the amount of material we had. We probably had another 50 boxes collected. Leading up to my retirement (in 2014) I didn’t want to be trying to do this in two months. Sorting it out was a great trip down memory lane.”

Pratt and Ziraldo relished their opportunity to take another such trip last Monday. Before their arrival Sharron laid out a selection of items on the two tables in the Archive’s tenth-floor workroom. 

Ziraldo pointed to one of many slides sitting atop a light table, this one showing him sitting with Napa Valley, California wine legend Robert Mondavi and another man.

“That’s a CBC film crew guy,” Ziraldo said. “They were doing a show and needed Canadian content. I told them I was heading to California and they came with me. That was the first time I met Mondavi. I handed him a bottle of Gewurztraminer. He tasted the wine right on camera. The camera guy said ‘what if he doesn’t like it?’ I thought it was worth the risk.”

A fascinating collection of Ziraldo’s day planners going back as far as 1972 are part of the collection. Sharron pointed out that Ziraldo’s days became jam-packed with phone calls and appointments in 1991, the year Inniskillin received the Prix d’Honneur, the most prestigious award in the wine world at Vin Expo, France, for winemaker Karl Kaiser’s 1989 Vidal icewine.

Of course, the Inniskillin archive also contains many rarely seen and instantly recognizable photographs of Ziraldo with Kaiser, the former high school teacher whose meeting with farmer and nursery-operator Ziraldo is often credited for sparking the region’s move into growing vinifera grapes.

“He heard that I was growing hybrids and grafting vinifera vines,” Ziraldo said of Kaiser, who passed away in 2017. “He came down and I gave him a dechaunac vine, and then he came back with a bottle of wine. I was pleasantly surprised with the quality. He said ‘I’ll make it and you sell it’. I told him it wasn’t so simple, but that started our partnership.”

In 1975, Inniskillin was granted the first winery license since 1929 by General George Kitching, then chairman of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. That original license is not part of the collection, but an October, 1973 letter from Lincoln MPP Robert Welch is. In it, Ziraldo is congratulated for his early success in producing quality wines from hybrid grapes. 

A collection of photographs on display document visits by Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and former US President Jimmy Carter. Others show celebrities taking part in the icewine harvest, a stroke of genius that Ziraldo used to increase the winery’s profile. 

“Debi organized that,” Ziraldo explained. “We were trying to generate activity for Niagara in the winter. We had the Icewine Festival, and we’d bring (Rush singer/bassist) Geddy Lee, hockey broadcaster Ron McLean, those kinds of people, to create some awareness. When celebrities say something, people tend to pay attention.” 

There’s a letter from Julia Child sitting on the table, thanking Ziraldo for organizing a 1993 dinner at the home of journalist and wine expert Michael Vaughan in Toronto. According to the menu, also signed by Child, the charismatic television chef was served Niagara wines, including three from Inniskillin, as part of a seven-course meal.

Ziraldo’s efforts as the founding chair of the Niagara Quality Alliance, soon to be renamed the Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA), are also evident at Brock. Thick files of correspondence and copies of applications make up this part of the collection. 

“We looked around the world for ideas,” Ziraldo explained. “What we found was that other regions had an appellation system. We felt we needed to distinguish our 100 percent Canadian wines from blended wines. We worked on it for many years, and got particularly focused on icewine. We put the book together with all the rules and regulations.”

Pratt took some time Monday to look over a display of Inniskillin’s wine labels through the years, while she and Ziraldo couldn’t quite agree on whom it was who created the fledgling winery's first label. Ziraldo suggested it was former NOTL resident Hartley Strauss. The Local followed up with Strauss the next day and he confirmed that he indeed was the first Inniskillin label designer, while subsequent labels were created by a Toronto design firm.

Beside three trophies won at international wine competitions sat two densely packed boxes of file folders. Sharron explained that these contained certificates from awards won by Inniskillin over its history.

“I think I won a dozen athletic trophies in my lifetime,” laughed Sharron. “For Inniskillin, they had to keep a database of everything they won. These boxes and these trophies are just a small sample of it.”

Ziraldo acknowledged the hard work that went into Pratt putting all the material together before turning it over to the university, where the Inniskillin name is attached to a building that houses the school’s Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute. Pratt, in turn, acknowledged Ziraldo for what he did to build the entire industry. 

“Donald was brilliant at educating in every interview, every article he did,” said Pratt. “It created a comfort zone for people to know why they should try Canadian wine. That success element built confidence. And you don’t want to forget how you got there. Anybody writing a book, doing a television show, can come here. It’s all here.”

Looking at this portion of the collection Monday, Ziraldo felt a sense of pride and amazement. 

“I have to acknowledge and recognize the people that did all this,” said Ziraldo. “I was really just the showman. Karl made the wine, Gerald (Klose) looked after the vineyards, Debi looked after the winery. We just became a tough team to beat, and we became a global, international winery.”

“It was an experience we wanted to give people,” he continued. “Because of that albatross of Baby Duck types of wines, we had to make it that much better to get people’s attention. The simplest way to do it was to get the icewine into people’s mouths. ‘Wow’ was usually the reaction that we got.”

NOTE: Digital images of some of the Ziraldo and Inniskillin Archive can be found online at https://exhibits.library.brocku.ca/s/inniskillin/page/introduction.