If you would like to visit southern Ontario (specifically somewhere outside of Toronto) and stay in a cool design-forward lifestyle hotel, what are your options? The obvious ones are the Drake Devonshire, The Royal Hotel, and Wander the Resort in Prince Edward County (~2.5 hours east of Toronto).
Looking north of Toronto, The Postmark Hotel in Newmarket is a nice boutique hotel. But I can't think of any others and there aren't any lifestyle hotels in Muskoka. That's cottage country.
Moving toward the west, Elora Mill is a popular hotel and destination (with very high ADRs), but I would not call it a design forward lifestyle hotel. It's traditional luxury. So that's roughly it. Your only other options are trendy motels, such as the Beach Motel in Southhampton.
Now let's look specifically at the Niagara Peninsula (where we have proposed a design-forward lifestyle hotel). The three most popular destinations are Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake, and the Niagara Benchlands. And each year, this region receives over 13 million visitors, 30-40% of which are American.
But again, I would argue that there are exactly this many design-forward lifestyle hotels on the Peninsula: 0. The market is dominated by Vintage Hotels, which is not this.
But that's set to change next year. The Clayfield, which is part of Hyatt's Unbound Collection, is currently under construction across from Stratus Wines in Niagara-on-the-Lake. The design is by Sid Lee Architecture out of Montréal (which Globizen recently featured here) and, when it's complete, it will be a cool lifestyle hotel and likely a great success. It will be the first hotel to serve this glaring hotel supply gap in the market.
But this is only one hotel in what is Canada's largest and most important wine region. It's also a region with two Michelin-starred restaurants, countless recreational and cultural offerings, growing cycling tourism, and much more.
We need more of this kind of offering, which is why we have also proposed a design-forward lifestyle hotel on the water in the Niagara Benchlands. Today, we refer to the larger mixed-use development as Project Bench.
For those of you that are interested, the Bench is a separate wine appellation from NOTL. It has an elevated and sloped terrain and a longer growing season that is ideal for Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Riesling. But in the end, we view these two subregions as being entirely complimentary, akin to Sonoma and Napa in California (incidentally, they also share similar differences in terms of style, climate, geography, and terroir).
A rising tide lifts all boats.
And we are of the opinion that a lack of design-forward accommodations — with global appeal — is holding back the economic potential of this region. And so we're working as hard as we can to correct that. If this opportunity is also exciting to you, please do get in touch. We're always looking to collaborate.
You can also check us out here for more about the project.
Cover photo from Beaumier
I was on the Bench yesterday for meetings and, as is usually the case, I learned a little more about how wine is made. Typically when you're laying out grapevines you want to align them for sun exposure. In hotter regions, you might align them east-west to minimize the harsh afternoon son. And in cooler climates, like Niagara or Burgundy, you might align them north-south to try and maximize sun exposure.
But what I learned is that topography often takes priority over sun exposure — especially in cooler regions. In practice, this means you generally want to align the grapevines so that they follow the slope of the land. Why? Because cold air is heavier than warm air. Aligning with the slope allows cold air to naturally drain away, which helps the vines survive the winter and reduces the risk of things like spring frost.
If, instead, you aligned the vineyard rows across the slope (as opposed to up and down), well then cold air might get trapped. The same is true for water drainage. I'm told you don't want pooling. And this is why it tends to be more important to optimize for topography rather than just sun exposure, though I'm sure it gets a lot more nuanced when you really know what you're doing.
Regardless, I find all of this fascinating because it's an intensely local activity. You need to understand how the sun moves across the site. You need to understand the site contours and where air and water will flow. And then you need to optimize for these specific conditions. It's exactly how architecture used to work before we had active mechanical systems, like AC, that could do all of the work for us.
Neat B and I were on the Bench this past long weekend. Hidden Bench Estate Winery was doing "Raclette on the Bench" and so, naturally, we went to check that out. We're suckers for Savoie-like mountain food. Anthony Bourdain was also right when he said, "you can never have too much cheese, bacon, or starch."
All of the above ingredients were local and we ended up sitting beside a nice lady from Upper Canada Cheese (the source of the raclette). She told us all about the benefits of A2 milk and explained that it's why people often feel better consuming copious amounts of cheese in Europe compared to in North America, even if they're lactose intolerant.
After Hidden Bench, we decided to go down the street to Domaine Le Clos Jordanne. We had never been before but we actually served one of their wines at our wedding last summer. They specialize in chardonnay and pinot noir. As soon as we walked in the door, we were super impressed by the space, and our host Tamara.
The interiors are by Solid Design Creative and they collaborated with Pamela Nelson on a really great 16-foot high art installation. It is meant to represent the "terroir" of the winery -- namely its strata of limestone, clay, sand, and silt -- and that is, of course, what their winemaker is all about. Turning the Bench region into liquid form.
If you haven't been, I would highly recommend a visit to both of these wineries, followed by a stopover at UCC for some A2-milk cheese. Or so I've been told.
If you would like to visit southern Ontario (specifically somewhere outside of Toronto) and stay in a cool design-forward lifestyle hotel, what are your options? The obvious ones are the Drake Devonshire, The Royal Hotel, and Wander the Resort in Prince Edward County (~2.5 hours east of Toronto).
Looking north of Toronto, The Postmark Hotel in Newmarket is a nice boutique hotel. But I can't think of any others and there aren't any lifestyle hotels in Muskoka. That's cottage country.
Moving toward the west, Elora Mill is a popular hotel and destination (with very high ADRs), but I would not call it a design forward lifestyle hotel. It's traditional luxury. So that's roughly it. Your only other options are trendy motels, such as the Beach Motel in Southhampton.
Now let's look specifically at the Niagara Peninsula (where we have proposed a design-forward lifestyle hotel). The three most popular destinations are Niagara Falls, Niagara-on-the-Lake, and the Niagara Benchlands. And each year, this region receives over 13 million visitors, 30-40% of which are American.
But again, I would argue that there are exactly this many design-forward lifestyle hotels on the Peninsula: 0. The market is dominated by Vintage Hotels, which is not this.
But that's set to change next year. The Clayfield, which is part of Hyatt's Unbound Collection, is currently under construction across from Stratus Wines in Niagara-on-the-Lake. The design is by Sid Lee Architecture out of Montréal (which Globizen recently featured here) and, when it's complete, it will be a cool lifestyle hotel and likely a great success. It will be the first hotel to serve this glaring hotel supply gap in the market.
But this is only one hotel in what is Canada's largest and most important wine region. It's also a region with two Michelin-starred restaurants, countless recreational and cultural offerings, growing cycling tourism, and much more.
We need more of this kind of offering, which is why we have also proposed a design-forward lifestyle hotel on the water in the Niagara Benchlands. Today, we refer to the larger mixed-use development as Project Bench.
For those of you that are interested, the Bench is a separate wine appellation from NOTL. It has an elevated and sloped terrain and a longer growing season that is ideal for Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Riesling. But in the end, we view these two subregions as being entirely complimentary, akin to Sonoma and Napa in California (incidentally, they also share similar differences in terms of style, climate, geography, and terroir).
A rising tide lifts all boats.
And we are of the opinion that a lack of design-forward accommodations — with global appeal — is holding back the economic potential of this region. And so we're working as hard as we can to correct that. If this opportunity is also exciting to you, please do get in touch. We're always looking to collaborate.
You can also check us out here for more about the project.
Cover photo from Beaumier
I was on the Bench yesterday for meetings and, as is usually the case, I learned a little more about how wine is made. Typically when you're laying out grapevines you want to align them for sun exposure. In hotter regions, you might align them east-west to minimize the harsh afternoon son. And in cooler climates, like Niagara or Burgundy, you might align them north-south to try and maximize sun exposure.
But what I learned is that topography often takes priority over sun exposure — especially in cooler regions. In practice, this means you generally want to align the grapevines so that they follow the slope of the land. Why? Because cold air is heavier than warm air. Aligning with the slope allows cold air to naturally drain away, which helps the vines survive the winter and reduces the risk of things like spring frost.
If, instead, you aligned the vineyard rows across the slope (as opposed to up and down), well then cold air might get trapped. The same is true for water drainage. I'm told you don't want pooling. And this is why it tends to be more important to optimize for topography rather than just sun exposure, though I'm sure it gets a lot more nuanced when you really know what you're doing.
Regardless, I find all of this fascinating because it's an intensely local activity. You need to understand how the sun moves across the site. You need to understand the site contours and where air and water will flow. And then you need to optimize for these specific conditions. It's exactly how architecture used to work before we had active mechanical systems, like AC, that could do all of the work for us.
Neat B and I were on the Bench this past long weekend. Hidden Bench Estate Winery was doing "Raclette on the Bench" and so, naturally, we went to check that out. We're suckers for Savoie-like mountain food. Anthony Bourdain was also right when he said, "you can never have too much cheese, bacon, or starch."
All of the above ingredients were local and we ended up sitting beside a nice lady from Upper Canada Cheese (the source of the raclette). She told us all about the benefits of A2 milk and explained that it's why people often feel better consuming copious amounts of cheese in Europe compared to in North America, even if they're lactose intolerant.
After Hidden Bench, we decided to go down the street to Domaine Le Clos Jordanne. We had never been before but we actually served one of their wines at our wedding last summer. They specialize in chardonnay and pinot noir. As soon as we walked in the door, we were super impressed by the space, and our host Tamara.
The interiors are by Solid Design Creative and they collaborated with Pamela Nelson on a really great 16-foot high art installation. It is meant to represent the "terroir" of the winery -- namely its strata of limestone, clay, sand, and silt -- and that is, of course, what their winemaker is all about. Turning the Bench region into liquid form.
If you haven't been, I would highly recommend a visit to both of these wineries, followed by a stopover at UCC for some A2-milk cheese. Or so I've been told.
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