Donald
Teuma-Castelletti
CLARENDON Dec. 9, 2017
After many litres have been dumped, immeasurable hours have been spent perfecting the recipe, numerous inquiries to experts, and permit approvals galore, the Little Red Wagon Winery held their grand opening party over the weekend.
Located at 165 Calumet Road West, owners Scott Judd and Jennifer Dale welcomed visitors Saturday and Sunday afternoon for a sampling of their wine trio and tours of the facilities, and had many excited guests arrive even before their official opening time.
Offering a selection of three varieties – red, white and rosé – the couple were proud to offer samples of their wines to visitors, with many guests finding a taste for a new strain that they hadn’t enjoyed before.

“We wanted the wine to be easy drinking,” said Judd. “So we went for a fruity, smooth wine, compared to a dry one.”
Judd said he had many people tell him throughout the afternoon that they quickly developed a taste for their varieties of wine, when they tended to stick to one colour. Those who traditionally drank red wines exclusively, found a new affection for whites, and vice versa.
“We’re learning that everyone’s palettes are different, it’s like art,” he said. “It’s great to see everyone finding their taste.”
Dale said that they were pleasantly surprised by the steady stream of visitors all afternoon, with guests arriving before their 1 p.m. opening as she was still frantically preparing. Before last weekend, their new event space had only seen a few small parties, so the opening was one of the first big parties for the building and it did not disappoint.
A Christmas tree standing 19 feet tall lit up the room as guests came in, before taking a second to look around and find a polished interior, complete with a sleek modern kitchen area that complements the varnished wood walls adorned with Dale’s artwork. Downstairs is the production area, where three large wine vats reside, two holding 3,300 L and one holding 4,000 L. The storeroom is also down there, where guests could find Dale’s mother applying labels to bottle after bottle, losing track of how many she had completed once she passed bottle number 360 the day before.
Dale said that completing the building was one of their biggest priorities starting out, as there were many requirements to meet when opening a new event space.
“It’s a tedious process to live through,” said Dale, with a laugh.
Beyond this, there were also many standards to fulfill in terms of licensing and labelling of their wines.
“When you start into the process, there’s a checklist of about 40 points to meet,” she said. “We thought that once we got the license, we’d be good to go.”
But even getting to the approval stage took a bit longer, as they worked to perfect their recipe and iron out the kinks working with their cold climate variety of grapes.
“They’re easy care, but makes it a little more challenging when balancing acidity,” said Dale.
Following the advice from locals and friends also in the winery business, they found that everyone had different issues in their own process. So, they enlisted an advisor to help them get going on their own, but that’s not to say a lot of wine didn’t get dumped out.
“We threw out a lot of wine, about 1,200 L” said Judd.
“We’re farmers first,” said Dale. “We’ve never been huge wine connoisseurs.”
But, now that their opening is done with, the kinks are stomped out and the 2016 batch is bottled and already selling, it’s onto the next batch. The 2017 wines are currently fermenting, the event space is open for bookings and the couple are already looking forward to what they can achieve.
“I want to do something with music,” said Judd. “I’m looking forward to having different events here in the future.”