By David DeRocco

As the final leg of the year’s most bittersweet concert tour heads into Ontario for the last few shows, fans of The Tragically Hip are bracing themselves for the inevitable end to one of the country’s most iconic and enduring rock bands. Since the news of Gord Downie’s terminal brain cancer became public May 24, diehard Hip fans have been struggling to find an appropriate way to honour the occasion, knowing full well the curtain closes on their 32-year run when the band walks off stage in Kingston August 20^th.  Thankfully, the people at Niagara’s Stoney Ridge Estate Winery have the perfect way to commemorate messieurs Downie, Langlois, Baker, Sinclair and Fay: raising a toast of thanks with a glass of the band’s own Tragically Hip wine.

As a result of their ongoing partnership with the local winery, The Hip have two excellent vintages available for your consumption at any parties you might be attending to watch the CBC broadcast of band’s final show. The first, The Fully Completely 20^th Anniversary Grand Reserve Red, was launched in late 2014, while the Ahead By A Century VQA Chardonnay hit the winery’s “gift shop” this spring in celebration of the 20^th anniversary of Trouble at The Henhouse. The arrangement to produce the band’s wines first came together as Hip management sought out unique ways to celebrate the milestone of their fourth album.

“The Hip and their management were looking at ways to commemorate the 20^th anniversary of Fully Completely,” said Barry Katzman, President and COO at Stoney Ridge. “They were going to go on tour and re-release the album and they were looking for ways to augment that. It was really their management’s idea to partner with a winery. They did their own due diligence and reached out to us. We were obviously extremely excited and we managed to work out a deal with them.”

Katzman says The Hip are part of a growing number of celebrities who are reaping the many benefits of assigning their brand to quality wines. While the winery plays a lead role in the product manufacturing, Katzman says the bands are very much involved in choosing what goes inside and on the bottles.

“Our role is very much the manufacturer and the supplier in this kind of relationship,” explained Katzman, whose winery also markets Johnny Reid Red for the Juno-award winning singer. “We make suggestions based on what we see in consumer patterns and the kind of wines that we make and have. But ultimately the varietal composition, the look of the label, even the price point are determined by the band. That was the case here. We went through multiple tastings with them, lots of discussions. The bottom line is it’s an extremely collaborative process. Somebody like The Tragically Hip have had a lot of success for a lot of years and they’re very careful with what they align their name with.” 

Reviews of both wines have been excellent, which is good news for Hip fans who prefer to drink their wine from a glass rather than a concert wineskin. The 100% Chardonnay grapes in Ahead By A Century Wine were harvested from Wiens Farm in Niagara-on-the-Lake and the product developed by winemaker Jeff Hundertmark . The wine description highlights a mixture of flavours including tropical pineapple, lemon, toasted coconut, marshmallows and a hint of butterscotch.  Band members played a more direct role in the co-creation of their Grand Reserve Red. It’s review suggests a wine with a soft palate that nicely integrates smokiness with pure grape tannins, producing a velvety finish featuring juicy red fruit and menthol. 

With the heightened awareness of band activity that followed Downie’s announcement, demand for both wines has been overwhelming. While that’s good news for the band’s bottom line, it’s also good for Stoney Ridge. Katzman says there are residual benefits to bottling wine for celebrity clients.

“We love these arrangements for a lot of reasons, one of them being it does create awareness. In the case of Stoney Ridge, we’re a mid-size estate style winery. So what happens with these co-branding or partnership initiatives is we traditionally bring in a lot of people who are not necessarily avid wine drinkers or visitors to the wine route or familiar with Niagara wines. We get a lot of consumers that really just came to the winery or the industry itself through their link to the talent. So we take that role seriously. It’s a bit of a cliché but it’s something we adhere too; the name on the label will get the first bottle sold, but what’s inside gets all the other bottles sold. If people come to our winery to purchase The Tragically Hip wine and they find a Pinot Grigio they really like then that’s great. It definitely casts a halo on all we do but more so the entire industry.”

With everyone from KISS and AC/DC to Fergie and Little Jon boasting their own wines, and an increasing presence at country music festivals, wine is being consumed by an ever-broadening demographic. What’s the reason for this growing love affair with the grape according to Katzman?

“I would say right at the top of the list is that consumer interaction with wine has changed. It’s no secret now that people who go to university drink wine; when I went that never happened. Wine was a product that over the years was shrouded in mystery. It had all this knowledge level to it and frankly it was intimidating to people. The new world wine regions, Niagara being one of them, along with Australia and California, they’ve casualized the business to a degree and made it more approachable. When you juxtapose that with people’s real strong desires to do things locally, to eat and drink locally and keep a small footprint on the products they consume, those are societal shifts. That’s the way young people are now days. So wine is a product that perfectly lines up with that.”

Hip white is $19.95, red $25.00. Purchase yours on-line at http://www.thehip.com/wine/.