The Dream
Early in our relationship as we fell in love with one another, we spent a weekend in Niagara wine country which spurred a love of the place, the people, and their products. Every other weekend was spent travelling to Niagara to nurture our passion and curiosity for the wines being made here and those that were making them.
Like many dreamers and entrepreneurs in the wine business, the thought of moving to wine country and starting our own became a serious pursuit of finding the ideal property. After over a year of searching, from the moment we saw the listing, we knew the property we now call home was “the one”.
We’ve quietly spent the last seven years developing this fallow and neglected farm into our home- productive, loved, and teeming with life. We set down roots, literal and figurative…. We married here on our farm. Our son was born here. We tend to the garden and work the land- planting new vines as we can, while maintaining our careers outside of the wine industry.There is not a task, from vineyard establishment to wine production, that we have not personally participated in, if not done ourselves.
With that being said, it takes a team to see the dream through to fruition! We could not have gotten to this moment without the encouragement and labour of our families and friends, as well as the experience and effort of our farm colleagues and community. Sempre Mio is the manifestation of this dream. The translation means “Forever Mine”. If wine is a vessel by which one can peek into eternity, into forever, our hope is that in our wines you will find us and see yourself reflected too- the dreams, memories, struggles, and the triumphs.
Sempre Mio is the quasi virtual wine brand of Corey and Lena Mio, with grapes sourced from our home farm, the Mio Vineyard.
The Growers
While we continue to plant the rest of the property and nurture our vines as they mature, we work with some of Canada’s most celebrated wineries and winemakers to provide grapes for their portfolios while we slowly build ours. We have a twin focus of specializing in Chardonnay and Cabernet Franc, with an emphasis on clones. We grow different clones of Chardonnay from all over the world, and are working on obtaining an even more diverse collection of Cabernet Franc clones. The last third of the vineyard is dedicated to small blocks of other varieties we’re confident we can grow well here that we enjoy- Marsanne, Viognier, Gamay, Cabernet Sauvignon, and soon, Albariño.
The Farm
Our small farm is nestled underneath the bench in the heart of the Beamsville wine route on King St. Our particular microclimate features unobstructed sun exposure, favourable to developing ripe flavours in our wines, with gentle breezes flowing down from the escarpment towards the lake, critical to maintaining freshness. Our soils are alluvial, bleached in appearance, with pockets of stone and coloured clays throughout the vineyard, that stand in contrast to the more reddish hard clay based soils of many of our neighbours along King St. We are part of the Lincoln Lakeshore appellation and our hope is that, in time, we better come to understand our vineyard within the mosaic of this region.
