Lailey Winery

About Lailey Winery

Located moments from the historic Old Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Lailey Winery has been a pioneer in artisan, estate-grown winemaking for more than forty years, with grapes planted back in the 1970s. Close to the steep brink of the mighty Niagara Gorge, we cherish regional authenticity and focus on bringing wine lovers the best of Niagara with minimal intervention in the winemaking process.

We grow grapes in two VQA appellations; Stonebridge Vineyard in Four Mile Creek VQA and Lailey Vineyard in Niagara River VQA.

A great wine transfers a sense of place when first tasted. This sense of place is something you preserve, not build. Our vineyard team grows our grapes by preserving their relationship with the soil, our winemaking team preserves the flavours that are entrusted to them.

Building upon our low yield, small batch, single vineyard principles, our Stonebridge series also employs an especially minimal intervention approach to winemaking that includes wild fermentation using only indigenous yeast. This process results in even more complex flavours and textures in these wines and the truest expression possible of our vineyard terroir.

Representative Biography

Faik Turkman, Owner & Vintner

Choosing to make his love for wine into a lifelong career, Faik, after significant research into international fine winemaking regions, chose Canada’s Niagara-on-the-Lake to immerse himself in a quest to achieve authentic, quality viticulture and winemaking. Inspired by the excellence of the world’s great wine producers, and invigorated by nature’s day-to-day challenges, Faik has surrounded himself with experts in their areas and is developing Stonebridge, and farming Lailey, to produce outstanding grapes for the production of wines of uncompromised quality.

About Ann Sperling and Peter Gamble, Winemakers
Often referred to as the “power couple” of the Canadian wine industry, the team of Peter Gamble and Ann Sperling have long pursued the pinnacles of wine quality in Canadian vineyards and wineries.
Ann, following her upbringing on her family’s Okanagan Valley vineyard, and throughout a distinguished career of winemaking and viticultural accomplishments, innately turned to the soil for the character and complexity of her wines. Acknowledged as a Canadian pioneer of organic and biodynamic viticulture as far back as the ‘90s, ‘terroir’ was at the centre of her artisan philosophy long before it became a buzzword in modern winemaking. Ann provides the “grounding” for this vineyard focussed team.
Renowned, too, for her head winemaking roles over the years at Malivoire Wines, Southbrook Vineyards and Sperling Vineyards, Ann’s been recognized through such awards as the 2004 Ontario Winemaker of the Year, the 2012 International Winery of the Year (Intervin), and the 2021 Riedel International Winemaker of the Year.
Peter, a lifetime wine industry professional whose career has encompassed roles as a distinguished professional winemaker and consultant, an internationally recognized wine taster and judge, and the founding Executive Director of the VQA, has long worked alongside Canada’s most passionate winemakers to achieve greater heights with our finest appellation wines.
Since 2000, Peter’s company has been dedicated to providing expertise in a range of areas critical to the successful establishment of ultra-premium winemaking operations. Along with international work, Peter was the lead consultant in the establishment of several significant Canadian winery projects including, in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Stratus Vineyards and Ravine Vineyards; and in Nova Scotia, Benjamin Bridge Vineyards and Lightfoot & Wolfville Vineyards. Peter was the inaugural recipient of both the Tony Aspler Award for Contributions to the Ontario Wine Industry and the Karl Kaiser Winemaker Emeritus Award for Outstanding Services to the Canadian Wine Industry.
With the purchase of a top-flight ancient Malbec planting in Mendoza, Argentina, in 2008, Ann and Peter broadened their company’s winemaking activities …but Niagara remains their cherished home base, where they focus on prestige wineries in their start-up phase.
Lailey Vineyard / Stonebridge Vineyard
Involvement began with Stonebridge in 2017 and grew to encompass the revitalization of the Lailey Vineyards operation with its purchase by Stonebridge in 2021. Peter and Ann oversee all winemaking and viticulture for both vineyards and, working with Assistant Winemaker Connor Book and vineyard contractor Phil Clarke, are excited about the tremendous potential of the two very different terroirs.

Why We're Cool

Our Stonebridge vineyard is located in the Four Mile Creek sub appellation of Niagara-on-the-Lake. Growing on the blend of Lake Iroquois sediments and glaciolacustrine clay. The Queenston bedrock shale that sits below consists of a sequence of ancient rock beds or strata, originating from over 500 million years ago as marine sediments in a warm shallow inland sea.
Stonebridge builds on diversity of clones, rootstock and microclimate, adding elegant complexity and structure to our Chardonnay. Our Chardonnay clones (95, 96, 548 & 76) are all hand harvested and fermented ‘clonally separate’ allowing us to work with each individually. In our East Reserve Chardonnay from 2019, we used only a single clone (76), whereas our flagship 2019 Stonebridge Chardonnay includes all four.
Our team works with practices that build on soil health and low yields, which allows for maximum expression of terroir in the complex and balanced fruit from our vineyard. In central Niagara-on-the-Lake and the hottest and windiest part of Four Mile Creek appellation, most of our 40 acres of this estate is dedicated to producing some of the best Chardonnay and Cabernet Franc. Cool nights extend the hang time and preserve the acidity of the fruit, building complexity in our wines.