Welcome. I'm Andrew Brooks, a Niagara grape grower and simolea. After moving to Niagara more than a decade ago, I've fallen in love with this region. I want to share with you some of the faces and places that produce amazing food and wine. Welcome to my Crush On Niagara. Shortly after settling into the area in 2002, I came across Featherstone Winery just south of the village of Vibery.

David Johnson and Louise Engel run a 23-acre vineyard and winery in the heart of Niagara's 20 Valley. Dave and I have always been self-employed. We had a little specialty food store in Guelph for about 18 years. And we both grew up on farms, so we understood agriculture on some level. And we just found through our work experience at our little butcher shop that the more we got interested in food, the more we got interested in wine.

It's a very slippery slope. Our philosophy has always been to be a small wine company and to work with the grapes that we grow on this property. And to make really great wine in fairly small and limited amounts. I remember being somewhere in a restaurant where they ordered, they didn't know I was there, and they ordered a bottle of Featherstone and it came to the table and they poured it and they all cheered with it, you know, amongst their little, like as every family does.

And it was a moment, certainly a great memory for me. It is, you forget how special a spot wine has at the table. It's a lifestyle and it's great for us because we live where we work, but it also means you're always at work. I mean, it's a nice short commute, but you're always at work. So you really have to have fun with it.

And, you know, we do a lot of stuff here that's a little bit off the charts. Featherstone is quite unique in how it deals with bird pressure, a term grape growers use to describe the threat to grape crops from flocking blackbirds and starlings. Wow, look at that. This is a hawk. This is a Harris hawk. Harris hawks are indigenous actually to Mexico and Central America.

This is Amadeus. Amadeus is part of the team here at Featherstone. I see your glove there. Is that to protect you from the beak or the feet? It's more to protect me from his feet. The feet are really the business end of things. Right. Falconry has been used for hundreds of years in Europe and the Middle East, mostly as a means of hunting.

But hawks and falcons also make really effective deterrents against the nuisance birds that do great damage to the grape crop. So right now, if there was a starling floating around, he would go after it and eat it. Really, a bird this size in a vineyard is flown as a deterrent against other birds. Because when he goes up into the air, it gets really quiet and everything else gets leaves.

That's good. And your grapes stay where they are. And the grapes stay where they are. Well, if you're ready, I think we are to see this guy fly. Sure. All right, dude. Hop, hop. Wow, look at that. So impressive. And so quiet. Yeah, absolutely silent. Like a flapping kind of a bird. Come on, dude. There are a number of things you can do to discourage nuisance birds from eating the grapes.

We do a lot of stuff here that's organic and that's biodynamic. And I really like that it takes advantage of a natural predator-prey relationship. The whole thing was predicated on the fact that starlings really piss me off. Right. Are you going to put Amadeus away now? Has he had it for the day? Yeah. Did you want to hold him?

I'm welcome to try it. Do I have to sign a promissory note to get my fingers back? You might. So I'm going to take this off. So what you want to do is make a fist. Okay. And squeeze it so that that is held like that. Okay. The only thing he might try and fly away, but he won't come at you. He's not aggressive. Okay. So I'm going to make a fist.

Put your hand in there and make a fist. Oh. See, he's going to try and fly away. That's okay. Easy, dude. Easy, easy. Oh, good. Okay. There. Make a fist. He's surprisingly light. Yeah, he only weighs about 600 grams. Wow. I can certainly feel the sharpness of his talons. Amadeus, thank you so much for letting me hang out with you for a few minutes.

And for not whipping my eyes out. Yeah, for sure. How did you, did you want to take him back? Or do you want to come home with me? All right. Good stuff. Thank you, Louise. Amazing. Wow. I've certainly never done that before.