Jens Gemmrich was born to be a winemaker.

The owner of Frogpond Farm, Ontario's only certified organic winery, was helping out in the family vineyard in a village near Stuttgart, Germany from the age of five.

"Sometimes it was great, sometimes it wasn't," he recalls in an interview with CityNews.ca at the Niagara-on-the-Lake winery. "When you are five, six it's a real pleasure to help. When you're 16 there comes a time when you don't like it that much anymore to do the same stuff as your parents. When I was in my mid-20s I came back to it in my training as a winemaker."

In 1996, Gemmrich and his wife Heike Koch, whom he met in the vineyard, moved with their two children to Canada. They bought a secluded 10-acre fruit farm in Niagara-on-the-Lake, the perfect place to raise their daughters, then aged 2 and not even one. Koch says the idea of transforming it into a vineyard wasn't their original intention.

"We were not planning at that point to have a winery, just a big backyard. But it was a little bit too big for not growing anything, and since Jens grew up in the vineyards, we decided to plant grapes," Koch says.

Growing the fruit organically was a choice they made to protect their little ones.

"I said (to Jens), 'You're not going to spray (pesticides) out there, because we have children playing.' I didn't want them exposed to all the chemicals. So we tried to do it organically and it worked really good," she notes. "In 2001 we decided to make our own wine."

In order to do that, Gemmrich and Koch built a barn on their property, then brought in stainless steel tanks, other machinery unique to organic winemaking including a filter that uses two dozen paper sheets, and large oval-shaped oak barrels, a German design.

"We think they're more sustainable because we use them over and over for many years," Koch explains. You don't get the strong oak flavour that you would from a small barrel because the surface area of the barrel compared to the wine in there is smaller. But you still get an air exchange, you get some oak flavour. They're very old and they can be used over and over again. So our wine's a little lighter when it comes to the flavour."

The pond referred to in the name is manmade. Gemmrich and others dug it out in order to assist with drainage. The three main grape varieties are Riesling, Cabernet Franc, and Merlot, all well-suited to Ontario's climate. The facility runs on Bullfrog Power, which uses emissions-free energy sources.

In mid-June, when CityNews.ca is there for a visit, the grapes are just tiny green buds clinging to the vine. Gemmrich notes at one point that that day's conditions - humid and temperatures in the mid-20s - are perfect for grape-growing.

He admits there was a lot of trial-and-error involved in being the province's first organic winery.

"That's the problem if you are the first one, you're the one who has to make all the mistakes and the others learn from you," he muses. "We are very lucky in that I have a brother who is very much into sustainable winemaking in Germany and relatives who have an organic farm in Germany. That's where we got most of our information. Here in Ontario there was not a whole lot at the time. It's becoming a little bit better now."

So how does organic winemaking differ from conventional methods? Gemmrich explains that the steps are largely the same up until the grapes are processed.

"The winemaking is not that much different, although we harvest almost everything by hand. We crush the grapes, de-stem them, press them. You have juice, put it in a tank, ferment it," he outlines. "The difference is mainly in the waiting. We don't use anything to help settle it. We just wait until nature takes its course and it settles itself, the yeast dies off. We usually do one filtration and then bottling."

Taking us on a tour of the vineyard, Koch explains that the red plastic strips tied to the vine-supporting wires contain sex pheromones meant to confuse and thwart a common grape pest, the Grape Berry Moth.

It's an idyllic and surprisingly intimate place, still as much a home for Gemmrich, Koch, and their three children - their daughters Lea, now 16, Eiblin, 14, and son Lukas, 10 - as it is a winery. They have sheep, chickens, turtles, and of course several varieties of frog - among them bullfrogs, leopard frogs, and pickerel frogs.

But it may not be as intimate for long. Demand for Frogpond Farm's organic wine is steadily increasing and they're finding their way onto a growing number of restaurant wine lists around the GTA and the province. In Toronto you can find their bottles at select LCBO stores and restaurants including Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar, Biff's, and Tundra. Koch admits they may have to expand operations before long - possibly building a larger retail shop and expanding the barn where the wine is processed, stored and bottled.

"All the wine is basically sold out," she laughs. "We have very little left. If we get a big order in we're going to have a big problem so we try to do it as fast as we can to get some wine out."

After years when they weren't sure whether their approach to winemaking would work, Gemmrich admits he's relieved it's finally paying off.

"We had a good year last year," he confirms. "It's nice to see. It took longer than I thought but we are finally at a point that people see what we're doing and appreciate what we're doing."

Frogpond Farm site