Permaculture, not pretension.
A 10-acre property in Hillier with 7.5 acres planted to vine. No synthetic pesticides since 2018. A family vineyard that decided the farming matters more than the certifications.
Our vineyard, our terroir.
We farm small. By hand. In a way most people don't notice from the road — but the land does.
Hillier sits at the western edge of Prince Edward County, on a limestone shelf the glaciers left behind. Cool nights, long sunny days, mineral soil. It's the kind of terroir that makes vines work for it, and that's exactly what we want — wine that tastes like somewhere, not just like grapes.
Our property is 10 acres total, with 7.5 acres planted to vine and the rest given to gardens, lavender, windbreaks, and the kind of biodiversity buffer that makes the vineyard ecosystem stronger. Mixed plantings: Frontenac Gris, Vidal, Marquette, Baco Noir, and others that hold up to Ontario winters without industrial intervention. We supplement with sourced fruit from Niagara growers we trust — because Ontario's reality is that single-estate-only means scaling down our food program and our patio, and we'd rather make wine for more people.
What we do
Permaculture practices
Mixed cover crops (grass, clover, dandelion), permaculture swales, windbreaks, companion planting. The vineyard is an ecosystem, not a monoculture.
Bio-organic inputs
Nurture Growth bio-organic fertilizer, Bordeaux mixture (copper + sulphur), Epsom salts. Nothing synthetic since 2018.
By hand
Hand-pruned, hand-thinned, hand-harvested. We don't have the staff or the budget for shortcuts.
Renewable powered
The winery runs on 100% renewable electricity through Bullfrog Power. The fridges, the bottling line, the lights.
What we don't do
No synthetic pesticides
Since 2018. No herbicides. No fungicides outside copper-sulphur. The weeds are part of the farm now.
No animal fining
Every Traynor wine is vegan — no egg whites, no isinglass, no casein. We let the wine settle on its own time.
No pretending
We're not certified organic and we're not certified biodynamic. We've chosen not to chase those certifications, because the farming wouldn't change.
No greenwashing
If a wine is sourced rather than estate, we say so. If a vintage was a tough year, we say that too. Honest labels matter to us more than perfect ones.
Why we're not certified organic
Honest answer: the certification process is expensive, time-consuming, and — in Ontario — nearly impossible to maintain when you source from grower partners. Most certified-organic fruit at scale doesn't exist here. Chasing the certification would mean changing the wines we make, not changing how we farm.
We chose to put the time and money into the actual farming instead. If you'd rather buy from a certified vineyard, we get it — those operations do exist and they do great work. But when you visit Traynor, you're seeing a vineyard farmed organically without the label.
The accurate language for what we do is permaculture and low-intervention, or organically farmed (not certified). Any third-party listing that calls us "organic and biodynamic VQA" is wrong — and yes, those listings exist and yes, we're working on getting them corrected.
Meet the team.
A short list. Everyone on it has their hands in the wine, the vines, the kitchen, or the bar.
Mike Traynor
Mike planted the first vines in 2008 after a winemaking career that started early — at 22 he was Canada's youngest commercial winemaker. That was the late '90s. Three decades and a vineyard later, he runs Traynor Family Vineyard with his wife and a small team.
Title aside, he's still the guy you'll find walking the rows on a Tuesday morning, the one tasting blends in the cellar, and the one most likely to be holding the door when you walk in.
Richard Narayan
Richard joined Traynor in 2018 and was formally named Head Winemaker in 2026. His approach: minimal intervention, maximum patience. He's the one who decides when something's actually ready — not when the schedule says it should be.
If you're tasting Inclusion, Madonna Vermouth, or one of the new reds, you're tasting Richard's calls.
JR & Russ
JR and Russ run the vines. Pruning, training, picking, the daily call on whether to spray Bordeaux mixture or hold off another day — that's them. They know every block of the 7.5 planted acres by feel, not by map.
On weekends, you'll find Russ on the patio too — pouring, talking, telling whoever's listening why this Vidal was a hard one.
Donavan
Donavan runs the tasting room. The wine knowledge, the flights, the conversations that start with "what do you usually drink?" and end with someone discovering they actually love piquette — all him.
If you've had a great visit at Traynor, there's a good chance Donavan was the one behind the bar.
Elise
Elise runs the kitchen. The hot dogs, the ceviche bowls, the whipped feta with hot honey — all hers. She's the reason this isn't another winery serving cheese boards.
Garden-to-plate is her philosophy too. If something on the menu has herbs in it, Elise picked them that morning.
People before margins.
Traynor is a certified Ontario Living Wage Employer. That means every person on our team — full-time, part-time, seasonal, weekend — earns at or above the calculated living wage for the region. Not minimum wage, not industry-standard, but the actual wage that lets someone live in Prince Edward County without juggling three jobs.
It costs us more. It also means people come back season after season, the food and wine get better because the same team makes both, and visitors get served by people who actually want to be there. That math works for us. Read more about the Ontario Living Wage Network.
Come see for yourself.
The best way to understand how we farm is to walk the vineyard. Open daily 11am–5pm, May through September.
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