Short Hills Bench

The Short Hills Bench is a sub-appellation of the Niagara Peninsula (St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada).

A Carolinian Climatic Zone, the Short Hills Bench has been acknowledged for its unique soils, topography and climate by the governing body of wine production, the Vintners Quality AllianceOntario (VQA) and by the United Nations as part of a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve within the Niagara Escarpment. The region supports flora from black walnut trees, paw-paws, willows, tulip trees and conifers to fauna including possums, coyotes, wild turkeys, and white-tailed deer.

The Short Hills Bench forms a shelf of land jutting out of the Niagara Escarpment midway up and bounded to the east by a valley of “short hills” carved by small creeks. This valley, now the Short Hills Provincial Park, was the original pre-glacial course of the Niagara River and site of an ancient rendition of Niagara Falls. The Short Hills Provincial Park is the headwaters of the 12 Mile Creek which flows north to Lake Ontario. To the south and west the Short Hills Bench is bounded by the dolostone capped rock-face of the Niagara Escarpment while its northern boundary is an open plain that ends at the top of a series of steps leading to Lake Ontario.

The Short Hills Bench is a shale and limestone basin, 30 – 40 feet (12 m) of glacial clay and silt and a 1 – 2-foot (0.61 m) mixture of clay-mixed top soil. Air and water flows to the east and the north but the area's wine-grape growers are required to under-drain their vineyards to remove excess moisture from the slow drying clay. This same clay limits the vines’ ability to produce large crops. It is typical for vines to produce small yields of tiny berries with high concentrations of sugars, acids, minerals and other flavour compounds. Still, the non-uniform glacially deposited soils do contain different minerals at different depths and locations. This results in wines with flavours unique to each parcel of land, particularly as the vines grow older, sending their roots deeper into soils.

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