Tasting Note
Over my career I have come across experimental barrel aged rieslings, but until now never found one I really liked. Somehow wood and riesling are a clash of ideologies. But the gentle and deft hand of Marlize Beyers has wrought something quite lovely here. The nose does show subtle oak vanilla and spice, but it nestles amid the apple and citrus. The real magic is on the palate which is elegant, bright, delicate and linear, very much what I have come to expect from Beamsville Bench fruit.  And the oak seems to evaporate leaving a lightly stony, mineral finish. Excellent focus and length.

Backgrounder
The Long Way Home reflects all the travels and travails of Marlize Beyers while pursuing her 25-year career as a winemaker, and the fact she now has two homes. She was raised on a farm in Worcester, South Africa, centre of the interior Breede River wine region. After studying Viticulture and Oenology at Elsenburg Agricultural College and Stellenbosch University in 2002 she began making wine around the world. In 2005 her husband was career-located to Ontario and she became the winemaker at Flat Rock Cellars, then at Hidden Bench from 2010 to 2016. She then returned to South Africa and partnered with Flagstone winemaker Jack Bruce to create a company called Resolute Wine Works. Post Covid she came back home again to Ontario and established her The Long Way Home brand which she makes at the Niagara Custom Crush studio in Vineland. She launched with a critically acclaimed Chardonnay 2022. In 2025 she added 2024 Pinot Noir and this Riesling. They are based on organically grown fruit from Hidden Bench, where she still consults.  It was whole bunch pressed, then unusually and obscurely, fermented in neutral French oak barrels and aged ten months therein.  Beyers wanted to honour her family who have supported her, so asked artist Rohan Etsebeth, to include likenesses of her husband, two children and herself subtly imbedded in the artwork (below). She still commutes to South Africa.