Over 2000 bottles of historically significant wines will be stored at Brock

Brock University is now home to over 2000 bootle of historically significant wines. 

Renowned wine expert Michael Vaughan has selected Brock University’s Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute (CCOVI) as the new home of his preserved collection of award-winning Canadian wines.

The Michael Vaughan Wine Collection contains 2,500 bottles from across the country, including a number of extremely rare bottles that date back decades.

The collection has been personally curated and preserved by Vaughan and contains some of the last-remaining bottles of their kind that are still in mint condition and drinkable.

Vaughan, who earned his PhD in International Economics from the University of Toronto, was a Professor of Economics at Ryerson University before becoming an award-winning national wine writer and critic. 

He said his collection was curated with intellectual pursuits in mind. As an educator himself, Vaughan said he felt CCOVI’s state-of-the-art facilities and reputation for research and educational excellence made it an ideal partner for both housing and utilizing his unique collection.

“I wanted to make sure the wines I have accumulated went somewhere where they could be a useful learning experience,” he said. “I wanted to share them with an academic institution. The most important one for me was Brock, because it made sense that it went to a place where the students, the faculty and the winemakers could experience the evolution of these wines and see how good they still were and how they had changed over all of these years.”

Debbie Inglis, Director of Brock’s CCOVI, said the Michael Vaughan Wine Collection is a prime example of how gifts of this kind and ongoing partnerships with donors can serve students, researchers and the community for years to come.

“This generous donation, coupled with Michael’s expertise, will be a valuable asset to the Institute as we work to address the evolving research and outreach needs of our industry and educate future generations of grape growers and winemakers,” she said. “This collection serves as a living history of the evolution of Canadian wine, allowing us to learn from the past and bolster the sustainability and success of our industry in the future.”   

 The collection will be housed in CCOVI’s 44,000-bottle capacity wine cellar, where the wines will be climate-controlled, archived and preserved as part of the Institute’s Canadian Wine Library.