Pillitteri offers a taste of the Olympics long after Paris games have ended

The normal hustle and bustle at Pillitteri Estates Winery ground to a temporary halt on Friday, August 2. Staff members gathered together near the closest television screens that day to cheer on Canada’s Kylie Masse in the women’s 200-metre backstroke final at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

Just your run-of-the-mill display of pride and patriotism? Not exactly. 

The Niagara Stone Road winery has a close connection to the Olympic swimmer who captured the bronze that day. Masse’s name is on the label of two different wines as part of Pillitteri’s Team Canada Collection.

Pillitteri was named the official wine partner of the Canadian Olympic Team and the Canadian Olympic Committee in 2019. The partnership has led to them being the exclusive wine supplier to Canada Olympic House for the Tokyo 2020, Beijing 2022 and Paris 2024 games. 

In return, a dollar from each bottle in the collection sold is donated to the Canadian Olympic Foundation and its efforts to support Canadian athletes.

In addition to their Team Canada Red, White and Vidal icewines and the two Kylie Masse vintages, Pillitteri also offers wines with the names of sprinter Andre De Grasse, equestrian show-jumper Amy Millar and golfer Taylor Pendrith, all of whom competed for Canada in Paris, on their labels.  

“We chose a good cross-section of Canadian Olympians who represent their country well,” said Jeff Letvenuk, the winery’s wine club manager and marketing director, recently. “More importantly, we wanted them to be good people. Kylie is certainly one of those, she’s inspirational and she has a welcoming, warm and genuine personality.”

The five-time Olympic medalist’s warm and genuine personality was on display at Pillitteri earlier this month when she spent an afternoon there meeting her fans and signing bottles of Kylie Masse Red and Kylie Masse White. 

“Never did I ever think I would have the opportunity to do a partnership like this,” said the 28-year-old Windsor area native. “This is something I will remember forever. It’s such a cool thing and I feel really lucky to work with Pillitteri. You can bet I will be keeping some of these bottles on my shelf for as long as I live.”

With her broad, beaming smile, Masse approached each visitor who filed into winery’s patio room. She asked them questions about their own lives and, silver metallic sharpie in hand, signed bottles of her namesake wine for her fans. 

“It’s really special to meet people at events like this,” said Masse. “When you’re competing, it’s a constant go-go-go. So to have people come up to me like this it makes me see that we have such a community behind us, that people come together and get behind sports to support Canadians.”

Coincidentally, another Olympian showed up that same day to Pillitteri Estates. Sade McCreath, a member of the women’s 4 x 100 metre relay team that finished sixth in Paris, just happened to be visiting Niagara with her mother, Sharlene Tardiel, a Brock University graduate. 

“How special was that?” asked Masse. “It was really nice to catch up with her and chat about the games. We had never met before. When you’re an athlete competing your time is mostly accounted for. It was nice to see her enjoying some time here with her family.”

With so much attention on fellow swimmer Summer McIntosh, who finished with three golds and one silver in Paris, Masse was asked if that caused any distractions for the rest of the team. 

“Not at all,” laughed the veteran of the last three summer Olympic games. “I honestly try to stay quite bubbled out from external pressures like that when I go into a big games or the worlds. It’s actually great to see how the sport has progressed and to see that we have Canadian swimmers consistently going for the podium. It’s a massive step from where we were just eight years ago.”

So, what are the Kylie Masse wines like?

“The Kylie Masse Red is a beautiful Cabernet Merlot-style wine,” said Letvenuk. “It’s lush and fruity, medium-bodied with a little bit of oak to it. It’s designed to be approachable to someone who maybe isn’t an experienced wine drinker. It was important to Kylie that her wine have broad appeal.

“The Kylie Masse White is your typical Niagara aromatic white wine,” he continued. “It’s fragrant and fruity, unoaked in stainless steel. It’s really food-friendly but also a great wine to serve chilled to sip on a patio. Again, an easily approachable wine.”

All of the Team Canada Collection wines are VQA certified, grown right in Pillitteri’s Niagara-on-the-Lake vineyards. 

It’s clear that bhavingn the exclusive partnership with Team Canada is a feather in the winery’s cap. And events like Masse’s visit, timed alongside the Niagara Wine Festival, are important in bringing new visitors to Pillitteri.

“Kylie’s wine will remain a mainstay of our product line,” added Letvenuk. “She is a very decorated Olympian and we are going to continue that program well into the future.”

And it wasn’t only during Masse’s final that the staff stopped to cheer on an Olympian. Whenever De Grasse, Millar or Pendrith were on the winery’s television screens a similar thing happened. 

“It was actually kind of funny,” Letvenuk laughed. “The phones were actually ringing off the hook and we were like ‘not right now, we’re watching our friends’.”