Not many people move back to Winnipeg to be wine makers.
And not many cider companies source “orphaned back-yard fruit” for their ciders, along with apricots grown right off South Osborne, nor breweries that utilize giant oak foeders to make beers that aren’t afraid to get a little funky (in a good way).
But such is the case at Low Life Barrel House, surely one of the most unique and flavourful beverage companies and event spaces in all of North America where wine and cider maker Jesse Oberman creates his lineup of mainly biodynamic/natural wines and Next Friend Ciders.
In the extensive interview below, we press Oberman on where he gets his grapes and why, what wines he’s excited about and currently producing, how Next Friend procures thousands of pounds of local backyard fruit (along with plenty of fruits from grocery stores that would otherwise go wasted), and so many more things that make this space at 398 Daly Street one of the coolest operations on the continent–starting with its Brett beers.
Get ready for all the local wine, cider and beer-making info you could ask for.
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Tell us about these barrels, these foeders that line the walls here at Low Life Barrel House?
The brewery was started initially as a Brett brewery, and that's a special type of yeast––Brettanomyces, Brett, for short. So that was the original concept behind Low Life––barrel-aged beers that were fermented with this unusual and quite unique strain of Brettanomyces.
And just like how cheese used to be made, or how sourdough is made, Brett is a pretty tenacious yeast, and if you have it and you don't want it, it's a big problem. And cultivating the very specific type that we have is a lot of work.
But once you have it and it's the right thing, you can sort of ‘infect’ your barrels with it, and it will live in those barrels forever. Those barrels, if we take care of them, will last over 100 years. I've seen 150-year-old barrels in all Alsace and in Germany, and if they are well maintained, it's totally possible the Brett will live in there and stay in there forever.
When we pump wort [in simplest terms, unfermented beer] into those barrels, we don't add any yeast. The Brett that lives in the wood is what ferments the beer. But it takes a long time! You can ferment an IPA in 10 days, while our Brett fermentations take three to six months.
But that was our original concept, the whole brewery was just going to be Brett beer. We very quickly learned that it's a terrible business plan, because like I said, you can ferment most beers in a week or 10 days, and these ones take three to six months. So, we now make other beers as well.
The foeders are made in St. Louis, Missouri using wood from the Pacific Northwest. The wood is hand-harvested, air dried three years. It's all handcrafted. They only make foeders.
You take a close look, you see the staves of the barrels are notched together using tongue and groove––it’s crazy the craftsmanship. All the barrels are steam bent, they are not toasted on the inside.
The idea is that it's a sort of gentle, soft oak impact on your beer, wine or whatever you put inside of it. Being American oak, it has a more coconutty, vanilla-y, sort of sweetness to it, but it's softer, more delicate.
How unique then is Low Life, with its three distinct beer, wine and cider components?
There is no single other business that has three different projects like this in this country on the market. Especially to the quality that we're producing.
There's a couple of people in Vermont and in New York that have breweries and wineries under the same roof. But on paper, admittedly it's quite stupid to have a brewery and winery in the same space, just because of the yeast that ferments beer and how you have to separate and clean all the equipment like crazy. We keep it pretty tight, but there's a lot of extra work for both the beer side and the wine side.
Of course, other local breweries here are doing really good interesting work, and local cideries too. But the combination of production techniques we use, equipment we have and financial freedom that we have been sort of gifted along the way––that's a super rare combination for sure.
How did you get into wine making? And how did you end up making wine here in Winnipeg?
I wanted to make wine, always. I come from a cooking background that took me behind the bar where I learned about wine. Then, I started importing wine 10 years ago––natural and organic wines from Europe. And I still do that today. That took me to London, England where I worked as a sommelier. I worked in France, Italy, Austria, Germany and Ontario too. I worked harvest and at wineries and all those places.
I went there as a sommelier, just trying to learn and understand the world of wine a bit better. And at some point along the way, I started to enjoy the work in the vineyard and in the cellar more than the work of selling wine in the restaurant, retail shop or whatever. In 2020, my partner and I were living in Burgundy in France, making wine at a winery.
Then COVID happened. We were living a pretty bohemian lifestyle, living in a trailer having a very beautiful picturesque French lifestyle that you’d want in a normal, non-pandemic environment. The pandemic made things difficult. We came home and super long story short, I met Adam [Carson, the now owner of Low Life Barrel House], and he just said, "Let's make some wine here."
I never thought that I would do this. I feel blessed that I was given this opportunity to do this thing that nobody, including myself, thought was a good idea––and it is working. That feels really cool.
Where do you get your grapes?
We don’t buy any fruit from wineries. We only buy our fruit from grape growers who don’t make their own wine. They are farmers and that’s who we want to work with. We visit them every year, which is a huge expense for us, but it’s also the most important trip we do every year.
Our grapes come from four farms now. Half of it roughly from Niagara [Ontario], and the other half is from the Blue Mountains near Lake Huron. All of it is organic, some of it biodynamic. We always buy whole fruit, meaning that if we get something processed in Ontario, we get it processed by partner rather than going to a press house and buying juice.
We bring in about 25 to 30 tons of organic grapes a year to make wine.
What draws you to these grapes, because you often work with less popular varieties like Foch, Chambourcin, etc, that you don’t see often––particularly on shelves here in Winnipeg?
About 75 per cent of what we work with is hybrids––a genetic crossing between the European Vitis vinifera and North American species.
There's a couple reasons: the idea that there's genetic heritage in the plants themselves is appealing philosophically. Rather than taking pinot noir from France and then putting them in the soil here, we're taking something that has always been here and working with that. And because of that, there's cold hardiness, disease resistance, pest resistance, all that stuff that these hybrids are bred for, which makes them have a much greater affinity for organic farming. They say that even a conventional hybrid vineyard can have less inputs, less chemical inputs than an organic vinifera vineyard, and that is amazing.
And then we're working with varieties that we want to one day plant here. So just to get the experience with those varieties, it's great for us to start thinking about what we want to plant.
And then of course we also like the taste. The most important reason is we think they make good wine. Being in Winnipeg, most people don't have a benchmark for Petite Pearl or Marechal Foch Gewürztraminer sparkling wines. These new and interesting grape varieties give our customers permission to appreciate it for what it is, and that's pretty special too.
In the cooler you have crates of apricots, dozens of types of apples and other fruits all on hand. Where do these fruits come from?
I bring in 30 to 40,000 pounds of local fruit––backyard fruit I should say, from people’s yards––to make Next Friend ciders.
[Check out this video on how it all happens from Winnipeg’s Dijon TV]
Last year we were at 37,000 pounds of backyard fruit and I also bought a little bit of organic fruit––maybe 10 per cent of the allotment––from a few local farms, one of which is now called Slow River Gardens. It used to be called Wiens Family Farm, and they were one of the first organic CSAs in the country 32 years ago.
The apricots we have right now are from the Sustainable South Osborne Community Co-Op. They are from a working orchard, and the orchard is farmed using the principles of permaculture as well. So, there's zero chemicals. It’s not just organically farmed. They are nice apricots and I have about 300 pounds of those.
Is there anything you’d like to add about your operation?
In addition to the backyard fruit I sourced for Next Friend in 2022, I started working with a grocery store wholesaler. The same place a Sobeys, Safeway and Superstore gets their fruit and vegetables from. It started during a long weekend, when they had overbought fruit, which happens all the time, and they ended up with all this fruit that was in perfect condition that they didn’t know what to do with. And so he called me––he got my number from a buddy––and I ended up with 600 pounds of strawberries that were in perfectly good shape.
That started this whole new bottling––Next Friend Reclaimed Cider––and this is the second year of it.
The fruit is not organic and it's not local, but it comes mostly from BC and California. This year’s Reclaimed bottles are made of blueberries, strawberries, cherries and raspberries fermented with our local apple juice. It's a cider made from true food waste, not just backyard food waste.
The idea is to draw attention to the fact that our regional foodways in Manitoba are so much longer than just the borders of our province. Supporting and building a sustainable local food system doesn’t only mean buying local necessarily, it also means that the food that is here that now has no value, that’s going to be wasted, needs to have a value assigned to it. It needs to be used in some way.
Using food destined for the dump is something that has as much, if not more of an impact on our food system than saving food from a tree that was going to drop and become a deer's lunch. So, we do both now at Next Friend.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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Low Life Barrel House fun facts:
- The term 'low life' refers to the little bit of liquid (be it beer or wine) that ends up at the bottom of the foeder that can’t be drained, which the next batch is then built upon.
- It is owned by Adam Carson, the head brewer is Chris Young, the general manager is Lucas Gladu and Elly Martin does sales.
- The brewery started in 2019. Here’s a feature article in the Winnipeg Free Press by Ben Sigurdson that reveals everything that went into building this space.
- Its most recent Canadian Brewery Awards (2024) include gold for Nay Nay no. 4 (wood- and barrel-aged beer category); gold for its House Saison (French and Belgian-style Saison) and bronze for Paradise Grove American-style Brett beer.
- As a venue, this 7,500 square-foot event space is perfect for anything from staff parties to weddings (they’ve had lots this summer) to dinner parties. The building can hold 300 people (with additional portable bathroom rentals), and can always hold 100 throughout the summer with space for 50 in both the main room that is lined with foeders and 50 on the patio.
- For weddings and special events, they can do custom labels on bottles and they have full AV capabilities.
- Jesse does 80 per cent of his cider sales in the summer
- It’s also one of the few large stylish venues in the city that allows outside catering and the space regularly hosts events that are catered by the likes of De Luca’s, Made by Paste, Ben Kramer, Los Comales Morales and more. Oberman estimates up to 20 different chefs and companies have utilized the space.
- Follow Low Life on Instagram to find out about the next food event.
- The tap room is kid and dog-friendly
- It is located at 398 Daly Street. For hours, and all the other fun things they do––like run club, wine club and events––click here.
