Lieux Communs: Montreal's First Urban Winery

“I really think that we're making wines of our generation.”

Daniel Gillis of Lieux Communs says this over a video call from their plot of land in Oka as he swats at mosquitos, dirt from vine caretaking smeared on his face and under his fingernails.

“If I had to be romantic about it in some ways, I'd say that, as people, we're a product of Montreal, and Montreal has a very unique situation in the wine world.”

Gillis, a working sommelier, is one of the four Montrealer proprietors of the city’s first urban winery alongside locals Thibaud Gagnon (an architect who heads all things design-related), Guillaume Laliberté (also a working sommelier) and Laurent Noël (a marine pilot on the Saint Lawrence).