Toronto’s landmark steakhouse has strengthened its Canadian wine representation, earning an upgrade to ‘Best in Distinction’ while continuing to build one of the country’s most substantial restaurant cellars
A Toronto institution since 1999, Harbour Sixty has built its reputation on a classic steakhouse experience within the historic Harbour Commission Building at 60 Harbour Street. Its combination of refined dining, premium ingredients and an extensive dry-aging program has established the restaurant as a longstanding destination in the city’s dining scene.
Under Executive Chef Carson Corbeil, the kitchen continues to build on that foundation, balancing steakhouse tradition with contemporary touches. The menu centres on prime cuts, including Canadian beef, alongside seafood, raw bar selections and other composed dishes. Yet it is the evolution of Harbour Sixty’s wine program that has brought the restaurant into a new tier of recognition.
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The cellar encompasses more than 3,200 individual selections and over 21,000 bottles, spanning an extraordinary range of regions, producers and vintages. Initially overseen by Christian Perreault Hamel, in collaboration with Master Sommelier Alexander Powell, the program has since entered a new chapter under wine director Jascha Baraness.
Harbour Sixty is now a Vine Award winner for its dedicated focus on expanding it Canadian wine content.
While the collection’s scale is impressive in its own right, Harbour Sixty’s recent progress reflects more than the size of its cellar. In a deliberate effort to give Canadian wine a more meaningful place within its international selection, the restaurant has increased its Canadian representation from two percent in 2025 to six percent in 2026.
Within a list of more than 3,200 selections, that increase represents a significant commitment to expanding the range of Canadian wines available to guests. For Baraness, the goal is not simply to add more bottles, but to build a collection that reflects the strengths of individual producers.
“We are working towards building the most complete list in the city,” he says. “Procuring with the continued goal of building depth, and filling in gaps, as we see them.”
Harbour Sixty wine director, Jascha Baraness.
That approach extends to the restaurant’s Canadian selection, where the focus is on representing the wineries that excel at what they do. With its British Columbia portfolio expanding alongside wines from Ontario and other Canadian regions, Harbour Sixty is giving guests more opportunities to discover the breadth of the country’s wine industry.
“Being able to show our patrons that Canada has alternatives to the California or Washington ‘style’ that they love has given us more options with which to enlighten,” Baraness says.
Rather than positioning Canadian wines as a substitute for established international favourites, the restaurant is integrating them into a broader collection, offering guests alternatives that can stand on their own merits. It is a meaningful shift for a program of Harbour Sixty’s size, where expanding Canadian representation requires a considered approach to selection and cellar development.
That progress has earned Harbour Sixty an upgrade from its 2025 Award of Distinction to a Vine Award – for Best in Distinction in 2026. It is the only restaurant in this year’s awards class to advance from a previous award tier to Vine Award status.
“We’re very proud of achieving the next step up,” Baraness says. “A lot of hard work and a lot of tasting has gone into us reaching the next rung of the ladder. It just motivates us further, and makes us want to maintain this award for years to come.”
The work continues. Baraness’s immediate priorities include filling gaps at different price points within popular styles, building deeper selections from favourite producers and sourcing rarer bottles to further develop the cellar. He is also expanding the restaurant’s Spanish offerings across multiple regions, drawing on his longstanding interest in the wines of the Iberian Peninsula.
At Arianna, Harbour Sixty’s Italian concept, he hopes to generate greater interest in the wine program, with a new by-the-glass list among the initiatives underway.
For Harbour Sixty, the Vine Award marks an important step forward. The expanded Canadian selection is a tangible measure of that progress, giving the country’s wineries a more substantial place within one of Toronto’s most extensive restaurant cellars.
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