LCBO Food & Drink Spring 2018

WINE  EARTH-FRIENDLY WINERIES

tawse and redstone wineries In 2005, Burgundy-loving financier Moray Tawse opened his eponymous Niagara benchland winery, complete with gravity-flow design, geothermal system and a wetland bio-filter. He opened Redstone, a stone’s throw away, in 2015. Both are certified organic and biodynamic.

WHAT’S THE FIRST THING most people ask about organic wines? Do they taste different?    I put the question to winemaker Paul Pender, who has worked as winemaker at Tawse since its inception and is now director of viticulture and winemaking. Pender smiles. “I don’t know,” he concedes, “but Moray often says there must be something about our single-vineyard wines that makes them stand out among hundreds of others in blind-tasting competi- tions.” That’s why Tawse has won the National Wine Awards Winery of the Year no less than four times in the last eight years. And in 2017 the winner was Redstone, Moray Tawse’s other organic, biodynamic Niagara property.    Biodynamic farming was invented in the 1920s by the Aus- trian scientist and philosopher Rudolf Steiner. In a series of lectures, he proposed maximizing the health and fertility of the land by applying specific compost preparations according to a calendar determined by the planets and moon. Some of these methods sound a tad arcane—one preparation is buried in a cow’s horn for the winter; another is hung inside a stag’s bladder, and channelling cosmic energy is also part of the process—but a number of the world’s top producers take them totally seriously, among them Zind Humbrecht and Opus One.    “So do most of the great estates in Burgundy, including Domaine de la Romanée-Conti,” says Paul Pender, “so it’s more a matter of why not do it! I don’t see it as magic or any- thing. It’s just one more little bit of attention you give your vineyards. The preparations are basically incubators for mi- crobes—compost accelerators for your soil that break down ni- trogen and minerals and make them available

WINEMAKING

TRADITIONAL

BIODYNAMIC VS

CULTIVATION

Animals to till cover crops in the winter

Use compost that is acquired from the farm and animals, natural fertilizer

Tractors to till the cover crops

Chemical fertilizer

CROP MANAGEMENT

Makes use of natural predators (good bugs) to get rid of the tasty prey (bad bugs) that are damaging the crop.

Practices standard pest control methods

HARVESTING

Mechanical crop thinning is used to achieve yield and quality goods.

Hand-picking during the cooler hours after sundown can be gentler on the grape’s skin.

TAWSE QUARRY ROAD ORGANIC RIESLING VQA VINTAGES ESSENTIAL 198853, $24.50

to the plant.” In other words, they boost the life in the soil and in doing so en-

There’s a geat deal of limestone in the soil of the vineyard where this Riesling is grown, up on the escarpment in Niagara’s Vinemount Ridge sub-appellation. It shows up as a hint of mineral- ity in the elegant, off-dry wine, lurking behind perfectly balanced acidity and fruitiness and aromas of lime zest and mandarin.

WINEMAKING

hance the sense of terroir in the finished wine.

Uses native yeast cultivated on their own farm

Sources yeast from outside the vineyard.

INFOGRAPHIC COURTESY OF WINE N’ABOUT (WINEANDABOUT.COM) AND ABOUT EATERY (ABOUTEATERY.COM)

80  FOOD & DRI NK SPRING 2018