Tawse Chardonnay Quarry Road: 2006-2013

BY IAN D’AGATA | AUGUST 30, 2016

Tawse is a family-owned organic and biodynamic winery located on the lower slopes of the Niagara Escarpment in Ontario’s Niagara wine country. It was founded in 2001 by Moray Tawse, a banker in Toronto, who first bought the property in 2000 and officially opened the winery in 2005. Paul Pender and Rene Van Ede share winemaking duties; the former is the director of viticulture and winemaking, the latter (a graduate of Australia’s Charles Stuart University) is the winemaker. Pender, a former carpenter and graduate of Niagara College’s Winery and Viticulture program, has been there from the start in 2005, becoming Head Winemaker in 2006. In that time, he has worked alongside a number of extremely high profile and very talented winemakers, including Deborah Paskus and consultant Burgundian winemaker Pascal Marchand. Marchand joined in 2006, but has since become primarily involved with Tawse’s Burgundy properties.

In fact, just like many other wine lovers, Tawse has been a life-long admirer of Burgundy and its wines; but he was able to do something concrete about it, and in 2010 bought a small piece (6 ouvrées) of Morgeot, the premier cru in Chassagne-Montrachet. He has since never looked back, and has gone on to buy other prime parcels of Burgundian land, even extremely prestigious ones (for example, 2 ouvrées of Musigny) and created a line of Burgundy négociant wines under the Marchand-Tawse label. More importantly, in 2012 he landed Domaine Maume, a storied name in Burgundy once famous for glorious Mazis-Chambertin wines, among others. (Obviously, Tawse must have felt like he didn’t have enough to do already, because since then he has also opened a second Niagara winery, called Redstone.)

Panorama of Tawse vineyards