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Tawse winemaker Paul Pender goes “natural” with Quarry Road Chardonnay

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I take you back to October, 2011, when I sought out Tawse winemaker Paul Pender, photo above, to get his thoughts on the new wave of so-called “natural” wines that were beginning to hit store shelves everywhere in the world (except Ontario, of course, where anything new is swatted away like a pesky insect by the government monopoly).

“Natural wine in its purest form is going out to the vineyard and eating a grape,” he told me back then.

In the 2011 interview, Pender said the term natural means “nothing” and he viewed it as such a generic term on a whole range of products, that it has no meaning.

At Niagara’s Tawse winery “we try to be as natural as possible,” he said, but he’s not about to make “natural wines” under the strictest definition out there. Natural wines? “I don’t think it’s the way to go.”

Fast forward to Feb. 18, 2015, on a chilly winter morning in the barrel cellar with Pender and assistant winemaker Rene Van Ede.

In our glasses, drawn from new 500-litre Mercurey oak puncheons with CLL (chauffe long légère — long and light toast), is the first “natural” wine from Tawse, a 2014 Chardonnay harvested from the winery’s Quarry Road vineyard.

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And by “natural” he means natural (though there are so many definitions of the term and no apparent rules that it depends who you talk to you, more on that later). The Quarry Road Chardonnay was harvested in mid-October of 2014. A total of 4,000 litres was pressed and a quarter of the pressed juice was sent directly to two puncheons before any sulphur was introduced.

The fruit was wild fermented in the barrels (one took a lot longer to ferment than the other) and is still aging in new oak and sitting on its lees as I write this. In the next couple of weeks, Pender and Van Ede plan on bottling the wine directly from the barrels (by going “old school” and drilling a hole in the bottom of the puncheons) and will likely rig a system to blend both barrels into each bottle of the “natural” wine.

barrelAll of Tawse’s estate vineyards are farmed organically and biodynamically, a key component of natural wines. Nothing has been added to the wine aside from aging in new oak (purists shun oak in any form unless it’s neutral).

The wine (1,000 bottles and some kegs for bars/restaurants) will be sold quickly under a slightly different label and perhaps name (it’s still being decided) for $36 a bottle by ordering at 905-562-9500 or email via email to shipping@tawsewinery.ca. Pender is hoping to get the VQA stamp of approval when he submits the wine for review.

Pender says the wine will be sealed with wax and will have a neck tag with instructions to drink the wine within six months, not leave it in sunlight and to keep it in a cool place until it’s consumed, among other suggestions.

The wine has no sulphur, which means no preservatives to protect it from premature aging. Pender wants consumers to enjoy the wine in its youth, to taste the Quarry Road Vineyard in its purest, most natural form.

For Tawse and Van Ede, their first natural wine is an “experiment.”

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Natural wines have been getting “so much talk and hype,” says Pender. “We wanted to know if it’s possible to make a natural wine that shows the terroir of the vineyard and not just the flaws (such as oxidation, reduction, brett etc.)”

Pender admits it was “easy to say I’ll never do it” back in 2011. He’s still not sold on the concept on natural wines, calling most of the examples he’s tasted as being “oxidized” and unpleasant.

But he’s willing to give it a shot and may even make a red “natural” wine from estate Cabernet Franc or Gamay (from newly planted Tawse Gamay) depending on how the Chardonnay turns out.

So far, he’s happy with his first effort.

“I really like the wine. It’s gets us thinking,” he says.

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The barrel sample of the first natural Quarry Road Vineyard Chardonnay 2014 was fresh and clean with pear and apple fruit, subtle vanilla and a rounded texture and persistence. There was underlying minerality and no signs of oxidization or what you might call flaws at all.

The second barrel sample, from the wine that took longer to ferment, was more voluptuous and rounder and showed off the vineyard’s terroir more precisely. It will be interesting to see what the wine shows when (or if!) the two barrels are blended at bottling.

We tasted the “normal” Quarry Road Vineyard Chardonnay 2014, also in barrel for six months with a long way to go, and it was markedly different.

It was brighter (sulphur will do that to a wine), with defined fruits, a citrus component that the natural wine didn’t have and a freshness and finesse on the finish.

I know what my plan will be: Buy a few natural wines, drink them in stages and hold one back to catch up to the 2014 regular Quarry Road and compare them. I can only hope it survives that long.

So, what is a natural wine?

The mere mention of “natural” wines strikes general discord among wine lovers. It’s been called many different things — naked, live, naturel, among them — and it has its critics and supporters on both sides of the fence.

Perhaps the most severe description comes from natural wine crusader Alice Feiring, author of Naked Wine, on Cory Cartwright’s excellent Saignee blog. Here she describes in a letter to Cartwright what “Vin Nature” wines are not:

“Any wine that deploys aromatic yeasts, enzymes, bacteria, new oak, toasted oak, oak additives, tannins, gum arabic, reverse osmosis for concentration or alcohol removal, spinning cone, excessive sugar, mega-purple thermo-vinification, cold-soaking, anti-foaming agents, ultra-sulfuring and god knows what else, in any combination, is far from natural. To argue the point is being combative, or desperate.”

Feiring’s simple definition of what natural wines are, which leaves room for interpretation and debate, is this: “Nothing added, nothing taken away.”

bodegaI have always preferred this less severe definition from Matt Mallo, right, who works at one of the finest wine shops in Boston, The Wine Bottega, which specializes in natural wines.

“Possibly the most controversial banner of our day, the term ‘natural wine’ really means nothing at all. There is no governing body or book of guidelines to making vin natural. In general, when we at the shop speak of natural wine we are talking about producers that work the vineyards without chemicals, they sometimes use biodynamic principles (sometimes not).

“They cultivate healthy grapes, which they allow to ferment without the addition of commercial/industrial yeasts, colour stabilizers, acid adjustments, etc. Basically, natural wines are those that haven’t been messed around with. Where organic wines stop at the cellar door, natural wine merely begins. It’s about the simplest and most honest expression of the terroir through the medium that we call wine.”

The sticking point for most sustainable wineries, of course, is the use of sulphur, an essential component in the making of wine.
Sulphur dioxide (SO2) is used to inhibit or kill unwanted yeasts and bacteria, and to protect wine from oxidation. If you are commercial winery and want to be successful, this is a crucial step not to be missed. And not using even small amounts of sulphur is a risk most winemakers do not want to take (and fewer winery owners).