More Harvest at Norman Hardie

October 14, 2012 by Andrew Rastapkevicius

For the first time ever, we're doing a small batch of rosé this year at Norm's. I'm pretty excited, as a big rosé fan I've been not-so-secretly hoping for this for a number of years. And when one block of Pinot Noir was not looking like it wasn't going to get perfectly ripe it was decided that we would endevour to make Norm's first rosé! We pressed the grapes down the road at Hinterland Wine Co. (one the finest sparkling producers in Canada) using their tank press. Here is a quick Blackberry photo essay from Day 1: the inception of rosé at Norm's.

Bringing the Pinot Noir into the de-stemmer, getting set for some rosé!

Some gentle pressing during a 3 hour cold soak on the skins. Looking for just the right amount of colour extraction.

First signs of being a rosé - 2.5 hours into cold soak.

Spaniels hate waiting for rosé to be pressed.

3 full fermenters of Pinot Noir ready to be go for pressing at Hinterland.

Assistant winemaker Richard with Sukko from Origin Liberty restaurant in Toronto, emptying the fermenter into Hinterland's horizontal tank press...

Me stuffing the corners of the press with Pinot...

Hinterland's horizontal tank press uses an pneumatic airbag to gently apply pressure to the grapes and continuously squeeze the juice out of the skins.

Norm stops by just in time for some afternoon beers and bubbles once the press is loaded...

...now the waiting game as the press does it's work.

The resulting pile of pressed grape skins

Rosé focus group the night before. Representation from Loire, Bordeaux, Tavel, Italy and BC.

Context is everything. Keeping abreast of other delicious wines and styles from around the world is a constant endevour.

Morning punch-downs bright and early with James Simpkins from Liverpool House in Montreal.

My city-truck becomes a man, pulling out stuck forklifts.

goLocal with Norman Hardie

October 11, 2012 by Andrew Rastapkevicius

As part of their goLocal program, the LCBO has highlighted a few of Ontario's top producers in a series of videos about those wineries and the people behind them. They did a great job capturing the essence of the winery and Norm's 'wine-growing' philosophy a few weeks ago in Prince Edward County...

As Norm mentions in the video, the best wines always come from the edge, and having found a place with a near-perfect confluence of a cool climate with red clay and calcareous limestone soils (like Burgundy) he produces wines that are truly unique. The wines are wonderfully and unapologetically earthy because the work is done in the vineyard, not in the winery. The riper grapes get or the more aggressively you oak a wine, the more it tastes like it could have come from anywhere, and these wines definitely taste like they come from P.E.C....or maybe even Burgundy.

In the end that's probably why Norm's wines have become relevant in the world's two biggest Burgundy markets: Tokyo and New York, markets that don't need just another Pinot Noir. Top restaurants in these markets can often be used as a litmus test of international relevance, and last year Norm's County Pinot Noir was featured at Tokyo's Four Seasons and this past week was included in a paired tasting menu for food & wine writers at Thomas Keller's Per Se in NYC. Apparently their pairing of Norm's County Pinot Noir with one of Chef Keller's poultry dishes was so outstanding that Saveur Magazine will be featuring the wine with the recipe in an upcoming issue! After visiting Per Se this summer and having seen the wonderful depths of their Burgundy list myself, this is high praise and definitely another reason to celebrate our local wines like Norm Hardie.

Harvest at Norman Hardie Winery

September 28, 2012 by Andrew Rastapkevicius

It's a funny thing about Norm, his wines, and the people they attract...

Chris Campbell washing barrels at sunset  |  Photo: Andrew Sainsbury  |  @avsains @campbell101 — Chris Campbell washing barrels at sunset | Photo: Andrew Sainsbury | @avsains @campbell101

Chris Campbell's personal twitter description reads: "Lacking VQA typicity since 1974." James Simpkins' twitter bio reads: "Professional wine guzzler. Opponent of all that is exceedingly-ripe, over-extracted and oak-laden." Chris was the former manager of Marben in Toronto, and is now full-time at the winery. James is the sommelier at Liverpool House and Joe Beef in Montreal who drives down to the County on weekends to volunteer at Norm's. These two guys are examples of the kind of loyal friends and clients Norm and his wines have built...and their tongue-in-cheek personal monikers of going against the mass palate and denouncing over-ripe, heavily oaked wines could be the unofficial motto of the winery. Norm's wines have never been for everybody, and he likes it that way. Norm's philosophy from the beginning has been that we don't make cutesy wines for the mass market. We make natural, unfiltered, terroir-driven wines that speak of a place. The terroir is cool-climate and red clay with calcareous limestone (like Burgundy) which leads Norm to produce unapologetically earthy wines that inspire critics like Ian D'Agata to say "His chardonnays and pinots are some of the most Burgundian you will find outside Burgundy", and for Matt Kramer of the Wine Spectator to name Norm's County Chard as one of his 3 favourite wines of the year.

All of this coupled with the most unpretentious, no-attitudes approach have inspired Chris, James, myself, and other like-minded wine geeks, chefs and sommeliers to spend their weekends at Norm's picking grapes, working in the cellar, working the tasting bar, or cooking dinner. This happens year-round, but is at its peak during harvest when all hands are on deck. The woodfire pizza oven is in full effect, he brings in whole pigs for roasts and lots of good wine gets consumed in the evenings after a good days work. It's such a wonderful community experience when 60 volunteers make it out to help Norm get all his grapes off the vine, and they get well rewarded with all the food and wine they can handle. Here is a great video that Andrew Sainsbury shot last weekend of Norm commenting on the vintage in the vineyard during harvest:

The following pictures are some quick Blackberry snaps from last weekend's harvest...more to come...

Norman Hardie (right) with his '05, '06, '07, '08 Prince Edward County Pinot Noirs.

Vertical Tasting with Norm Hardie

December 05, 2011 by Andrew Rastapkevicius in Uncategorized

We followed with the 06 County Pinot which was overall my second favorite of the lot. It had an aroma nearly as intense as the 2005, but with quite an impressive structure. This wine was likely at its peak, but not passed yet. Very Burgundian on the nose and palate with its barnyard and cherries with soft tannins and bright acidity. Awesome wine.

Then we got to the famed 2007 vintage, and it was a little underwhelming by comparison. I know that wine will yield dividends in the years to come and it has been judged as one of the standout Pinot Noirs from Ontario, but it was still relatively tight compared to the other wines of the evening. It shows nice dark cherry and strawberry fruit with Norm's trademark earthy nose and minerally palate, it was just not quite as opulent yet as the rest of the line was currently showing. The famously great year of 2007 was followed by the notoriously bad year of 2008...which of course would have to have been voted the wine of the evening...

2008 is a great example of making the best of a bad year. In 2008 with late rains and not as warm a fall Norm had to play "winemaker" more than usual. In this case it meant leaving the juice on the skins for a shorter period of time and bottling the wines unfiltered to retain more character. I remember loving this wine immediately after bottling, and still today it was the show stopper. It will undoubtedly have a shorter lifespan than its predeceasing 2007, but as of today was still drinking fantastically. It was the perfect blend of earthy, funky, barnyard with great ripe cherry fruit and minerality to wow everybody. I think everybody expected to love the much lauded 2007, but came away loving the 2008 underdog!

The current vintage of 2009 showed really well. Having been put freshly to bottle earlier this year it was showing obvious youth next to the rest of the wines, but looked to be headed in a direction somewhere between the 07 and 08. It had great structure that seemed like it will hang around for a while, but had very approachable fruit with that classic Hardie funkiness already. It was drinking really really well for being so young.

The evening rounded out with Denis pulling out a surprise bottle of 2004 Niagara Pinot Noir. This was Norm's very first Ontario vintage. The year before his county fruit was ready he was already working with his Niagara vineyard. So while '05 was his county debut, '04 was the first official Norman Hardie wine. This wine was super interesting. At first it was the earthiest wine we had all night, and still fairly built on the palate. But then it began swaying back and forth between notes of volatile acidity and fresh fruit. It eventually settled into a testy Dijon kind of nose with a still edgy palate. Norm's analysis was that it was just passing its peak and was beginning to show some volatile acidity. But again, very impressive for 7 year old Pinot Noir on his first attempt!

Overall it was an incredible opportunity to taste all those wines side by side with Norm leading us through the tasting. I think in the end everybody enjoyed the '08 the most, followed by the '06 then the '07 and '09, which are signs of good things to come!