Steve Payne
Special to The Lake Report
Augusta Van Muyen, vineyard manager at Tawse Winery in Vineland since 2021, knows her terroir.
Terroir is a French word that, in the wine world, refers to the combination of topography, climate, soil and microbes that shape a region’s wines. Niagara has remarkable terroir.
But it wasn’t that long ago — shortly before the 37-year-old Van Muyen (rhymes with “flying”) was born — when Canadian wines were considered almost undrinkable.
So unappetizing were they that famed Canadian novelist Mordecai Richler once joked that, “There is only so much plonk (bad wine) I am willing to drink for my country.”
That was during the Concord grape era.
Today, Canadian wines are internationally famous for their quality, thanks to a shift in grape varieties. Niagara’s wines are especially prized (for more on that story, see Niagara-on-the-Lake author Jill Troyer’s recently published book, “The Winemaker’s Gamble: How One Man and a Handful of Rebels Turned Niagara Wine into a Global Industry.”)
Canada’s wine-making successes didn’t happen by accident. It took a series of coincidences, chance meetings, and a cast of determined “rebels” to make it happen. Van Muyen has been influenced by many of them.
Van Muyen is this year’s Grape King, a coveted appellation dating back to 1956. Awarded annually by the Grape Growers of Ontario marketing board, it recognizes excellence in vineyard work. The Grape King is also charged with promoting Ontario’s (and more broadly Canada’s) grape growers.
“I’m super honoured to represent the wine industry,” she says. “It means a lot after all the hard work I’ve done.”
Van Muyen is the fourth woman to win the honour. It is not handed out casually. Viticulture experts dissect the technical proficiency of vineyard managers in great detail before selecting a winner.
Why is Van Muyen not the Grape Queen, you might ask?
“It was my choice to keep the Grape King title,” Van Muyen told The Lake Report at Tawse Winery, a sumptuous property on the Beamsville Bench.
“I worked really hard to be a king. The way I was raised, I was told that I could do whatever I wanted. And one of my goals was to be the Grape King.”
Agriculture is part of Van Muyen’s heritage. She grew up in Prince Edward County, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, just south of Belleville. Her family came to Canada from Holland after the Second World War.
She got her first vineyard job at 13. That was in the early 2000s, when Prince Edward County’s wine industry was just emerging. Her father helped build some of the first wineries there with his bare hands. He was (and is) proprietor of Kente Enterprises, a steel fabrication firm.
“Once I started working in the vineyards, that was it for me,” Van Muyen says. She immediately decided to pursue a career in viticulture — the science of growing grapes.
She came to Niagara to study at Niagara College’s newly established teaching winery. Two decades ago, it wasn’t yet the impressive Daniel J. Patterson campus at Glendale and the QEW. It was, she recalls, just a green barn at the back of the property with straggly vines behind it.
Unfortunately, at 17, Van Muyen was too young to enrol. Students had to be of legal age to take wine-tasting classes. So she bided her time instead at Brock University, taking viticulture courses before moving to Niagara College.
A co-op placement brought her to the then-new Tawse Winery. She spent her summers in the vineyard and, after harvest, in the winery.
Eager to learn about European production, she went to work in Germany’s largest wine region, Rheinhessen, upon graduation. Her experience at two wineries there were seminal.
She next headed to the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia, another nascent Canadian wine-producing region. There, she worked for vineyard owner (and broadcast legend) Pete Luckett, who was famous for his “Pete’s Frootique” all-about-produce segments on daytime television.
“There was this huge vineyard, overlooking the Minas Basin. And it was absolutely beautiful there — a great experience,” she says.
A relationship with her soon-to-be husband beckoned Van Muyen back to Niagara — and back to Tawse Winery. She was appointed assistant winemaker at Tawse in 2013 and, a few years later, returned to work in the vineyard.
Tawse owner Moray Tawse — like many who helped transform Canada’s wine industry — is an improbable character. A Toronto financier, he was initially looking for land in Burgundy, France, to make wine, before he found out about the stunning terroir available right here at home.
As Grape King, Van Muyen serves as an industry ambassador. It has been a busy year already since she took the honour in September.
She’s heading to other Canadian wine regions soon: Prince Edward County, the Lake Erie North Shore (another burgeoning terroir), and then the Okanagan Valley in B.C.
“It’s only for a year, right? You have to embrace it while you have it. And make the most of it,” she says.
Tawse Winery is just one of about 200 high-quality wineries and vineyards in Ontario. Tawse has 130 acres on the Beamsville Bench that are farmed organically and sustainably.
“At Tawse, we focus on letting the land speak and the terroir speak,” Van Muyen says.
It’s easy to take these vineyards for granted — a verdant backdrop for a summer drive to and from Niagara-on-the-Lake. But they are truly fields of miracles.
And people like Augusta Van Muyen have helped make Canadian wine what it is today — respected around the world.
Asked if she had one fervent wish for the future, Van Muyen doesn’t hesitate in her response: “I’d like more Canadians to drink VQA wines.”
The Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA) label means, among other guarantors of quality, that you are drinking 100 per cent Canadian wine.
So next time you go to the LCBO or a winery, buy VQA. The Grape King knows you’ll taste the difference.
