Norman Hardie Winery — Attraction in Ontario

WE LOVE THIS WINERY!!! My girlfriend and I drive from the GTA to PEC at least two or three times a summer season, enjoying lazy days in the spring or summer sun sampling the best wines and food the region has to offer.

Norman Hardie is ALWAYS a must do stop for their wine and pizzas on the way in or out of PEC.

Our most recent stop was over Mother’s Day weekend (2022). The wine and food experience (did I mention the pizzas are a MUST) at Norman Hardie is consistently top notch but on this occasion I would be terribly remiss if I didn’t shout out to Russell specifically, a new hire staff member of the Norman Hardie team.

As we were leaving he treated my girlfriend and I to an impromptu white wine tasting. My girlfriend and I are not strangers to wines nor wine tastings and what knowledge and hospitality Russell gave to us was nothing short of a NEXT LEVEL MASTERCLASS. I’m not typically a white wine fan, I love bold reds, unlike my girlfriend who really enjoys her Chardonnay’s, but after Russell gave us a little education on the importance of pairing/balancing acids or sugars in white wine with foods and why, my mind was blown! His explanations and knowledge were polished and well delivered and his hospitality was disarmingly genuine and refreshing. We can’t wait to go back and I highly encourage anyone spending a day in PEC to do the same. And don’t forget to ask for Russell!!!!

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We enjoyed our overall experience here with the wine tasting and patio. They have lovely self grown basil and other herbs on premise which they seem to also use on their pizza. We wanted to sit down but it was a 1.5h wait and thus we did takeout (which was only available via Margarita style which still took about 20 mins). There is one thing though that made me reduce the overall rating of this place - the staff arent attentive and don't understand how to deal with lineups of people. They basically feel burdened for having a line of people waiting to be seated. They need a better procedure to deal with holidays and weekends or better signage as to wait times and treating patronage with better overall service. We witnessed (didn't happen to us) a couple who waited an hour for their takeout also and wanted their money back.

Their wood burning oven was amazing and gave the pizza a nice delicious flavour with a crispiness and slightly burned flavour (which is how it's supposed to be). The dough was slightly chewy in an almost tapioca flour way with an amazing texture. The pizza sauce was zesty with a pure tomato flavouring. The basil was deliciously fresh.

I could have eaten 10 of these. The pizzas are small (7" or so) and thin crusted. Amazing pizza, long waits if you go on a weekend, decent wines (typical PEC wine selection), service could be...

Full disclosure: we did not have the pizza as the hostess was incompetent. We arrived at 1:40 PM and were told there was a 40 min wait. My husband stated clearly that we were hungry and asked if there was any food to have while we waited. She suggested the wine tasting and the biltong. This is what we did. When we approached the hostess after our 40 min wait she stated that there would be another unknown wait as there was 3 other tables ahead of us. At this point she also states that if we wanted we could order take out, but it would take 15 mins. This is where we concluded that she really had no common sense. My husband's initial comment when we had arrived was that we were hungry. If the hostess had any customer service skills at all, she should have advised us upon arrival: "if you wish to have service it'll take 40mins or longer, BUT if you're hungry you can order take out and have the pizza with your wine upstairs." Simple right? To complete the story; When we stated that we would not wait any longer and went on our way, we received a call from her advising our table was ready. My husband advised her we were the ones that told her we were leaving - to which she stated "oh sorry, I crossed off the wrong name.'" Geezus, this was the absolute worst example of service incompetence that I have ever...