Augusta Van Muyen Selected as the 67th Grape King

Dec 02, 2025

Grape Growers of Ontario and Farm Credit Canada are pleased to announce that Lincoln vineyard manager Augusta Van Muyen has been chosen by her peers as the 2025-2026 Grape King.

“Augusta has accomplished an enormous amount in her time as Vineyard Manager at Tawse. She is the fourth female Grape King to be honoured, and her knowledge of grape growing is the perfect blend for our industry’s ambassador,” says Grape Growers of Ontario Chair Matthias Oppenlaender.

“The annual crowning of the Grape King is a timehonoured tradition that began in 1956 to recognize exemplary vineyard management and understanding of the industry. Augusta exemplifies the very best standard of what it means to be a great grape grower,” says Debbie Zimmerman, CEO of the Grape Growers of Ontario.

“FCC is pleased to support the tradition of naming an Ontario Grape King and with it, celebrating the best in the business,” said Clinton Buttar, Ontario vice-president commercial and small business at

Farm Credit Canada. “At FCC, we admire the passion that goes into every vineyard, every harvest, and every bottle. Congratulations to all the past Grape and Kings, and special toast to the 2025-2026 Grape King, Augusta Van Muyen”.

The Grape King carries the distinction of being nominated by their peers and selected by industry judges who visit each of the nominated vineyards. The Grape King serves as a representative for Ontario’s grape and wine industry at events across the country, starting with the annual Grande Parade on Sep. 27 at the Niagara Grape and Wine Festival and the Mayor’s Invitational Grape Stomp on Sep. 28 in Montebello Park.

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Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators