Nerding Out with Duarte Da Silva

The luckiest among us get to spend time with a bon vivant and fellow trailblazer who also happens to be a cherished friend.

DUARTE AND I ARE POSING KIND OF NERDILY on his gold-rimmed, black and chrome motorcycle in an alleyway beside the Regent Theatre on Main Street in Picton. We’re shooting photos for this story and it’s taking a long time because even though we’re at least ten feet back from the sidewalk, everyone passing by knows at least one of us, and neither of us can resist an opportunity to say Hi.

It’s no surprise that Duarte is getting so much attention in this small Picton alleyway. He’s a significant figure in Prince Edward County. Previously the Executive Director of the PEC Winegrowers Association, he was recently named CEO of the PEC Chamber of Commerce, and it seemed like such a natural fit. His instinct for leadership, deep-rooted knowledge of the region, advocacy for our community and passion for the local wine and food scene are worn on his sleeve.

“Can you hop on the back, Lonelle?” our photographer asks and Duarte keeps the bike stable while I gracelessly manoeuvre myself onto the end pad. Our eyes meet and we laugh – how did we end up here?

It’s been eight precious years for me in this place. Nearly a decade of sowing and reaping a life in Prince Edward County, this beautiful world between the bridges. These days, you can find me singing my heart out to karaoke in an old barn, sipping Chardonnay in the belly of a winery, or dancing through the waves on the edge of a secret beach – but some years ago, in one of my previous lives, I’d be drinking vodka-soda-limes, eating late-night poutine and dancing like a maniac at The Mod Club at College and Crawford in Toronto.

It was a good place to spend my mid-20s. The venue was big enough to command really good bands and DJs, but small enough that you felt you were a part of something important.

The owners were British expats with a deep love of 60s music, so we immersed ourselves into their heartfelt revival of Motown, soul, R&B, and mod bands. It was more than a scene, it was a movement, and our core group obsessively gathered every Saturday, fuelled by bottomless VSLs and a purpose: dance until the lights went up.

My high school friend sometimes played there under the creative moniker “DJ Trevor.” As kids, Trevor and I were concertmates, shoegazing our way through English bands from Swervedriver to Catherine Wheel to Spacemen 3 to Slowdive. A decade later he was spinning those tunes at the Mod Club and it was our job to relive their glory on the dance floor. “I was the Britpop guy and I always played the big hits,” Trevor remembers. “I never tried to challenge anyone musically; I played what the crowd wanted and I played it all night – I loved the feeling of a packed dance floor.” We did too, so we went for that and made shapes all night to his set. But another resident DJ was also drawing our attention, and his playlist philosophy was totally different. “He peppered in a lot of deep cuts,” Trevor remembers. “He played what he wanted to hear – dance floor be damned – and the true music nerds always appreciated it, myself included.”

In those circles, he was known as DJ Da Silva, but over the following two decades, I would come to know him better as Duarte.

“It was a time of smartly dressed mods dancing to Motown and BritPop,” Duarte says. “I was working for a big bank and then the burgeoning Toronto start-up scene at a FinTech company, but I was very active socially, eating at new restaurants, attending art openings and film festivals, concerts, theatre – I was out six nights a week.”

Despite similar experiences across the city for a decade, the two of us would never actually meet. I was in publishing and marketing and he was in tech and finance, but we were hungrily driven to consume the same Toronto culture, with music at its core. From the DJ booth, he gave me everything from “Killing of a Flash Boy” to “Something For The Weekend,” songs that led me to coax my unwilling date onto the dance floor – a date who would eventually become my husband. It was an era that is fixed in my mind as the one where I was most meaningfully immersed into music culture, and Duarte was there for it.

If my first distant encounter with Duarte was us nerding out to music, the next was us nerding out to wine.

Visiting more and better restaurants in the city, we both naturally developed a parallel interest in wine. “I started reading about wine, visiting the LCBO … often,” he laughs, “attending wine events, buying from wine agents, and travelling to other wine regions around the world.”

Around 2008, PEC was a low-key cool and upcoming wine destination, attracting people in the industry, hospitality and media. I’d visited the County several times on wine tasting and buying trips, but it was 2014 when I would meet Duarte officially for the first time behind a wine counter in Hillier while I was working on a travel story for a Toronto magazine. I identified him as a cellar brat before recognizing him as DJ Da Silva. “It’s more like Sonoma than Napa in personality,” he filled me in on the County wine scene, “but the terroir is Burgundy.” I nodded thirstily.

In the County, Duarte went all out,  from drink to food to volunteering to music to people – he was everywhere, doing everything.

We were both deep diving into wine, but he was very hands-on about it. “I started coming up on weekends,” he explains, “and working in tasting rooms and at wine events. In the fall, I would take time off to work the harvest and learn wine production.”

My timing wasn’t ideal for wine research. I was pregnant with my darling son on that trip and mesmerized by the endless supply of shucked oysters, transfixed by the County’s signature pale gold and ruby-coloured wines, just out of reach. Even as a sober wine writer, the County seemed perfect to me then – creative and unpolished, artsy, a little bit raw and utterly delicious.

While PEC wouldn’t even be a glimmer in my eye for at least another two years, just maybe a seed was planted then.

In 2015, a year before I was ready to cross the bridge, Duarte moved full time to Prince Edward County. “It was a confluence of factors,” Duarte says. “I was spending more time here, had a partner living here and was looking for a career change. Fortunately, I was packaged out of my corporate gig and that allowed me to buy my lovely little home in Consecon.”

In the County, Duarte went all out, from drink to food to volunteering to music to people – he was everywhere, doing everything. “I think, in PEC, you have to make an effort to socialize, especially in the winter months,” he elaborates, implying that County socializing is a wide spectrum of activity. We did that too, following the scene around like County Deadheads. We said yes to every invitation, volunteered everywhere we could, and tried to make ourselves valuable to our new community. It took some courage to be a new face in what seemed to be a sea of friends, but Duarte was a reliable fixture at every turn and his familiarity gave us fortitude in the early days. “Duarte will be there, of course,” we’d say, getting into the car.

Exploring County roads is a rite of passage for new residents. From West to East, top-to-tip, we mark our place by carving our own tracks along its paths.

“I wanted to ride a motorcycle for a long time, but I didn’t want to do it in Toronto,” Duarte says. “Too many lights, too many people and streetcar tracks. I was already an avid road cyclist so anything on two wheels appealed to me. After moving to the County, one of the things I promised myself I’d do is get my motorcycle licence.” Duarte eventually left Consecon and renovated an old farmhouse with his new partner, Sarah, co-owner of Cherry Bomb Coffee. “She was also a rider,” he says, “and we were excited about the opportunity of adventures on two wheels together.”

A community of motorcycle enthusiasts was developing in the County and the surrounding area, so they signed up to be hosts for the local chapter of The Moto Social, a global motorcycle initiative dedicated to building community around the globe. “Riding in the County is beautiful,” Duarte confirms. “The scenery is incredible, the roads are twisty and there are very few traffic lights. Whenever I just want to relax or clear my head and de-stress – getting on my bike and riding the County does the trick.”

Of course, the County has changed, but from the moment we stepped foot onto these soils, we both knew this place for what it was.

“We are spoiled with incredible farm stands, restaurants, artists, beaches, wine, beer and cider and distilled products and some of the most talented, giving, thoughtful people you could ever meet,” Duarte says, and I hear my own gushing in his soliloquy.

From the heart of a dance floor in Toronto, I recognized someone equally obsessed with the critical minutiae of all the great things, from music to wine to community. Duarte and I have been carving similar paths for twenty years and now we’re nerding out on a Countywide scale. “I think we discovered that in Toronto; we knew a lot of the same people, went to the same places, attended the same events, but somehow didn’t cross paths until we found Prince Edward County,” Duarte muses. “And I think we separately found what we were both looking for … again.”