2012 Niagara Icewine Festival (part 1 of 6)

After we'd ordered our passports for the festival, I went on a planning frenzy to decide which 6 wineries to visit, and in what order. I came up with 4 criteria; we would visit 2 wineries per day, in close proximity to each other, each serving the same type of icewine, one serving something savoury to eat and the other something sweet. A couple of hours later, I showed Chris the itinerary. Since he couldn't convince me to work in a trip to Gorilla Cheese, and I wouldn't go along with his idea of wandering haphazardly through wine country and stopping wherever the -17 degree wind might take us, he eventually agreed to my plan.

First Stop: Cattail Creek Estate Winery

Cattail Creek was serving butter chicken with its 2006 Vidal Icewine. Many of the wineries participating in the festival are trying to convince their patrons that icewine isn't only for dessert. Unfortunately after this pairing, I'm not convinced. The butter chicken itself was quite good, although the serving they gave was mostly rice. The flavour didn't overpower, nor was it overpowered by the icewine, but they didn't exactly compliment each other either. We think maybe the idea was that butter chicken is often served with a mango chutney and vidal icewine often has a hint of mango flavour, but this certainly didn't jump out at us while we were tasting.

The wine itself had a very strong aroma before the glass came anywhere close to your mouth. (This might be because they weren't serving using icewine glasses, tapered in at the top to hold the aroma in.) Either way, both the smell and the tast were very rich, almost creamy. Chris thought fruit (apricot & peach), and I agree with the peach but thought more of toffee. Although the taste (like almost all vidal icewine in Ontario) was very good, there was an undertone or a strand in there that I didn't like ... almost a burnt flavour that I can't really describe.  Since this is one of Ontario's few barrel fermented icewines, I wonder if it's the oak I'm tasting but I just don't recognize it.

While we were there I noticed their novelty wines, a late harvest cab franc infused with chocolate and strawberries and a late harvest vidal infused with chocolate and orange. I have to admit I'm annoyed that even though I bought a bottle of the red, they still charged me $2 for the tasting. I wanted to point out that they were offering free tastings of the cab franc icewine, and my tasting was of a much less expensive wine, but I kept my mouth shut. I walked away feeling like the winery had sort of missed the purpose of the icewine festival: demo your products, grow your brand, increase your sales and market share in the long run. The ironic part is that once we got in the car, Chris told me he didn't even like the bottle I'd bought, but didn't want to be rude during the tasting!  Oh well ... at least the winery donates $0.50 from every bottle sold to the Lincoln Humane Society.