We hadn't intended to visit Tawse on our icewine tour, but since we were in the neighbourhood having already stopped at Angels Gate and Greenlane, and since we were out of our favourite riesling, we thought we'd stop in and stock up. Ironically, we left thirty minutes later with five other bottles, completely forgetting about the riesling until we got home. I'll focus here on the icewines, and save our two new reds for a later post.
Tawse didn't use its regular tasting bar for the icewine festival; instead, we were escorted by a server into one of the underground barrel cellars for a private tasting of two icewines: the 2008 chardonnay and the 2010 cabernet franc. I didn't even know you could make icewine out of chardonnay. The server explained that it's not common because of the large investment and risk involved. Chardonnay is a low yielding grape to begin with, and icewine only yields 15% of a regular harvest. Combine that with the risk of a mild winter and an additional 15 months of barrel aging and most producers just aren't interested.
Neither of these wines have been released to the LCBO, so after the tastings we bought one of each. The chardonnay has a beautiful, mild, floral nose that I didn't expect. The flavours of vanilla and honey came out nicely with a creamy, mild, brick cheese from the Upper Canada Cheese Company. I'm starting to understand that icewine doesn't really need a food course to go with it, but only a little taste of something to unlock its flavours. I will probably serve this bottle within the year, possibly with scones and creme Anglaise. As an aside, in a prior post I had previously attributed the burnt flavour of Cattail Creek's vidal to the oak barrels, but I must have been wrong because this oaked icewine had no harsh flavours whatsoever.
The cab franc was also very good: richer, sweeter and less spicy than the one we tasted earlier in the day at Angels Gate. You could definitely taste rhubarb and sour cherry. The wine was served with Lindt's dark chocolate with sea salt which broke through the sweetness and seemed to ground the flavours. Chris commented that he's having trouble distinguishing cab franc icewines from each other but I think this was because it was our 8th tasting of the day. Either way, I'll review it more fully when we open the bottle. The server suggested pairing this wine with a flourless chocolate cake so maybe we'll share it with some of our gluten free friends!
Update: we drank the cab franc in June 2012, serving it with the same Lindt chocolate that the winery did. Before the chocolate its predominant taste is candy apple. After the chocolate, cherry dominates the palate. It's very similar to Inniskillin's Ruby Red Icewine.
ReplyDeleteUpdate: we drank the chardonnay in May 2012, but my choice of paired dessert didn't do it justice. I made a blueberry / icewine pie in a shortbread crust hoping that the butter in the crust would be enough to open up the wine like the cheese did. It wasn't. I will buy this wine again though.
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