Wine & Herb day 2 (Riesling)

Since the Wine & Herb passport includes Fridays, and because Carrie and I always get the Friday before the long weekend off work, we headed out for the afternoon to the three wineries exhibiting their rieslings: Joseph's Estates Winery, Ravine Vineyard , and Maleta Estate Winery.  We also stopped by The Ice House, because it was on our route and its assigned spice was arugula, which I absolutely love.  Since I've blogged about Joseph's and Ravine before, I'll focus here just on the riesling pairings, and will give a more thorough review of our visits to Maleta and the Ice House at a later date.

The Contender - Ravine Vineyard

Coming third in a 3 person race perhaps isn't something to brag about, so I should note that all 3 rieslings we tried today were very enjoyable.  I should also note that Carrie disagrees with me about the relative order of 3rd and 2nd place.  Our main point of contention is that Carrie likes sweet wine, and Ravine Vineyard's 2010 Estate Riesling rates a 3 on the sugar scale.  The server explained that this is an organic wine, and that its sweetness is the result of a particular fungus which would be eliminated were the vines to be chemically treated.  After a weak grassy nose, I was a little taken back by both the sweetness and body of this wine, for an Ontario riesling, and I invented a new category: boat wine.  (Boat wine is wine my parents would drink on a Sunday afternoon at their boat, requiring no food accompaniment and often leading to a headache despite not tasting in any way like alcohol.  The exemplar for all boat wine is the Beringer White Zinfandel from California.)  The wine's flavour is fruity, and lemon seems to stick in my mind, but this is probably because it was paired with a lemon tart infused with citrus thyme.  The intense lemon flavour from the dessert seemed to suck up all of the wine's sweetness, leaving behind a flatter, more tart taste, especially on the sides of the tongue.

The Runner Up: Joseph's Estate

Joseph's offered a very similar pair, matching its 2007 Riesling to a lemon square seasoned with thyme.  In this dessert, the lemon was slightly more subtle, the crust more buttery and flaky and the thyme more prominent; Joseph's definitely did a better job with its assigned herb pairing.  Although Joseph's does bottle a sweet riesling, it offered instead its drier version, a 0.5 on the sugar scale.  It has a weak nose with a hint of grass, and a clean flavour featuring yellow grapefruit.  There was initially a pronounced tartness near the front of the tongue, but the addition of the lemon square dulled it, evening out its taste and consistency.  The resulting flavour was very much like that of Ravine's combination.  If that's the result I was looking for, though, I would be far more likely to buy the Joseph's bottle at $9.95 than the Ravine one at $28.  (It is entirely possible that I just don't know how to appreciate extra-sweet rieslings though, or that organically produced wines always sell at a premium.)

The Winner: Maleta Estate

Maleta's 2010 Riesling is all around more subtle, complex and sophisticated than the other two visits of the day.  I noted an aroma of tomato vine or stem but didn't take any notes about the delicate taste as I was too distracted by the fantastic and well thought-out pairing of baguette, brie and marmalade made with the assigned spice, pineapple sage.  (I'd never heard of pineapple sage; it looks like regular sage but smells like pineapple.)  The wine was very well balanced, falling in between Joseph's and Ravines on sweetness and smoothness.  Like Joseph's, though, it must be purchased at the winery (for $16.95) as it is not available at the LCBO.