Wine & Herb Day 3 (Chardonnay)

I'd never really liked Chardonnay until quite recently, when Flat Rock convinced me to give it another chance. I know other times I've said that chardonnay confuses me. On our third day of Wine and Herb touring, though, I started to understand why; chardonnay is very diverse, so much so that it's sometimes hard to find similarities between different wines made from the same type of grape. That was certainly the case when we visited Palatine Hills Estate Winery, Lailey Vineyard, and Marynissan Estate Wines, even though these 3 chardonnays themselves only represent a small subset of what's available in the region.  Actually, each winery really stood out in one regard or another.

Best Food - Marynissan Estates Wines

Marrynissan served its 2008 BFBA Chardonnary.  BFBA stands for barrel-fermented, barrel-aged, meaning this chardonnay is oaked, explaining its big nose of toasted vanilla.  Unfortunately, that didn't flow through to the palate.  Although very smooth, the lemony flavour seemed sour in light of the sweet smell.  We did find though, that the food pairing of spicy gazpacho featuring sweet basil eliminated the sourness, improving the wine's flavour while highlighting the winery's featured spice.  Chris absolutely loved the gazpacho, but we found when we sat down to write our tasting notes two minutes later, that was the only flavour we could recall, hence the rather short description of the wine.

Best Pairing - Palatine Hills Estate Winery

Palatine gets points for creativity and effort.  It combined its assigned spice, anise, with a hot caramel sauce, which it used as a topping over Hewitt's Cannonballs ice cream, a special flavour to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812.  (The wine boutique also has war relics found on its property on display.)  It then topped the whole concoction with tiny blackballs, further highlighting the black licorice flavour of the anise.  The wine to accompany this was the 2008 Neufeld Vineyard Chardonnay, which I noticed has a rather spicy (but clean) nose for a chardonnay.  This wine was oaked longer than that of Marynissan, which might be what I was smelling.  Chardonnay is often described as buttery, something I've never fully understood, but I did start to notice a creamy sensation  which the ice cream accentuated.  I also remarked that the body felt somehow thick, with a toasty or smoky background flavour.  This wine is not at all dry.  We did not taste the citrus that the bottle's tasting notes promised, but this could be because the anise, blackballs and caramel focused our attention on the wine's creaminess and mild spiciness. 

Best Chardonnay wine - Lailey Vineyard

Like the last time we visited Lailey, it used the festival to introduce a new release, its 2011 Unoaked Chardonnay.  It's smell was barely noticeable, but Chris indicated a light passion fruit note.  The label describes flavours of honeydew and stone fruit, which I interpreted as melon and perhaps nectarine.  Its lightly creamy texture was really the only thing distinguishing it as a chardonnay.  Being fermented and aged in steel, its flavour and finish are both very clean.  We have two chardonnays in inventory just now, one fully oaked and one lightly oaked.  If there was more room in the bar, this would make a nice contribution, and has solidified Lailey as one of our go-tos on both the wine route and in the LCBO.