Cuvee at Henry of Pelham

I included the Henry of Pelham Family Estate Winery on our tour because it doesn't usually participate in festivals.  I asked our hostess about this, who explained that smaller wineries often have difficulty staffing festival events, since they need to keep staff both on hand and at the festival park in St. Catharines.  I had heard this before from other small producers, but find it a little hard to swallow from Henry of Pelham, with its production level at 75,000 cases per year.

The first wine we tasted was the 2009 Speck Family Reserve Riesling.  Keep in mind, we'd just been at Thirty Bench, whose riesling is a tough act to follow.  In comparison, this wine is smoother, less complex and featured much more citrus.  It has a yeasty nose , and the taste of unsweetened orange juice.  The acidity is a little lacking and the medium length finish was sour.  On its own, there is nothing inherently wrong with this wine; it's a fairly standard riesling.  It just doesn't compete with those we'd tasted earlier in the day.  (Rating: 85.)

Note: Only Francesca tasted the cab-merlot instead of the
baco noir, and she didn't love it.

Next we tried the 2009 Speck Family Reserve Pinot Noir.  Keep in mind that 2009 was an excellent growing season in Ontario for this grape.  This wine's aroma is dirty, as expected, reminiscent of dried wild mushroom.  The wine's best feature is its nearly perfect balance between its tannin and acidity.  It has a medium body, is dry but not overly dry, and has a medium length finish and a complex palate that we found hard to describe.  A few people noticed a burnt flavour.  Surprisingly, there was no hint of tomato skin or stem.  (Rating: 87).

Since Henry of Pelham is known for its Baco Noir, (or, at least, that's what I know it for,) I was surprised that it wasn't advertised as the third wine of the day.  However, there was an open bottle at the bar, and the hostess let us taste what we wanted, which, for many of us was the 2010 Baco Noir Reserve.  This turned out to be a good business decision as the wine is not available in the LCBO and our party bought several bottles of it before we left.  The wine features a sweet, fruity nose, that gives way to the scent of cigar smoke or campfire.  The fruitiness of sour cherry and the skin of red plum are the first tastes evident, followed by a dry, lengthier finish.  Like the pinot, this wine is also exceptionally well balanced.  This is not exactly a 'big red,' but it's almost a 'big red!'  I won't rate this wine as I'm not experienced enough with this varietal, but I did buy 3 bottles.

Interestingly, no one in our group ranked Henry of Pelham as their first choice for wine.  However, we collectively bought 8 bottles there, more than at any other winery we visited that day.  I suppose this speaks to the unreliability of self reported data?  Aside from the wine, Chris and I both really enjoyed the atmosphere at Henry of Pelham.  The partially undergound wine boutique and exposed stone has a cave like feel, like what we would expect to find on the south of France.  I also found the hostess very helpful, who informed us of an annual Baco Noir vertical tasting at the winery, called Back to Baco, on the last weekend June and the first of July.  I think we'll definitely be returning for that.