Cuvee at Strewn

The first time Chris and I visited Strewn Winery, we determined to return to taste its higher end wines.  So when it advertised it would be serving three of its Terroir wines, we made it the 4th stop of our Cuvee tour route.   Of course, we had already tasted 14 other wines before arriving, so the memories are fuzzy and the tasting notes nearly illegible.  (I'm noticing that my choices for quality pictures got pretty slim as the day went on too!)  The wines consisted of three different years of the "Strewn Three" red blend of cabernet sauvingon, cabernet franc, and merlot.  Strewn does not make this wine every year, depending on the growing conditions and the quality of the harvest.

2005 - The sommelier student who served us accurately described the nose as 'cigar box' - rich, thick, sweet and smoky.  The wine is exceptionally dry, but without tasting at all of chalk.  Its taste and body do not live up to what its nose promises.  Its finish was a tad too short and its brick-like colour suggested that it had passed its prime.

2007 - Jeff absolutely loved this wine!  According to the place mat (pictured left), "Aromas of plum and a minerality are found on the nose.  Flavours of cherry mingle with raspberry and plum on the palate.  Supple and silky tannins add to the full round character.  This wine from a stellar vintage year can be enjoyed now or allowed to develop through 2015."

2010 - Based on the description alone, I knew this wine was for me!  "Cedar, maraschino cherry, vanilla, eucalyptus and spiciness on the nose.  Maraschino cherry plays in the flavour with chocolate and a hint of tobacco and a desirable leather.  Structured tannins are well integrated.  Drinking well now but can cellar up to 2016."  The description is bang on, and I bought 4 bottles at $33 each - two of which were for other people.

In addition to the advertised tastings, we were also offered a sample of the pre-release 2011 Meritage.  When it is released this August / September, it will be a good buy for $19 / bottle and we'll definitely look for it again.

2010 Vidal Icewines

Neither Vineland Estates Winery nor Fielding Estates Winery are new to us, but we've never tried their icewines before.  Since I tend to prefer icewines from the Niagara River sub-appellation I wasn't quite sure to expect.

Vineland Estates was our first stop.  They started by serving their 2007 Vidal Select Late Harvest, featuring an easy to find nose of apple and honeysuckle, and the flavours of really good apple cider: apple, cinnamon, orange, honey and spices.  The wine's brilliant acidity offsets the sweetness for a very clean finish.  This wine is an easy 90, impressive for its price of $18.95 / 375 ml.  Although it certainly doesn't need food, Vineland set up a creative station of apple slices on sticks which we then dipped in warm maple syrup and ground hazlenuts.  Aside from the hazlenuts, though, none of the food and wine flavours really interacted at all.

The main event at Vineland, though, was the 2010 vidal icewine.  In all respects, the icewine was a concentrated version of the late harvest.  It reminded me very much of unpasteurized Greek honey, which probably isn't a helpful reference for many people.  Since I agree completely with Vineland's tasting notes on this one, I'll reproduce them here; "Possessing all the pure, raw power you would expect, this wine also surprises as it is expertly wrapped within package of elegance and refinement. Heady essences of orange blossom, crème caramel, apricot and honey are all in abundance. On the palate the sumptuous, sweet extract is made lacy by the bright balancing acid."  Given the slight toastiness, and golden colour, I'm surprised this wine is not oaked. We rated it 89, also a good value at $40 / 375 ml.

Vineland paired this delectable wine with prosciutto wrapped smoked gouda-style cheese topped with apricot-jalapeno jelly.  This daring combination successfully captured all the right opposites: acidic, fruity and sweet against creamy, salty and spicy.  This suggests to me that either of these dessert wines could actually be served during an appetizer course instead of at the end of a meal.

Our last stop of the day, Fielding Estate, also featured its 2010 vidal icewine, but paired it rather unconventionally with a chocolate brownie topped with cayenne spiced chocolate icing. Altogether, this was a terrible idea. Theoretically, the sweetness of the wine should counter the heat of the pepper, but in this case, the latter was just too much. Also, the rich chocolate of the brownie completely obliterated the taste of the wine; a cab franc icewine would have better held its ground.

To be perfectly fair, this icewine did win a silver medal at InterVin 2011, but so did Angels Gate's 2009 pinot noir, and I've poured some of that down my sink. It also won silver at the 2011 Canadian Wine Awards, which is hard to discredit.  It is also entirely possible that I am allowing the terrible pairing to unfairly skew my judgement. With all that in mind, though, I would have a hard time rating this wine any higher than 84.  Although it is advertised as well balanced, it's actually quite cloying.  It is light coloured and light tasting, featuring apricot, honey, and possibly lemon.  Chris also wants me to mention that the brownies weren't great either!

Cab Franc Icewine Pairing

Last Sunday marked our second icewine festival and the 1 year anniversary of Newlywined. One of these years, we'll take advantage of some of the other festival offerings, such as the gala, or the Twenty Valley street festival, or the wine and cheese seminars. This year, though, we opted once again for the touring pass. At $40 per passport, I first rolled my eyes that the price had gone up by $10 since last year. However, they've added two additional tickets to each pass, for a total of 8 paired tastings, so the overall value has stayed the same.

As we planned our route, we had two objectives. We were eager to try the much anticipated (at least by me) 2010 vintages, and we were also looking for dessert ideas to pair with cab franc icewines. Our baseline for quality cab franc icewine is now the Peller 2010 (or the Jackson Triggs 2008) so with those in mind we set out once again for Hinterbrook Winery and for Niagara College Teaching Winery.

Hinterbrook

Along with its 2010 cab franc icewine, Hinterbrook offered white chocolate pudding in dark chocolate cups. I've tried dark chocolate with this type of wine many times, and had always been worried that the white chocolate would be drowned out by the wine, or that it would make the wine seem sour by comparison. In this case, it was actually the dark chocolate cup that overpowered the wine. Apart from that, the creaminess of the pudding blending quite nicely with the icewine and the flavours were of surprisingly equal intensity. I am no longer going to be afraid of trying my favourite white chocolate raspberry tart with a bottle of that Peller 2010.

I was especially curious to try Hinterbrook's icewine because its summer offerings last year were full of so many interesting fruit flavours. The nose on the wine was different; yeast was definitely detectable, but Chris and I struggled to describe the fruit.  Cherry?  Strawberry?  Some type of citrus holding it all together?  I've got it: fruit punch!  It actually reminded me of a red fruit punch drink I would get as a kid which came in the same small bottles as apple juice and orange juice to make you think it was real juice too.  The cherry-dominated fruit punch carried through to taste, joined by a hint of spice.  The structure of the wine was not quite acidic enough, leaving the wine tasting a little like syrup.  However, the dark chocolate cup did alleviate that.  Finally, the finish was unremarkable.  Chris and I agreed on a rating of 84.

Niagara College

Let's start with the labels.  NCTW's "Dean's List" brand labels have been redesigned to look like report cards, in keeping with the teaching focus of the winery.  Aside from being cute, though, they also contain all of the wine's tasting notes on them, a very useful feature.  Onto the wine, also a 2010 cab franc icewine, which has a lot of distinguishing features.  Chris described the nose as candied apple - both the candy part and the apple part.  I thought of one of my favourite gelato combinations: strawberry-limone.  The predominant flavour is maraschino cherry, also with some spice (nutmeg?), held together by a wonderfully full caramel undertone which carries through on the medium-long finish.  Chris and I rated this wine 90 and 88, respectively.

NCTW also hit a homerun with its dessert pairing.  It can be difficult to find a dessert wine sweet enough to pair with cheesecake, except when you happen to have a culinary school across the road!  The Niagara College chefs solved this problem by increasing the cheese content and reducing the sugar.  Then they slathered it in salted caramel which further offset the sweetness and brought the wine's caramel undertone to the forefront.  Simply a brilliant pairing!

Cheap, but nothing to be ashamed of

Over the holiday season, I've had quite a few bottles of Angel's Gate 2010 Susreserve Riesling.  I actually stocked up on this one without even tasting it first based on the incredible 2009 vintage which scored at or above 90 by various reviewers and won a handful of awards.  So, for $13.95 per bottle, I didn't think there was much risk.

I describe the scent as a combination of honey, citrus and lemon, but other reviewers interpret this as pineapple.  The wine is definitely sweeter than the 2009, but without being too sugary.  There are two distinct layers of flavour to this wine: the slightly sour, citrus and mineral flavours that you would expect from a Beamsville Bench riesling, backed up by a smoother flavour of fruit (possibly pineapple and / or nectarine) and honey.  Since the susreserve method involves adding unfermented riesling juice to the finished wine, I wonder if those two parallel flavours come from the wine and the juice respectively.  The mouth feel is thin, but very consistent, with a longer than expected finish.  In a neat coincidence, I also did a blind review of this wine.  My sister-in-law served me a glass when I'd asked for white; I didn't realize at the time that she'd sent my husband out shopping so he just bought what he knew I liked!  Overall, this wine is very drinkable and refreshing.  After much debate, Chris and I both rated it an 86.

Niagara Wine Festival (Pillitteri / Bad Company)

You would think that I would have more time for wine tours and blogging during summer vacation, but apparently I needed my regular schedule of the school year to resume before I could get back into the swing of things.  This weekend is the first of two for the annual Niagara Wine Festival.  Last year, Chris and I checked out the festivities at the festival's hub, Montebello Park in St. Catharines, but we were sadly dissapointed by the predominantly trashy atmosphere and the remarkably inefficient ticket system for sampling wine.  This year we skipped the park altogether, opting for a $30 Discovery Pass and visiting three of the participating wineries.  Click here to see what this route has to offer, and note that you can buy a passport at any of those wineries, a fact that isn't entirely clear on the web site.

Usually when we plan a route, we pick a theme by visiting, say, three wineries serving the same varietal or three wineries all serving dessert.  For these two weekends, though, we're focusing on wineries we've never been to before and we're continually surprised at just how many of those there still are.  Pillitteri Estates Winery has been on our "to visit" list for quite some time due to its reputation for icewine, but it's just never fit into our touring theme before.  We have noticed that the parking lot is always busy, partially due to its prime location on Niagara Stone Road.  There are three different entrances and each gives a very different overall impression.  One opens to the casually elegant primary tasting bar, the next into an impressive showcase of awards and a hostess to direct you around, and the third into a country market / wine store.  Unfortunately, we entered through that last one which instantly reminded me of my distaste for Riverview Cellars.  After a brief walk around, though, the careful merchandising and professional staff convinced me that this setup was genuinely "shabby-chic" instead of just shabby. 

One thing still confused me; the wines on display in both retail areas ranged from $10 - $189 per bottle, but without the variety in between that such a range would imply.  Producing 100,000 cases per year, Pillitteri is neither a cottage industry like Maleta nor a mass producer like Magnotta.  It's interesting portfolio of wines suggest that it likes to experiment, but produce only what it is best at, and only then in large quantities.  It also takes the risk of extensively aging its Family Reserve label, its current offering a 2002 vintage.  (Honestly, though, when I think of what $189 would buy me in a French or Californian blend, I'm going to be hesitant to risk that much on what is, at least to me, still an unknown.) 

Moving onto the festival activities, Pillitteri offered two different options for Discovery Pass holders: the advertised gourmet grilled cheese with a choice of its mid-range red or white, or a sample of both the red and white from its Bad Company label with an antipasto plate.  (I can't recall any other wineries offering such a choice.)  We chose the latter of these as it was indoors, warmer and less crowded than the former!  Bad Company is Pillitteri's entry level wine, at $10 / bottle and with no vintage year indicated.  The upstairs tasting room was devoted to promoting this brand, with a fun, interactive photo area.  The servings were generous for a festival, and there were tables with seating to relax, enjoy and discuss. 

The Bad Company white is a blend of riesling and gewurztraminer.  It has a weak nose of lemon with a hint of mold.  It's taste is a very light, clean flavour of yellow grapefruit, but with a rather short, flat finish.  Although it is described as off-dry, I would put it on the dryer end of that.  However, the wine did provide a very nice background for all of the various flavours in the antipasto, and its hint of sourness disappeared with the food.  Chris and I agreed on a rating of 82 for this wine.

The red counterpart is a blend of pinot noir and merlot with a pleasant nose of very ripe, still dirty strawberries right off the bush.  Its mouth feel is pretty thin, but very smooth, or as Chris said, "nothing complex, but nothing offensive either."  The pinot noir is more evident than the merlot, and the flavour suggests sweet, ripe tomatoes and, again, strawberries.  It's finish is more pronounced and a little longer than its sister's.  Again, this wine nicely offset the accompanying food, earning a rating from both of us of 83. 

Although these wines wouldn't really fit into our usual style, I have been to several events that serve a generic red and white, perhaps with a bottle of each on every table, and these two are better, and likely less expensive, than several I've had in that context.  I also figure that if that's what Pillitteri can do for $10, I'm certainly interested in trying some of its higher end offerings.

Wine & Herb day 4 (Sauvignon Blanc)

Although we toured 4 different wineries on the last day of the Wine & Herb event, we enjoyed Stonechurch Vineyards so much that it gets its own blog entry.  We had no prior expectations for this winery and chose to visit only because we were tasting all the sauvignon blancs that were on offer in the passport that day.  It's somewhat off the beaten path, meaning its not on Lakeshore Road, Niagara Stone Road or Niagara Parkway, but we enjoyed the drive past fields, orchards and farmhouses before arriving just in time to see a group departing on a guided wagon-pull tour of the vineyards.

 

Along the entrance way, its hard not to notice how carefully tended are the numerous brightly coloured gardens.  Attention has been paid to many details of the decor, and it successfully strikes the elusive balance of eclectic without being tacky, quaint but elegant, authentic shabby-chic.  Inside there are three distinct areas, the first of which is the spacious wine bar.  Its retail products are more unique than other winery boutiques, offering an extensive array of Brickstone condiments and various entertaining utensils, including two different sets of "amuse bouche" spoons.  (That impressed me!) 

We headed through the boutique to the extension off the back, essentially a barn, which had been tastefully decorated for a private event but which was temporarily housing the Wine & Herb tasting.  Here we tried the 2009 Sauvignon Blanc paired with a tabbouleh salad featuring quinoa, fresh parsley and cucumber.  The wine first presents a soft whiff of freshly cut, dewy grass.  Its following taste is very clean, dry and smooth, and Chris and I both noticed a slight taste of lime ("tropical fruit" in the winery's online tasting notes).  The wine accented the parsley and the cucumber beautifully, and would be an excellent accompaniment to several mild Mediterranean dishes.  Since I have just such a recipe in my cue just now, we picked up a bottle for $12.95 and agreed that our next two stops of the day would have a lot to live up to.