Legends Estates Winery

We're really trying to include wineries we haven't yet visited into our tours.  Legends Estates Winery attracted Chris' attention during last month's icewine festival, not for its wine, per say, but for its food choice: pulled beef brisket in yorkshire pudding nests.  Instead of serving icewine, Legends used it to cook the onions for the beef, and instead showed off two different wines: an '07 chardonnay and an '07 petit verdot.  We started with the chardonnay while waiting for the food.  My initial impression of the smell was buttered microwave popcorn just before it burns.  Chris remarked that it smelled 'hot,' meaning it cleared his sinuses.  At 14% alcohol, it also tastes 'hot' and incredibly oaky.  The buttered popcorn also carried through to the taste.  I really didn't enjoy this wine until I tried it with the beef.  The oily texture of the yorkshires matched the meaty body of the wine, taking away the alcohol heat.  The wine also played well off of the icewine-soaked cooked onions.  I just probably wouldn't drink it on its own. 

The petit verdot, Legends "big red," was a new varietal for us.  It's usually blended in Bordeaux style wines but is sometimes bottled on its own.  Legends is one of only two wineries in Ontario that attempt this one as it needs a longer growing season than the province's signature varietals: riesling, chardonnay, pinor noir and cabernet franc.  Legends' lakefront location, though, gives it a few weeks longer than its competitors.  (As I type, I can hear our friends at Zippy Sauce cringing, "If it doesn't grow well in Ontario, then don't grow it in Ontario.")  It was difficult to take notes on this one because we weren't really sure what we were looking for.  Some of the things scribbled in my notes include: big nose, nicely dry, no wood, cab-like tastes without the body, smooth, and little tannin.

After tasting it, I understood why it is usually used in a blend.  It would add great aroma and forward flavours to a more subtle, better structured wine.  However, since I don't blend my own wine, this isn't one I'll be buying.  That being said, the women in the boutique were very friendly and knowledgeable, and Legends does have a wide array of interesting wines, all aged longer than usual before release.  Although these two weren't our favourites, the overall experience makes it worth another visit.

2012 Niagara Icewine Festival (6 of 6)

Final stop: Magnotta Winery

We saw Magnotta as a learning opportunity as it offered a 'horizontal' tasting of 3 dessert wines, each made with vidal grapes harvested at different times of the season. (On a side note, we had only recently tried a regular harvest, table wine vidal for the first time, a 2009 Pelee Island Winery Vidal Monarch. We really enjoyed experiencing the vidal flavour without the concentrated sweetness of dessert wine, since its sugar level is only 1.) By comparison, Magnotta's first offering was its 2010 Harvest Moon Vidal, with a sugar level of 7. It's a fun wine, very fruity with an acidity that bites the tongue like limonade, an Italian blend of carbonated water and lemonade. They served it with a creamy brie that cut right through the sweetness and acidity to reveal a pleasant banana flavour. Anyone who likes pink wine would like this one!

Next up, instead of a late harvest, was a vidal passito with a sugar rating of 10. Passito is an Italian dessert wine that concentrates the juice by letting the grapes bake in the sun, instead of waiting for them to freeze as with icewine. That's probably why I found the predominant taste to be of gold, juicy raisins. Chris categorized it as "sherry made from vidal grapes". It was served with fontina cheese, and the salt affected this wine just like the cream did the last one, by breaking through the sweetness and the high alcohol content. Finally, we sampled the 2007 vidal icewine, a 23 on the sugar scale. It opens with a taste of honey which gives way to dramatic peach and apricot flavours; if you have this bottle, drink it now because it wont develop any more than this. Chris even thinks it's reached its cooking years, and suggests using it in a marinade, a salad dressing or over ice cream. (I'm not sure he's ever tried any of those things before, but they all sound like good ideas!)

So we left empty handed.  As for Magnotta's wine store itself, the phrase "lipstick on a pig" comes to mind. The floor space is divided between carefully arranged displays of icewines and utilitarian shelving to store its large stock. They seem to keep bottles of everything they make on hand, and they make a lot; local grape varieties, imported grape blends, aperitifs, iced fruit wines, and port. You can even buy wine making supplies, or stock up on its most popular labels in 4L boxes! The signage and shelf cards are not overly helpful, acting more as an inventory management system than a marketing tool. The tasting bar and cash register area are filled with high margin kitsch, but I admit I was impressed at their selection of Riedel glasses. Even the private tasting room for the festival was awkward, as other customers would inadvertently walk in but then get shooed out by the server.  The next time I taste Magnotta wines will be at the LCBO.

2012 Niagara Icewine Festival (4 of 6)

Stop 4: Greenlane Estate Winery

Confession: we only picked this winery on our festival tour for two rather superficial reasons.  First, it was our day to taste riesling icewine and no other wineries in the Beamsville area were serving any.  Second, they were also serving gourmet grilled cheese, which placated Chris after the Gorilla cheese fight the week before.  We'd never even heard of Greenlane, probably since it only opened in 2010, and were a little skeptical when we drove up because of the small barn like exterior, the unpaved parking and the fact that the public washroom is in a separate building on the other side of the lot!  So, when we walked into the small but stylish tasting bar to be greeted warmly by a hostess despite the crowd of tasters, we were instantly impressed.  The hostess took her time to explain the tastings, took our passports and ordered what turned out to be our lunch.  The sampling included 2 wines and 2 baguette sized gourmet sandwiches.  This really impressed me because the passport itself only costs $30 for six tastings so the winery only gets $5 for each of us, less any fee it has to pay to the industry association for festival advertising, etc.  Greenlane treated this as an opportunity, perhaps a marketing expense, to gain exposure to new consumers whereas some other wineries treat the $5 as cost recovery and some even try to profit from it by keeping their portions extra small.

The first tasting was their 2007 Cabernet Merlot with an aged cheddar and bacon sandwich.  Since we were so impressed with the experience so far, I really wanted to like this wine but in the end agreed with Chris that it was a bit too thin and acidic.  The second was the 2008 riesling icewine with a grilled Gorgonzola and spinach sandwich.  Chris felt the gorgonzola was too strong for the wine but we weren't really there to review the cheese, and I personally don't think a gorgonzola can be too strong. This riesling was entirely different from the one we tasted earlier in the day at Angels Gate.  It was very juicy, like biting into a ripe green apple, and somewhat more syrupy.  It's finish wasn't quite as clean as most icewines, implying not enough acidity, but I actually like this quality.  (The longer it lingers on the tongue, the less likely I am to drink the whole bottle!)  Interestingly, the wine really picked up the grilled butter on the baguette.  Since this is the second time I've noticed this, I'm determined to try serving icewine with Grandma's traditional Scottish shortbread next Christmas season.  For the bottle I did buy, I was thinking maybe grilled pineapple to go with it.  (Please comment if you think that's a terrible idea and a waste of an otherwise good bottle!)