Wine & Herb day 1 (Gewurztraminer)

The Wine & Herb festival is a lot like February's Wine & Chocolate festival in that for the passport price you can visit each of 28 wineries once over the four weekends in May to taste one of their wines paired to their assigned herb.  This passport is more expensive ($43 + HST), probably because it's a lot easier to attract people to wine country when there's no snow on the ground, but also because it includes Friday evenings as part of the weekend.  Because there's much more variety in herbs than there is in chocolate, there's also a much wider variety of wines being offered amongst the different wineries, with several more white choices available than in the winter.  For day one, we stopped at three wineries all serving gewurztraminer, using the previous night's wine as a comparison.

Stop 1: Hillebrand Winery

THE WINE - The 2010 Artist Series Limited Edition Gewurztraminer had an airy, floral bouquet, followed through with a taste of rose petal and lychee.  It would be very drinkable on its own, or with mildly to moderately spiced food, but would not stand up to spicer Indian or Thai food.  At only 13% alcohol, the first taste was a bit sour, but not for long.

THE FOOD - The chef from the winery's on-site restaurant prepared a creamy carrot and leek soup containing several spices, including its assigned coriander.  The creaminess instantly coated our tongues, permanently taking away the wine's initial sourness.  The combination and interplay of the wine and the food was similar to what we tried the night before, but with more delicate flavours and spices.

WINERY'S BEST FEATURE - The entire property is beautifully constructed and landscaped, and I love tulips, but on this visit, it was the new loft tasting bar that really impressed us, both for its interesting assortment of decanters and for its very knowledgeable staff.

Stop 2: Jackson Triggs Winery

THE WINE - The 2009 Black Series Gewurztraminer is exemplary, in that it offers a little bit of everything that a gewurz should have: a mild nose of yeast with subdued flavours of lychee and rose petal contrasted with light spice and citrus (possibly grapefruit).  It's very light bodied, and despite its 14% alcohol content, offers no sour shock at the start.  I do wish it was a little dryer on the finish, but that's just my personal preference.

THE FOOD - I commend Jackson Triggs for taking on a difficult, not to mention expensive herb, but found that its saffron aioli tasted more like mayo than saffron.  This was used to dip naan-bread pizza topped with partially dried tomatoes.  These were all interesting flavours, but didn't come together the way I think they intended, so the effect of the pair was lost on me.

WINERY'S BEST FEATURE - Although Jackson Triggs looks quite industrial from the front, the tasting bar at the back offers a relaxing patio overlooking the rear vineyards.  They also host a vineyard concert series in the summer that we're sure to return for.

 Stop 3: Konzelmann Estate Winery

THE WINE - The 2010 Late Harvest Gewurztraminer was Chris' favourite wine of the day, but I'm not sure how it classifies itself as late harvest, as it rates only a 2 on the sugar scale and really isn't a dessert wine.  In colour and body, it was comparable to what we'd tried the night before, but better tasting with little sourness and a creamier texture.

THE FOOD - Konzelmann's assigned spice was lavender, which it baked with honey into biscotti.  Although unimpressive on its own, the biscotti worked nicely with the wine, the lavender bringing out the wine's natural spiciness and the honey rounding out all of the flavours.

WINERY'S BEST FEATURE - The vineyards sit right on the lakeshore, offering a pituresque view of lake Ontario and the Toronto skyline.

Gewurztra-weekend!

My last two wine and food pairing attempts didn't go as well as I'd hoped and I really wanted to knock one out of the park so I picked a wine from our bar, (2010 Angel's Gate Gewurztraminer), and consulted the Canadian Wine Wheel before designing the menu.  Along with several incarnations of the word, "spicy", it specifically suggested coriander, cumin, five spice and garam masala, leading me to Indian cuisine; samosas contain all of those!  It also suggested sweet potato as a vegetable, and I knew of a salad I'd been wanting to try with roasted yams and a whole slew of fresh spices.  The salad recipe came from the vegetarian cookbook, Plenty, from which every meal is both yummy, and painstakingly difficult.  The first challenge in this one was finding a particular ingredient: dried Persian limes.  Three different stops and 1/4 tank of gas later, I found them at an Arabic store on  Concession St. between Upper Wentworth and Upper Wellington.  The next challenge was the preparation; most salads don't require the use of a roasting pan, a frying pan, a sauce pan and a rice cooker!  The samosas were much easier, since we cheated and got takeout from The Himalaya, a vegetarian East Indian restaurant near Eastgate Mall.  We also picked up our dessert there, consisting of various brightly coloured pastries.

Onto the wine, we'd tried this gewurz before, and remember liking it, but do tend to have a positive bias towards Angels Gate.  It has a striking gold colour to it and its bouquet features what Chris calls citrus and what I call dish soap, which I mean in a nice way.  The initial taste has two dominant features: minerality and alcohol, only the first of which is good.  The sourness did weaken both as the wine aerated and as we ate.  Actually, this turned out to be a perfect pair, or trio, as it were.  The wine picked up the spices in the samosas which in tern brought out the spices in the wine, and the flavour intensities were evenly matched.  Meanwhile, the sweet potato and feta in the salad worked to cool down our mouths, and the dried lime, mint and lemon juice all played off of the wine's citrus notes.  Once the food was gone and the wine had had more time to breathe, its dominant flavour became sour green apple, and it shared the quick dryness of the fruit.

Overall, we like this wine but find it really needs food and aeration, both anomalies for an Ontario white.  I'd like to find one with a similar body and flavour but either less alcohol or more sugar to alleviate the sourness.  That will be our goal tomorrow as we  head out for the first weekend of Niagara-on-the-Lake's Wine & Herb festival to taste 3 other gewurz pairings.  I might add, though, to keep this wine far away from desserts.  Later in the evening when we tried our extra-sweet treats from Himalaya, the wine became too sour to drink by comparison!