Easter at the A Family part 1 - Niagara College Teaching Winery, 2009 Barrel Fermented Chardonnay

Many people who know I (A) like wine ask me how I started drinking it, since I have been into it since a time when Vex Coolers should have been my more appropriate drink of choice. The answer is my parents (but in a good way)! When I was a kid, Mohawk College in Hamilton used to offer bus tours of wineries, stopping at six wineries per trip with food, and talks, and fun. This was in the 1990s, when Niagara on the Lake had only about twenty or so wineries open to the public, as compared with the nearly fifty and growing these days. My parents loved these tours and the wine, and so when the tours were cancelled, they started going on smaller jaunts, of two or three wineries which allowed them to be done in an afternoon in the car. These have continued as I have gotten older and the chance to support farmers, try before I buy, and go on these trips as a means of spending time with my parents has made wine tasting (samples are less than an ounce, so these are not wine keggers by any means) a familiar and fun activity. Wine is on our dinner table probably three nights a week, and we have always talked about how we like them I should note that you need to have a plan in place for a responsible driver (having three of us means we can take turns over the summer and no one gets left out, and wineries offer spitoons so you can sip and spit, if you absolutely have to try something, but do plan ahead) if you are doing winery visits as a road trips.

One of our recent trips was to Niagara on the Lake's Niagara College Teaching Winery, outside of St. Catherines. My parents had tried their wine at the Hamilton Food and Drink Festival, and took me out one day as well. They teach both wine grape cultivation and wine making and it was an educational stop for sure. This wine is only available at their store and was $18.95. While this wine was a little (ok a lot) steep for my budget (especially for wine drank while cooking), my parents believe that if they've already bought a bottle, there is no point in feeling badly about drinking it, and when in Hamilton... Both my Mom and I agreed this was in the end not the appropriate choice for afternooon sipping, which was when we had it. Due to the time, money (barrels are expensive and cannot be reused indefinitely), and attention that goes into barrel fermenting a wine (instead of doing it in stainless steel casks), barrel fermented wines are more expensive. This wine is better suited to impressing a small family at Easter for serving with dinner, rather than for sipping as we cooked. Though at this price, I may choose a more traditional barrel fermented chard.

A - This wine was shockingly yellow, as you can see in the picture. It was like the colour of apple juice or canola oil. It had good legs, which is when a wine has enough body that the wine runs in beads down the side of the glass. It smelled floraly but fruity, kind of like a farm in the spring  (like hay and clover, but fruity). The wine was on more of a tart/ sour side of the scale than on the sweet side. You can really taste the oak in it (oak taste is like when you taste a library, classy, woody, and aged). It has more of an apple or pear start for me but a definite lychee/ grape taste to finish.

Mom - This wine was fairly heavily oaked. I got tastes of pineapple and lychee. It has a long finish, and a medium body (which means it is thick, but not syrupy, but also not thin). It is semi-dry (meaning it is dry, but the dryness isn't the predominant flavour). It was maybe not suited for an afternoon sipper following an ice cream snack, and perhaps would have gone better with food as this wine had BIG flavours and power. It was a bit on the heavy side.

Dad - This is a very tasty wine. But you can't get as much thickness as you can out of other barrel fermented wines, like the ones at Strewn. It is floral and really oak scented but the taste was not at all what I was expected. It is sharp and crisp, especially for a wine aged in oak. I like this wine, but like I said, it just wasn't what I expected. I don't get that big oaky-ness in the taste and instead get crispness. It is almost deceptive, as you expect a thick chewy wine from this kind of grape and the colour of the wine, but don't get that at all.

Gypsy White Blend 2009, Kacaba Winery

Tonight was another odd house night of dinners. None of us ate the same thing, and the wine didn’t go with any of it, but both were good, and that is really all that matters! Tonight’s wine was the Gypsy White blend, a blend of unoaked chardonnay and Gewürztraminer from Kacaba Winery, a small lots winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake. At $11.95 a bottle, it is widely available through the LCBO. It was an easy drinking sipping wine, but we all got something else out of it!

A – I had balsamic mushroom glazed pork with a side of mushrooms and potatoes for dinner. Unfortunately, I found this wine too fruity for the dinner I was having. This bright, easy drinking, summer wine was completely overwhelmed by the strength of the glaze. However, when drinking it on its own, I found that the wine tasted like lighter citrus fruits like clementine and lemons. I got a hint of apricots as well, because the wine tasted juicy but not as sweet or juicy as a peach. It had a definite dried fruit taste to it on the end, which I quite liked. I only want to know why more wines don’t taste like coconut?

L – I ate this wine with a dinner of Dijon lamb sausage quesadillas. Again, this wine was overpowered by what I ate. I did like the label though, which was a nice nod to the art nouveau. It has a crisp, fruity, and mild taste to it, like green apples and chamomile. I would enjoy this on its own, and if I were to eat something, I would make sure it was something mild or summery, like salads or BBQ food.

K – I found that this wine smelt like Honeysuckle, a blend previously available from Waupoos Winery in Prince Edward County. It was good for someone who likes sweet wine with a bit of a dry note. It also had a syrupy texture.

M – I had this with Greek salad and beef stroganoff. It did not pair well with the beef stroganoff, though as L suggests it went better with the Greek salad. All I can say is that it is no Baco Noir. While it was fruity, it was ultimately not for me. There was too much brightness. Even though it wasn't horrible I wouldn’t drink it again. I found it too limited, especially for a white. My years of drinking white wine on Easter tell me that a solid white wine should pair with many kinds of food.

This wine was revisited on our girls night by L’s friend M. She thought it was good and that it was a good choice for drinking alone on a girl’s night (vindicating A’s previous statement). L's M found it dry and a little fruity, since she doesn’t usually like dry wines, she thought a fruitier dry wine like this was a good way to try something less sweet.

Sandbanks Estates Dunes Vidal

When the Queen of England came to visit Ottawa in 2010, the government wanted to show her Canada's best of everything, and this included wine. For her dinner, she was served the Sandbanks Dunes Vidal, a VQA wine from Prince Edward County. And if it is good enough for the Queen, it is good enough for me!It is also carried at the LCBO, where it sells for $12.95. This was another wine that we had at our dinner party and I chose it because it was delicious and widely appealling. It was universally well-recieved.

K - This tastes like a typical vidal. I like this wine and have had it before. I, in fact, bought and drank an entire half case of this. It is a nice summer wine. It is light and tastes like wine but isn't alcoholy or syrupy. It is neither overly fruity or sweet. It has the lightest bit of citrus to it, like a light lime or lemon taste, accompanied by some fruit we couldn't identify, like mango, peach, or apricot. It tastes like something less sweet and naturey, like honey suckle or clover. It is good for sipping with jazz.

K2 - I did whiskey tastings in a previous life and developed a skill for knowing about the different levels of burning one can taste in whiskeys. I liked this wine, it tasted like mango and white grapes.

G - I like it.

A2 - I like this wine a lot. It tastes like a summers night on a patio, and it makes me think of the summer. It has a hint of citrus. I would eat this with salmon. 

2010 Canada Red (Merlot Zweigelt blend), Konzelman Winery

Friday marked the return of A and K's dinner party club and our friends learned the hard way that wine from A comes with a price. We started the night while our friends cooked with a red, deciding to leave a white for causal after dinner drinking. Our red was Canada Red 2010, a Merlot-Zweigelt blend from Konzelmann's winery in Niagara on the lake. This winery takes its inspiration from the German wine business and their Canada Red rings in at a very reasonable $12.95 a bottle and right this second it is on sale for $11.95 at the LCBO. Reactions for this wine were both fun and varied. Let's just start off by saying this wine was not for people who don't like dry reds.

K - EUGHHHHH. K stuck her tongue out immediately after trying this wine. She says: It touches the wrong part of my tongue. It is dry with a bit of bitterness to it. it was like licking the rind of a grapefruit. I would never buy it again and dumped my glass out into A's instead.

P - I get the opposite of sweetness in this wine. It is quite dry and I thought it was like licking an ashtray. That said, I still liked it.

A - This wine is dry but still thick. It has a fruity dry taste to it, like raisins or currants, or other dried red fruits. It had quite a tart taste to it and a really fruity smell. There is an earthiness to the scent that also carries through to the taste for me. I would buy it again, being as I was the one who brough it.

K2 - This wine smells fine, but I do mind the taste of it. It has a fizzy taste in the middle of the tongue and an awful taste at the end of it. It tastes like garlic and ashtrays.

G - This wine was way too dry, especially because I am a non-wine-drinker.

As an aside one of our other friends tried this later, not knowing it was the wine that had recieved split reviews, and she said she quite liked it as well. 

2009 Ridge Road Estates, Vineridge Blend

Tonight M made tourtiere. It was delicious and tasted a lot like cloves and love. The crust was flaky and it was juicy, but not runny. We had it with a salad made by our roommate K, which had a mustard vinaigarette. In keeping with bringing something from M's home region with something from A's, the wine was from Ridge Road again, right near Hamilton and it is their 2009 Vineridge Blend. I can't remember what goes into this blend, and the website does not tell me, but I know that there is riesling in there. At $12.95, it is a reasonable wine for dinner time, party time, or really just any time. Especially considering how easy to drink it is. M is sick, so please forgive us if her review is off.

A - This wine tasted lemony and bright to me, with a bit of a tingle on the tongue to start with. When eating it with salad, it occured to me that it might taste like yellow peppers. It had a long taste of green apple that lingered in my mouth. It smells kind of mossy or earthy, but not in a gross way. It was also on the sharper side. I would eat it with a fruit pie, and wasn't crazy with it with salad.

M - With my sickie taste buds, I still get a lot of citrus. It seems light without being under-powering. It is sort of like the 7-Up of white wines, citrusy and refreshing overall. I'm sure it would be great in the summer chilled and served on the patio. It worked well with our beef/ pork combo and salad, but would also pair well with Barbeque.

K - This wine was very sweet and syrupy. It had a thick texture and you can really taste the citrus in it. I'm not sure it would go with Indian, but can see what they mean by the Thai thing.

2008 Chateau des Charms Pinot Noir, Estate Bottled

In every LCBO there is a magical section where there are things that they have ordered and can't sell or no longer want to carry, and so they put these wines on sale, usually at between 20 and 30 per cent off. This is not consistent from store to store, or even day to day, which makes it even more magical in some ways. At our store it is always around the outside edge of the store on one of the enders or rarely, usually after Christmas, on one of the bigger shelves towards the beer fridge. This section gives wine experimenters like myself a chance to get higher end wines (and trust me, it is never the $7.00 wines on sale) at a lower price point, if you are willing to take the chance. For example, this wine usually retails for $14.95, but I picked it up for $11.95, neither of which are bad prices, but I certainly like the second one a lot better. It is also a VQA wine, with the winery located on quite a large estate in Niagara on the Lake.

A - After a bit of a disappoining dinner I was looking for something good, and thankfully pulled this one off the shelf. This wine is quite a dry red, and has a distinctly oaky taste to it but a very sweet and juicy finish. This gives it a bit of a smokey taste, but smokey like a campfire, not like a cigar or cigarette. To me, it both tastes and smells a little alcoholy, but not in the same obnoxious way that some of the other wines we have tasted have. It has a bit of a tingly taste on the tongue, like it has a bit of fizz rather than a lot of sparkle.

K - This wine has an earthy smell, like a nice woodsy kind one that smells like a forest. It is a nice solid earthy red. As a non-dry wine drinker, I would still drink this. It is easy and sippable and really quite nice. There is actual red wine flavour here, so even though you can taste the alcohol to it, it isn't overwhelming. It tastes like a fall wine, like one you would take on a camping trip in the fall, but not camping in the summer.