On the Crush Pad

Posted on September 19, 2012 by

It’s that time of year again… Niagara Wine Festival is around the corner! Nothing says Fall like sipping wine on a crisp evening in Montebello Park in St. Catharines during wine fest. I love it and have been every year since I was a kid… well not the wine part of course… but to Grape and Wine festivities — like the parade. I remember putting out blankets and lawn chairs with my family downtown super early when I was a kid to get a good spot to watch the floats go by.

And Niagara Wine Festival means grape harvest time! Recently I was at Vineland Estates for a tasting with some family visiting from England. Lucky for us, winemaker Brian Schmidt and his crew were out on the crush pad.

They were bringing in Riesling grapes — my favourite varietal and if you haven’t tried the Rieslings at Vineland Estates you MUST! Delicious! We watched the harvester dump a huge lot of them into the press (check out the picture below). It was pretty awsome to watch and let me tell you there’s a lot of sweat and muscle that goes into it!

The juice that is pressed from the grapes is pretty murky and brown looking (the glass on the right). We drank it and it’s almost like apple cider. After a few days it looks more like wine, just a bit cloudier (the glass on the left, 2 days after being pressed).

Harvest is a few weeks early this year because of the hot, dry summer we had. The lack of rain had many growers and winemakers watering and worrying about crop damage. Vineland Estates had 3 people watering, by hand, every day since the end of June to make sure none of the younger vines suffered.

That wasn’t the only challenge this year. You’ll remember the summer-like conditions in March which caused a lot of the buds and leaves to come out on the vines. That had a lot of growers worrying and running wind machines to make sure there was no frost damage. But despite these challenges, it looks like it’s going to be a great year. The fruit is much smaller and the crop size is down about 25-30% but I’m told the quality should be exceptional — more sugars and more concentrated flavours (my mouth is watering already).

Make sure you check out the Niagara Wine Fesitval at the end of the month. There is so much going on, both at the park and at the wineries, and it’s a great opportunity to sample and learn about different wines. For more info check out the Niagara Wine Festival website.

Cheers!

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100 Marks White Merlot

Posted on June 21, 2012 by

Earlier this week I took a trip to wine country and stopped off to visit my friend Jeff Hundertmark, the winemaker at Marynissen Estates. He’s been making wine at Marynissen since 2007 but has recently launched his first virtual winery. It’s called “100 Marks Wine” — a clever play on his last name and the labels are pretty sleek looking (check out the picture).

Jeff has just released his 2010 vintage. He’s produced a Pinot Noir — 90% Pinot Noir and 10% Gamay, aged in New American Oak for 15 months. It’s a beautiful wine, lots of fruit and acidity. He’s also released a white wine — a White Merlot — and it is delicious.

He told me I would love this white and he was absolutely right. It’s golden in colour, with a slight hint of pink, and it has this great fruity/acidity — Jeff describes it as strawberries with lime squeezed on top.  He told me he wanted to make an aromatic white wine for his wife Kimberly. Only a few wineries in Niagara make a White Merlot.

I interviewed Jeff back in 2009 for a profile I was writing on Niagara winemakers and he told me then how much he loved Merlot. He reminded me of that interview when we were tasting his wine so I had to dig up the article:

“Winemaker’s Picks: If you had to pick one grape varietal to drink, what would it be? Merlot. It can produce a great red wine but it can also produce a really good rose and a white wine. So if I only have one grape variety that would be the one because I could produce all three styles.”

I can remember sitting at a picnic table with Jeff that day, in the vineyard at Marynissen, talking about how he wanted to make a White Merlot… and now three years later he’s done it.

Cheers!

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Get Fresh in the Valley

Posted on April 12, 2012 by

There’s a really great wine event coming up later this month — “Get Fresh in the Valley” — and it’s as fun as it sounds!

It’s a passport program that celebrates Spring, hosted by Twenty Valley Tourism Association. You can purchase a passport and visit the 23 participating wineries to sample new vintage wines and each wine is paired with a spring-inspired appetizer.

And you won’t go home empty handed. Each winery will be giving away the recipe. So you get the chance to assemble your own “Get Fresh Spring Cookbook” by collecting recipe cards at each stop along the way.

Last year each winery handed out packages of seeds for a vegetable or herb that was used in their appetizers. It was fun and inspired me to plant my first garden last Spring.

Get Fresh in the Valley takes place April 28th and 29th and May 5th and 6th, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Passports are $35 each and are on sale at participating wineries or online at www.twentyvalley.ca. You can check out the website for a list of the wineries involved.

Cheers!

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Exploring the World’s Wine Regions

Posted on February 17, 2012 by

Last month I began a journey exploring the wine regions of the world. I decided to sign up for a wine course at Brock University and every Wednesday we “travel” to a different country. It’s now known as “Wine Wednesday.” I have always been interested in learning about Ontario wines and rarely do I miss a local festival or event — but hand me a wine list with a lack of local choices and I am a bit lost.

I was out touring and tasting on New Year’s eve and there on the tasting bar at one of the wineries was a pamphlet for the courses at Brock. Leaning more about something I love seemed like a great way to start the new year, so I signed up.

I didn’t really know what to expect when I arrived at the first class with my notebook and pen and I was a bit nervous. But when I sat down at a desk with 8 glasses of wine and a glass of sparkling in front of me I was super excited.

Each class we swirl, smell, sip, compare and talk about the wines before we learn what they are and how much they cost. It’s laid back and feels sort of like drinking and talking about wine with a group of friends on a Friday night. And we always start each class with a cheers and some bubbles.

So far we have explored British Columbia, South Africa, Ontario, Chile, Bordeaux and Burgundy.

British Columbia has just over 9,000 acres, to put that in perspective California has more than 520,000. And the growing season is short but there’s lots of heat and sun. One of the varieties that does the best there is Syrah and my favourite wine from our BC class was Black Hills Estate Winery 2009 Syrah.

South Africa has some of the oldest viticultural soils in the world and thousands of different plant species. The wine industry supports the biodiversity and there is a heavy focus on sustainable farming. The Cape’s winegrowing regions are influenced by the Atlantic and Indian oceans and the sea breezes help create nice fresh, focused wines. Chenin blanc is the most widely cultivated variety.

I was already familiar with Carmenere – Chile’s signature grape — but didn’t know 95 percent of the world’s Carmenere is planted in Chile. Chile has some of the largest organic vineyards in the world and a few of the wines we tried were made with organic grapes. I also discovered a delicious sparkling — Cono Sur Sparkling Brut — from the Bio Bio Valley. It has a bit of Riesling which makes it nice and crisp. You can pick it up in the LCBO for $13.95.

February is France month and that deserves a post of its own once we have finished exploring.

Cheers!

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Wine vs. Beer at Niagara College

Posted on January 31, 2012 by

There’s a fun event happening at Niagara College this week called “Caps, Corks and Forks.” It’s a competition — wine vs. beer – that includes a 5 course meal prepared by the culinary students… and teams of wine and beer students provide pairings for each course. Diners are then asked to vote on the best pairing for each course. The host of the TV show The Thirsty Traveler is the MC. Here’s the release:

NIAGARA COLLEGE – The battle between grapes and hops has begun, as students from the college’s Teaching Winery and Teaching Brewery vie for ultimate supremacy at the Canadian Food and Wine Institute’s new signature event, Caps, Corks and Forks.

To take place on Feb. 2, 2012 at Benchmark , a teaching restaurant on the college’s Niagara-on-the-Lake campus, the event will feature an elegant five-course meal prepared by NC’s top culinary students under the guidance of chef professor Tony DeLuca. Each course will be paired with both a beer brewed by a team of the college’s Brewmaster students and an Ontario VQA wine carefully selected by a team of the college’s Wine students. Guests will vote on which pairing was best after each course to determine the winner.

Kevin Brauch, host of TV show The Thirsty Traveler, will be the master of ceremonies for the evening.

“Caps, Corks and Forks was designed to showcase all three specialties of the CFWI – wine, beer and food,” Jon Ogryzlo, dean of the CFWI.
“The fact that it will take place in our newly renovated Benchmark restaurant – to reopen in late January – which will feature a new bar, and wine and food pairings on the menu, makes it all the more meaningful.”

While weeks away, Caps, Corks and Forks is already stirring up a playful rivalry between the CFWI’s wine team and its beer team, who have been making a sport of pointing out the superiority of their own beverages and the perceived inferiority of the other’s.
“Crush a bunch of grapes, put them in a bucket and see what happens,” said Brewmaster professor Jon Downing about how to make wine.
“Browse beer recipe pages online for a while, add or subtract one to several ingredients at random to your selection,” said Jennifer Wilhelm, instructor and coordinator, Wine programs, about how to make beer.
The culinary team, according to chef professor Tony DeLuca, has decided to maintain a “dignified neutrality.”

A limited number of seats are still available. Tickets are $79. For ticket information contact Benchmark at 905-641-2252 ext. 4619.

The Canadian Food and Wine Institute, located on Niagara College’s Niagara-on-the-Lake campus, is the college’s centre for food wine and beer education. It is home to Benchmark, the college’s teaching restaurant, as well as the Teaching Winery and Teaching Brewery.

 

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Icewine Festival Part 2

Posted on January 27, 2012 by

I spent the second weekend of the Icewine Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake tasting in the village and visiting a few wineries.

The weekend started with a stop at the Shaw Cafe where Donald Ziraldo was launching his new Equifera icewine. He co-founded Inniskillin winery in 1974 and is a pioneer of Canadian icewine.

His icewine comes from Equifera Estates which was once home to champion racehorses in the 1950s and 1960s. He was pouring his 2008 Vidal Icewine — great flavours of tropical fruit and apricots. It retails for $49.

The next stop was Inniskillin for a private group tasting. We tried 2010 Vidal Sparkling Icewine and the 2010 P3 – 40% Pinot Blanc, 27% Pinot Noir, and 33% Pinot Gris. The sparkling icewine was paired with an apple crumble… and we roasted marshmallows by the fire outside.

And at Pondview Estate Winery, owners Lou and Adriana Puglisi were serving up their Vidal Icewine paired with blue cheese on a baguette drizzled with spicy wine jelly and Cabernet Franc Icewine in a chocolate shooter.

Lou (a former Grape King) gave us a sneak peak of his 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon that was  just out of the barrels. This is going to be an amazing wine.

This year, there was an icewine cocktail competition in the village at night. There were some really interesting concoctions like Ice-swine-tini (some sort of bacon infused creation) and my favourite, Jack Daniels, icewine and Steam Whistle. It sounds horrible but it was really good.

There’s still one more weekend of icewine to go… check it out at www.icewinefestival.com

Cheers!

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Winery Name Influences Perception of Wine Taste

Posted on January 23, 2012 by

Brock University did an interesting study that shows the influence the name of a winery can have on the taste of its wine. Researchers found that most people believe wine tastes better if they have a difficult time pronouncing the name of the winery. Here is the news release:

When presented with the same glass of wine in the same glass in the same environment, people are more likely to believe the harder-to-pronounce wine tastes better.

This is according to research from Antonia Mantonakis, associate professor of Marketing at Brock University. Mantonakis will explain her findings at an upcoming talk, which is part of the annual Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute (CCOVI) Lecture Series.

Mantonakis’ research group has found that when a test group was given an identical wine with two different names, more people pointed to the complicated name as tasting better.

The professor lined up two similar test groups in Brock’s consumer perception and cognition lab. The group was given wine and told it was from the easily-pronounced Titakis Winery. Then it was given wine from Tselepou Winery.

Both names are Greek and begin with a T. Both have three syllables. But Tselepou is harder to pronounce and has more unusual letter combinations. The test consumers rated Tselepou Winery higher on a scale of one to seven.

After the experiment, participants were also given a short quiz to gauge their knowledge of wine. Those with more wine knowledge in particular showed more of a willingness to buy the wine from the hard-to-pronounce winery.

“It’s interesting how consumers perceive things,” Mantonakis said. “Something like the sound of a name can illicit a thought, and that thought can influence the perception of how something tastes.”

Mantonakis had read about the dynamic in other studies. One study found that the more unusual the name of a rollercoaster, the riskier people imagine the ride to be. The same trend is true with fictitious brokerage firms such as Artan versus Lasiea and food additives (magnalroxate versus hnegripitrom). Even easy-to-pronounce stock market ticker symbols are perceived as being less risky, hence why those symbols are more valuable.

But wine drinkers seem to like risk. Mantonakis guessed early on that seeking a new taste adventure, they’d lean toward the hard-to-pronounce names.

The annual COOVI lecture series begins this week with a presentation by Karl Kaiser, a CCOVI Professional Affiliate and co-founder of Inniskillin Wines, on Wednesday, Jan. 25. Mantonakis will present “Does a wine influence consumer taste perception?” on Wednesday, Feb. 8 at 3 p.m. at Mackenzie Chown H313.

The lecture series is free and open to everyone. It will also be broadcast live at www.brocku.ca/ccovi

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