For my birthday this year (I turned 71 on Sunday, February 19) we spent some time in the Niagara Wine Region. We often do a wine tour on my birthday and the last few years during this pandemic it's been a private tasting in a geodesic dome at
Fielding Estates Winery on the Beamsville Bench, other years it's been where ever we happen to be travelling. The photo at left is from the wine tour on Sunday. Kate took the picture, she's not in it; the women pictured with me are Trystan and Diana from London, then Maddie, Chloe and their mom Carolyn from Whitby.
With the current COVID wave in remission, and us somewhat protected having just got over a bout of it, we felt we might safely entertain going out to some restaurants and touring with a small group. Our plans were to stay in Niagara Falls and to do a conducted wine tour on the Sunday so neither of us would have to drive. We booked a room at the Marriott on the Falls in Niagara Falls for Saturday and Sunday and a conducted tour on Sunday.
We had a great time and tasted some very fine wines. The following is a summary of some of the highlights. Or at least the highlights I can remember .....
Saturday: Lunch at Vineland Estates
On Saturday we drove over and had reserved a table for lunch at Vineland Estates Winery (another Beamsville Bench winery). They have a lovely restaurant with a view out over their vineyards, with Lake Ontario below in the near distance and, on a good day, you can spot Toronto across the lake in the far distance.
We've been to the winery several times over the years and we had been to the restaurant before but it was many years ago during a very snowy Christmas break with a friend who I had worked with at the University of Waterloo. It wasn't very busy back then, but it was today. In the very large main room of the restaurant there was a large gathering of their wine club. We were in the smaller room to the side which wasn't as busy and was reasonably quiet.
We had arranged that my brother David and his wife Gail would meet us for lunch. They live in Hamilton and this area is an easy reach for them. An alternate we had considered was Peninsula Ridge but we had been there not too long ago. I wanted to try this restaurant again and we're quite pleased that we did.
While waiting for David and Gail to arrive (we were early), Kate and I shared a glass of their unoaked Chardonnay. It was light and crispy, an ideal example of what an unoaked Chardonnay should be. Kate, it should be noted, prefers the oaked Chardonnays which are more in the California style — more flavors of pineapple and buttery in the mouth. That's fine, and it has it's place. For example, Lindeman's Bin 65 is our house Chardonnay and there's always a stack of the far more expensive California Chardonnays waiting in the wine cellar. But with salads and most foods the unoaked versions are more to my liking.
Kate asked for and they found an Oaked Chardonnay that she enjoyed with her dinner. It wasn't on the menu but the gracious server found that a bottle had been opened. Kate liked it a lot. The pours were generous and the stemware was fresh for each wine.
When David and Gail arrive they ordered a glass of wine as well. I think they ended up swapping wines. We ordered a bread appetizer to share with olive oil and balsamic on the side for dipping. A whole loaf of their wonderful bread came with a bit of black olive tapenade (at home we sometimes make our own), some ricotta lightly flavored with lemon zest and some pickled red onions served on a large slate. This appetizer was worth the price of admission, so much so that when we left we took a fresh loaf back to the hotel with us!
The menu had a prix fixe option of three course meals of your choosing but dishes could be ordered individually which is what we did. Kate had an Oaked Chardonnay with her trout and beets, I had a Pinot Meunier with the pork belly and cassolette, David had the soup and a chacuterie plate (it was huge!) while Gail had the squash soup with a bread pudding for dessert.
The meals were all gourmet/chef quality. The servers were professional, gracious, knowledgeable and helpful. The table was set with a crisp white table cloth, proper silverware and the wines were always served in fine fresh stemware. It was what I would call "fine dining" and it was reasonably priced. When it was time to clear the bill I offered to split it with David, he wanted to treat us and, although we argued a bit, it was only a bit.
For wine, I was really interested in the Pinot Meunier having never had it in all of our travels. I'm aware that it's one of the wines (with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir) found in the classic Champagne blend but hadn't seen it on it's own. The server, who was very gracious, kind and knowledgeable, told me it was a lot like Pinot Noir. That's my favorite grape — it makes a red wine that's subtle and not overpowering (like the "Meritage" blends popular in the region, California Cabernets, or the overly jammy Australia Shiraz sold here in Ontario). I ordered a glass and was pleasantly surprised by what I found.
We were going to pick up some of the wines we had enjoyed with our lunch at the Vineland Estate wine store as we were leaving but the wine club had the same idea and we didn't want to join their crush. We promised our selves that we would return later. [This counts as the one that got away.]
180 Estate Winery
After our long lunch with David and Gail, we parted ways and thought we might drop in at another winery or two on our way to Niagara Falls. We stopped in at
180 Estate Winery, in part because we'd never heard of, and in part because we didn't have any maps with us, but we didn't stay long. They have a nice sunny sheltered restaurant/tasting area and we might have stayed but the tasting involved 8oz. servings and we'd had enough already. Instead we bought a bottle of their Bourbon Barrel aged Sauvignon Blanc to take back to our hotel.
We were looking for Oaked Chardonnay (for Kate) and Pinot Noir (for Reg) and ended up asking one of the servers for her recommendations. She recommended several nearby wineries and suggested we try
Westcott Vineyards which specializes in both — we got a map of the wine region and took up her suggestion.
The 180 Estate Winery is below the Beamsville Bench (on the flat plain by the lake well beyond the Niagara Escarpment), Vineland Estates is on the bench (on a sloping step just below the escarpment) and Westcott Vineyards is above the bench on top of the escarpment. These have different
terroir, suitable for different wines, because of the soils and the weather. There are only a few wineries on top of the escarpment and Westcott is, in my opinion, one of the very best.
Vieni is another and we had stopped in on our way to our lunch. Unfortunately there were a couple of tour buses there, it was very crowded, and we did not get to taste anything.
Westcott Wineries
At Westcott, it's a small boutique winery with a cosy tasting room. There are only a few cars in the lot, but the room is full with folks enjoying the wines. The wine steward managing the room, a young lady, tells me they politely decline the tour buses; they're far too small. I note that some of the guests today are travelling with a Uber driver. We're on a mission though and don't spend a lot of time chatting. We taste a couple of their Chardonnays (an Estate and a Reserve: yum!), then a couple of their Pinot Noir (an Estate and a Reserve: yum again!) and we purchase all four. They are impressive wines and exactly what we were looking for. Not cheap, but very much world class wines.
I note that some of the vines at Westcott are wrapped or under cover of some sort and the wine steward tells me that here, on top of the escarpment, wind and frost are issues and that part of the vineyard is subject to frost and freezing damage. Hence the blankets.
It's been a mild winter so far. In our travels this weekend we discover that everyone who had plans to make ice wine has had a tough time of it — for many it's not been cold enough for long enough to freeze the grapes to make it. Some places had managed to pick some icewine during cold snaps in November and December but there's a lot of fruit still under nets. Others have told us about vines budding too early with the warm weather in January. Buds freezing off is another vaguery of the weather for wine growers.
Marriott on the Falls
We struck off across the country to find our way to Niagara Falls where we have booked a room at the "Niagara Falls Marriott on the Falls" (not to be confused with the "Niagara Falls Marriott Fallsview" which is right across the street and only a stone's throw away). Both are on top of the escarpment with good views of Niagara Falls just below. We've paid extra for a guaranteed room above the 22nd floor and are given a corner room on the 24th floor for the view. We read somewhere that there's supposed to be a beer/wine tasting that comes with our room but we never figured that out. [Another one that got away.]
When we arrive it's way too cold and windy to do any exploring outside. The parking lot is full with cars parking where they ought not, but I find a place at the far end of the lot after unloading the car. We were able to get checked in pretty quickly, but we see later that there's a long queue at the check in. I wonder if they found any parking? Kate thinks the hotel is busy because Monday is the "Family Holiday" in Ontario. She checked out the pool at the hotel but there are a lot of kids and it's pretty small, too small to do laps. So we never get in a swim.
There is a Milestone restaurant at the hotel (we like to say "mill-eh-stone-en" in a fake Italian accent, a joke we picked up from Louis) where we might have dinner. There are lots of restaurants nearby but that evening we stay in our room munching on snacks we've brought with us, tearing bits from the loaf of bread we bought at lunch and drinking some of our wines while watching regular commercial TV — mostly home renovations and chef challenges. We don't have regular TV at home and keep reaching for the pause and rewind buttons that we're used to. And why isn't regular TV subtitled?
When it's dark the two falls (the "Horseshoe Falls" on the Canadian side and the "American Falls" on the other side) are lit up with lights that are changing colors. It's interesting, not terribly exciting, but interesting. At 8:00pm though there's a big fireworks display between the two falls that lasts quite a while. We're high enough that we're sort of looking down onto the fireworks which seem to be happening in the gorge between the two falls. Kate tells me she arranged this spectacle especially for me, I think she's pulling a fast one.
We asked the doormen the next day about the fireworks in hopes we might see them again that night. We are told they are scheduled irregularly over the winter season. They think it's just on Friday and Saturday nights and the timing depends on the park service. We were lucky to be in last night to catch the show rather than off at some restaurant for dinner.
Before falling asleep we order a room service breakfast for delivery early next morning: a pot of coffee, orange juice, pastries and some sausages. Kate has her juice, milk and breakfast cereal that she's packed for the trip — she's not much of a breakfast person.
Sunday: Wine Tour
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Sunday morning we have breakfast and my birthday in bed. Kate has brought some prezzies for me including a wind chime from Lyric Flowers, some licorice all sorts, a USB power supply/shelf and a very funny card: "Happy Birthday to a rare bird!" as shown at left. But mostly, the birthday celebrations today are the wine tour with the
Community Transport Group which will pick us up at our hotel at 11:15am.
We have booked the
Half Day Wine & Cheese Tour - Niagara On The Lake Wine through
Viatour (a Tripadvisor company). There are several tours one might take. We picked this one as it was advertised to serve a small group. We didn't want to be carted around in a huge bus. It turned out to be a very small group.
We were waiting in the lobby, talking to the doormen about the fireworks, when we receive a phone call from Chris, our driver. He's waiting across the street at the other Marriott hotel and could we please come over and meet him there. It's not far but Kate is struggling with a bad ankle, she's using a cane, and we vow that we will be dropped off at our door. Chris, our driver, tells us there's only one place where he can park his van and it's in front of the other Marriott. He does drop us off at our door on our return and kindly helps with carting in the box of wine we purchased over the day visiting wineries.
In any case, we're on board and are met with a young mom and her two daughters who are staying at this Marriott. They have driven down last night from Whitby with a stop for a show in Toronto: they are Carolyn, Maddie and Chloe. They're celebrating the Maddie's birthday, she turned 23 on Saturday. We tell her we're celebrating mine today. So she's an Aquarius and I'm a Pisces — we're on the cusp of the two signs.
Chris tells us there's one more pickup where we are joined by two young women from London: Trystan and Diana. Each group is identified by where we've come from (Chris introduces us: "London gang, here's the Whitby gang and over here's the Saints from Saint Marys"). So, this is a small group. There's seven of us and I'm the only guy! That's the gang of us above at RiverView Cellars Winery, minus Kate who took the picture.
Our driver, Chris, is keen to educate us. Chloe, one of the young women, is taking a wine course at the local university and is keen to know more. Chris will interrupt our conversation with some important lesson that he's sure we need to know. He points out the various wineries we pass along the way, stops to show us videos from his phone of starlings waiting to pick grapes, he points out the grape netting to protect the ice wine from the starlings, the mounding in the fields to protect the grapes, the skins and seeds returned to the soil, and much more. Some, with tongues hanging out aching for some wine, will say he spends too much time hectoring us with useless information. Let's get to the wine tasting!
Lakeview Wine Company
The Lakeview Wine Company is a large consortium that markets wines under many names: Lakeview (of course), 20 Bees, East Dell, and Fresh Wines. Only some of these are found at the LCBO and then only some of the portfolio under those names. Chris explains that the deal with selling through the LCBO requires 1) that you produce enough to deliver to all the stores, 2) that the price be the same as at the winery and 3) the LCBO gets half of the selling price. Now I don't know if any of that is true, but if true, you can see that selling direct from the winery has some advantages.
We often order on line through the LCBO and sometimes order direct from wineries (I recently bought a small case of
Chateaux des Charmes Sparkling that Kate liked). Pretty much all of the wineries have clubs where they'll send you something each month. We buy wine from around the world and we are members of the Ontario Wine Society (Niagara Chapter) so I don't see a need to sign up with Lakeview or any of the wineries.
We have a private tasting in a glassed in room at the very back. We try several wines including a Cabernet Franc icewine that's thick, almost syrup. We're told that everyone in the region is having a problem getting their icewine off as the weather has not cooperated. We're offered some light rose to cut the icewine but I can't see why one would do that. At other wineries we sample some Vidal icewine.
Maddie, one of the young women in our group, is dutifully sticking her nose into the glass and sniffing deeply — she manages to snort up some of the wine into her nose!
We end up buying an 8% Mindful Rose (Kate thinks this will help moderate the calories and alcohol), a couple of 2016 Crooked Pine Late Harvest Cabernet Franc (half bottles but only $8.50), a 2020 Serenity Pinor Noir Rose, a 2017 East Dell Pinot Noir and a 2017 Syrah.
Nomad at Hinterbrook Winery
The remainder of the wineries Chris, our driver, stands back and the wine steward at the winery shows us around. Chris tells us that some wineries have complained to the tour operator that he's a little too pushy. Kate says he seemed a bit "shirty" about that.
Chris points out a nearby red barn and tells us that they make appasimento wines here (see more below) but we never tasted any. This is a new winery for us, we've not been before.
The wine steward is interesting. We try to identify his accent and he tells us he's from Ukraine and speaks several languages (English, Ukraine, Russian, German, and more). He's quite knowledgable, we understand he has a PhD., and we learn a bit from him. We taste a couple of sparkling rose wines and he explains the charmat method (the wine is fermented in a closed vessel to capture the effervescence as opposed to Champagne which has a secondary fermentaion in the bottle) and how sugar levels in sparkling wines are muted by the carbonation. These are wines to be enjoyed now, they are not for aging.
He tells us the popular story about
Marie Antoinette: the champagne coupe was apparently shaped to fit her left breast. He acknowledges that it's just a myth. He then ponders the model for the champagne flute.
We taste a Pinot Grigio, which usually I find as a pretty bland wine, that I really like. It has a bit of grip to it and we buy a bottle. We taste their Bordeaux Blend, a 2018 Wanderlust Meritage, and he corrects my pronunciaion error — it's "meritage" like "heritage". We buy both of these. They're both bottled in expensive slim but heavy Bordeaux style bottles with proper corks — no screw caps here!
Chris hurries us along as we have more wineries to see and a schedule to keep. We could have stayed much longer talking to the wine steward. He was really interesting. But Chris, our driver, interrupted several times to hurry us along.
Reif Estate Winery
Reif (say it like "reef") Estate Winery is just outside of Niagara on the Lake along the Niagara River. We are escorted to a private tasting room where we have our wine and cheese combinations. It's just a very small snack (3 small pieces of cheese with 3 small crackers) but a welcome bite that goes well with the wine. Some of us skipped breakfast and are starved and a little tippsy.
We taste several wines and they're all quite nice. The steward is a young woman and the group engages pretty well with her.
We bought a couple of "The Magician" which is a kiln dried Shiraz/Pinot Noir blend. We didn't taste this wine but I'm intrigued by the style — it ought to be interesting. The grapes are first dried in what I assume to be tobacco barns (not a "kiln" as like a potter's kiln). In Italy this is known as "
appassimento" style made famous by Amarone wines of the north.
RiverView Cellars Winery
This winery is on the Niagara River just a little south of Reif. We've been tasting quite a few wines by now and are a bit giddy. The gang poses with me for the picture above and Kate buys some chocolate. The wine steward wasn't as engaging as some and I can't recall anything special about the wines. But I suspect that's largely because we're somewhat saturated with the various tastings.
We follow along the river back into Niagara chatting and having a great old time. The gang sings "Happy Birthday" for Reg as we drive by the Whirl Pool Gorge.
Sunday Night
That evening we go to Milestone's (say "mill-eh-stone-eh") at our hotel and order a dinner to take back to our room. There's no fireworks in the gorge tonight.
Monday: Returning Home
On Monday morning the wind has subsided. We check out of the hotel and drive down for a quick view of the Horshoe Falls before heading home via the QEW. My intention is to take the Expressway to Hamilton, then up the mountain, across the Alexander Parkway, then the 403 to Woodstock and the Embro Road home. But it's a lovely day and other ideas come to mind.
Kacaba Vineyard and Winery
We pulled off the QEW at Jordan Station with the intention of finding a place for lunch. Driving along King Street at the foot of the Beamsville Bench we stop into
Kacaba Vineyard and Winery. We note their sign saying, "We're Open and have an award winning Syrah!". We turn around and head back to them.
It's not busy, it's early Monday morning, and we have a tasting with a nice young wine steward. She tells us there's a $25 fee for the tasting but they will waive it if you buy some wine. The place has expanded quite a bit since our last visit and now has a huge tasting room. She takes us to a private table/tasting station where we share and sample a few wines. All are very impressive. The whites are lovely, but a touch too cold. She agrees and tells us the fridge at that tasting station runs too cold and there's no adjustment on it! They must have their own stemware washer as each tasting is served in a fresh glass. The stemware are large, made of fine glass, and the pours are more than ample.
We're looking for that special Oaked Chardonnay (for Kate) and Pinot Noir (for Reg) and are not disappointed. I think we ended up tasting 5 or 6 wines (well beyond what the tasting includes). We end up buying a 2018 Oaked Chardonnay and a 2020 Estate Chardonnay as well as a couple of the 2021 Susan's Sauvignon Blanc. The steward tells us that their vineyard was planted in reds and, while I enjoy their Pinot Noir, I am gob smacked by a 2019 Proprietor's Block Syrah and a 2018 Reserve Syrah — we buy both. A few years ago I brought back a Peninsula Ridge Syrah that I had found at a tasting. These are only the second Syrah I've ever had from Ontario. They're lighter than Australian Shiraz (which is often too "jammy") and cleaner/fresher/less earthy than the French Syrah. We are impressed and decide we'll set these aside for a dinner with our friends Carol and Bob.
As we're checking out, we had picked 5 wines, the steward says, "You know if you order a case (of 6) you get 15% off?" — that's how we ended up with the two Sauvignon Blanc to round out our case. She was an excellent steward and a good salesperson as well. And they have lovely wines, do sample them if you're in the area. At this writing there are five (5) Kacaba wines at the LCBO but all the ones we purchased are only available at the winery.
They kindly try to help us find an open restaurant and make some suggestions. However, it's Monday of a holiday weekend and we can't find anything open. We even called
Peninsula Ridge, where there's a restaurant, but it was closed that day. So we continue on home driving along Mud and Fly Roads on the top of the escarpment.
Bottom Line Summary
This note is a lot longer than I had intended. Let me close off and give a quick summary of lessons here:
- Take a wine tour, you'll make some friends and taste many fine wines.
- The quality of Ontario wines in the Niagara VQA is stellar. There's lots of really great wines.
- I'm particularly impressed by the several Syrah we tried.
- Enjoy a nice chef quality meal at an Ontario Winery.
- The wineries we were most impressed with were smaller and off the beaten trail.
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