Ontario Wine Spot #8- Cave Spring

The Story-
I don't really know much about the founding of Cave Spring, but this winery did have an awesome tale to tell. We arrived later than we thought, around 15 minutes before closing. The lady at the tasting bar was fun, and as soon as she talked to us a bit, started getting more comfortable and telling us what she really thought. I think the customer service industry has the effect on people that they are really blunt once their cover of niceties is gone. She was awesome, cussing and complaining about American tourists, and generally letting us know what her opinions were. This sounds like too much, but after a day of wine boutiques, it's amazingly refreshing. So we tasted some wines, had some conversation, ran over time until the doors we're already locked and the designer was in talking about things that needed doing. He joined the conversation and ended up telling us about his European and North American travels. He was a hippy and a vagabond, and liked it that way. He bought us Cave Spring T-shirts that he had designed, we bought a bottle of wine, and they gave us three loaves of bread that were going in the garbage otherwise. Pretty epic.

Riesling- A nice minerality, with a fair serving of apples.

Dolomite Riesling-Hugely Grapefuity and pretty mineral. Nice wine.

Chardonnay Musque-Smells and tastes like orange peel. I didn't write anything down for this one so I'm going on memory. My memory is orange peel.

Gamay Noir-One of the varieties I like a lot because it can be really earthy, gamey and somehow still maintain fruity, more light bodied characteristics. This gamay was halfway decent, showing a bit of the earth but a little too many oak characters for me. I like oak, but when the wine gets overshadowed by the time it has spent on wood it pisses me off.

La Penna- This is a really interesting wine, made in the style of Amarone. They pick the grapes, then air dry them to up their concentration of sugar and flavour. After drying, they are then pressed and concocted into a wine. It's a mix of Cab Franc and Cab Sauv. The wine is dry, smoked, and cherried. Thats all I got. Also some vanilla and spice from the oak, which is Hungarian, which I'd never heard of before.