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.

Ontario Wine Spot #7- Jackson Triggs

The story- Jackson Triggs is also massive, if not the biggest winery in Niagara. Their production goes into the million bottle range, and they produce at least 15 different varieties of wine. These guys make the 2 litres you see in stores. They are also a Vincor property, because clearly they got big enough and had a wide enough market to warrant attention. They're wines are decent, and we had a decent time at the tasting room, which is a little more true to wine than Inniskillin's. I didn't take tasting notes here, and can't remember for the life of me what the hell we drank, so I guess just try a 2L from your local alcohol vendor and see for yourself. Wait, I just remembered something. We did try the Clos Jordanne Pinot Noir because it's their super high end label and doesn't have it's own tasting room.

Clos Jordanne Pinot Noir- Village Reserve- These guys are some serious wine folks. This is a Burgundian wine house from France investing in Canada, because the conditions and soil in Niagara are close to that of Burgundy. The pinot noir is organically grown, hand harvested, and gravity fed. Dark fruit, and rather heavy for a pinot, but that's probably due to it's growing year, which was the biggest in Niagara memory. Besides the cherry and blackberry kinda tastes, I don't remember anything else. Hope that was helpful. I still think it's too expensive for how good it is.

Ontario Wine Spot #6 - Inniskillin

The story-
This is the second time we visited Inniskillin. They also have a winery in the Okanagan valley, and estate vineyards there as well. The one in Ontario is famous for their icewine, which is basically a wine made from grapes left on the vines until they freeze at least two nights of consecutive minus ten degrees Celsius. They are typically picked in the middle of the night in full winter gear. This is not the only thing that drives up the price though. The grapes freeze, meaning they yield way less liquid than they typically would. Higher in sugar, but less liquid, meaning the basically crush to grape syrup. The syrup is then fermented in the same way regular grapes are, and let reach around 7-9% alcohol(usually). The problem is that though Inniskillin pioneered Canadian icewine and is almost single handedly responsible for it's ascent to world class icewine, it has since been bought. The company that bought it is Vincor, which in turn is owned by Constellation, who also happen to own every mexican beer possible and a couple other global brews as well. A large company to say the least. As it goes, Inniskillin is lacking a bit of soul. Their icewines are syrup, because they can easily produce them in massive quantities for relatively cheap. Their tasting room is in fact a gift shop, and though our tour was educational, it showed very little besides a massive manufacturing facility. I guess you can't really insult success on this level, but it's not appealing. However, I do think it's prudent to mention that our tour guide was pretty cool, recommended brazilian steakhouses to us, and even brought us in independant of the group to taste other wines because we displayed interest.

The wines
-Cab Franc icewine- so syrupy my teeth hurt, couldn't think of anything else.

-Viognier- Actually not a bad option, very lime driven, which I wasn't expecting. Some floral notes as well.

-Cab-Merlot- A decent table wine, cheap enough price point to make it pretty drinkable. Spicy and Plum-ey.

-Sparkling Icewine- A pretty interesting combination, seeing as only some wineries in Niagara make icewine, and barely any make sparkling. Combining the two is to create a very unique wine. Sadly I don't think the though process was anything but "how can we sell even more, with even less?" and this popped out. It's still sweeter than chugging honey, but the sparkling takes away some of the mouthfeel of syrup. Good idea for people who can't stand syrupy wines.