Scratching a Fortified Wine Itch Off of My Back

Berserkers,

Despite my recent pair of tours to Niagara WIne Country with the opportunity to get loads of icewine, I actually have suffering from a fortified wine itch that I just have to keep scratching.

Don’t get me wrong, I did stock up on some Jackson-Triggs Riesling and Cabernet Franc icewine during their 2 for 1 sale at the local Wine Racks here in Ontario. But the fact is that I’ve been itching for classic fortified wine since the end of the year as you can tell from recent posts.

I’m done building up my Vintage Port collection for the time being. The Vintage Port is a nice mix of ready to drink high-enders (Warre’s 83, Dow’s 85, Delaforce 94), great value single quintas (Dow’s 99 Bomfina, Grahams 2001 Malvedos), and young babies from last decade that still need to incubate (Dow’s 2000, Ferreira 2000, Quinta de la Rosa 2000, Fonseca & Van Zeller 03, Ventozolo 04, and Gould Campbell 07). This is also a nice mix of well known and lesser known names.

Same for the Tawny Ports. Only 20 and 30 year olds in the mix from Fonseca, Ramos Pinto, Kopke, Graham, Warre and Offley. Heck, I’ve even got an Australian 35 year old Tawny in there. I will likely acquire the 20 year olds from Dow’s and Cabral when I next hit up the SAQ but that’s probably it for now.

However, it turns out that I still had a fortified itch to scratch. This week, the LCBO picked up releases of Lustau Moscatel and Pedro Ximenez Sherry so I picked some up. Then I found out that they had also picked up some Justino’s Boal and Malvasia Madeira. All of these were available in extremely affordable sub $20 CDN half-bottles.

Well, I already have some Port, I figured I may as well make it a hat trick and pick up some Sherry and Madeira. I did try some Lustau East India at the Gourmet Food and Wine Expo last November and remember it not being all that, but then I found out that the East India is a special blend of half sweet Pedro Ximenez and dry Oloroso. So it will be interesting to see what a pure Pedro Ximenez Sherry is supposed to be like.

Just for fun, I even picked some Domaine des Bernardins 2009 Muscat Beaumes de Venise which dropped on sale to less than $15 a half bottle. I’ve always been curious as to what this wine is like so now I finally have some to try.

It’s kind of interesting that when I first started out here, I found sweet wines that were fortified to 15% to be too alcoholic because I could readily taste the heat off of them and now I deliberately seek out wines with much higher levels of alcohol like Vin Santo, Port, Sherry and Madeira. [cheers.gif]

Jackson-Triggs Riesling rocks, esp the reserve. Inniskillin makes a terrific icewine.

Where are you located? We’re in Buffalo (duh… ) and make many trips to N-o-t-L wineries. Always a good time!

Located in good old Toronto, one hour away from the NotL wineries. Let me know if you’re ever in the area, perhaps my friends and I can hook up with you when you visit.

Welcome to the world of Madeira!