Hello Berserkers,
Yours truly didn’t get to travel out of country for the Family Day long weekend up here in Canada unlike others who made it to sunny California and the Bahamas, but I did get to go to a friend’s house in Coldwater, Ontario for a fun weekend getaway where we ate lots of food, drank lots of wine, and played a couple of rounds of Exploding Kittens. Here’s what we had:
CHATEAU BARDE-HAUT 2006 SAINT-EMILION GRAND CRU – A very smooth Merlot based Bordeaux with lots of cranberry, dark ripe purple plum, and tobacco flavors. A touch phenolic on the finish. Tannins are well-integrated and help give this its smoothness in the mouthfeel. Really cries out for a steak. Could’ve used a bit more bright fruit as well.
CHATEAU GUIRAUD 2006 SAUTERNES – Bright straw gold color, smooth texture, lots of sweet honey, banana, and creme brulée flavors. This is quite rich and very sweet, and I notice a lot of the online CellarTracker reviews complaining about strong sweetness and a lack of acidity. To my recollection, it’s a Guiraud trademark to be on the richer and sweeter side, their house style compared to a lighter more floral Sauternes like, say, La Tour Blanche. Which leaves me wondering why folks are complaining, you know what you are getting when you get a Guiraud. Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong in my recollection of their style. I enjoyed it for what it was.
CROFT 1994 VINTAGE PORTO – A delicious Vintage Port that appears to have just hit its sweet spot at 30 years of age. Smoky, sweet ripe black cherry and black plum fruit, and a noticeably very high acidity for a Vintage Port that I really appreciated. Tannins are more than all settled out, a lot of sediment. Very good.
SIGALAS 2003 SANTORINI VINSANTO – An extremely complex but also dangerously sweet greek Vinsanto made from sun-dried Assyritiko grapes. Deep dark brown gold, honey treacle and molasses nose, and flavors of rancio, caramel, vanilla, rich raisin fruit, dried apricot and a very light touch of eucalyptus. Practically indistinguishable from an equally aged Spanish Pedro Ximenez Sherry. Anyone complaining about the 06 Guiraud above is going to go apoplectic over this one. The complex flavors help balance this out, but there’s no denying the lack of acidity that pushes it into cloying territory. Small sips with this one please, people. It truly is a mediation wine. Stupendous if you can take the sugar hit.
HIDDEN BENCH 2020 UNFILTERED CHARDONNAY – You are reading the wines in the correct order in which we had them. Yes, we moved back into dry wines for the rest of the time after using the Bordeaux and the sweet wines as apertifs. As you’ll see when I get to the gratuitous food port, we were actually able to make this work because of some specific food items we were eating which I’ll get to.
So this local Niagara region Chardonnay comes from one of the hottest and best summers where pretty much every wine from every winery reaped massive benefits. This is a crisp and surprisingly very saline Chardonany with lots of lemon and unripe green apple fruit. The saline note is wowing me, I only ever usually find it in wines from Spain and Portugal.
CHATEAU PEYRABON 2009 HAUT-MEDOC – This is very fruit forward Bordeaux with lots of wild cherry in the nose and palate. Great deep red color, very smooth texture, creamy note in the background, a touch saline, and plenty of tobacco flavor and tannins. I was raving about this because it didn’t taste like the usual Cabernet Franc heavy Bordeaux blend and was much more fruit forward. Well, I looked it up online and it turns out there’s a good reason for that – it’s actually Cabernet Sauvignon dominant! Ah-ha. That explains it. Good. It’s actually a blend of 72% Cabernet Sauvignon, 23% Merlot 23, and 5% Petit Verdot. Very affordable at just $38 CDN. I’m guessing this is a “supermarket” Bordeaux based on that affordable price. Essentially a Bordeaux daily drinker. First I’ve ever had it or even been aware that Bordeaux did such affordable wines. Very good and I’d be happy to have again.
PEPE YLLERA 2018 RIBERA DEL DUERO – A very strong and flavorful red blend from Spain with lots of tobacco and tannins that are still very strong and barely let any fruit shine through. This is quite young and could probably age for a decade or two without issue. A blend of Tempranillo, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. It’s essentially a Bordeaux wine made in Spain instead of France. Definite infanticide here, really needs a lot more agiing to be enjoyable.
1983 WARRES VINTAGE PORTO – Oh yeah. This was a touch corky on the nose and the palate when first opened and double decanted, but once that blew off… Wow. Translucent color, sweet ripe plums and vanilla on the palate, and still quite high heat on both the nose and palate. Really delicate flavor, this is an iron fist in a velvet glove. Beautiful. We actually brought this out to the hot tub with us for seconds.
We then opened another round of sweet wine aperitifs to start a fresh new round of imbibing:
DISZNOKO 2008 LATE HARVEST TOKAJI – This was quite maderized and unfortunately that became the dominant note and it didn’t go over well, especially since the wine was quite light-bodied for a sweet wine. There’s some tart dragonfruit and green apple in there, but it’s far too maderized to be enjoyable.
CHATEAU RIEUSSEC 2006 SAUTERNES – On to bigger and better. This is also maderized but nowhere near as bad as the Tokaji above. Dark straw gold int eh glass, lots of caramel, banana, dried pineapple and orange marmalade flavor. Very high acidity in contrast to the Guiraud. Very good.
CHATEAU DES CHARMES 1997 RIESLING ICEWINE – The general rule is that Canadian icewine usually only has a 10 year lifespan before it goes completely down the hill. Yeah, you can forget that now. This is full bodied, dark straw gold, syrupy and smooth in texture and sweetness and then hits you with a very tart lemon curd in the nose and on the palate. Insanely high acidity. A real treat.
BATASIOLO 2010 BAROLO RISERVA --This was decanted for 2 hours prior. Red plum, pencil lead graphite, licorice, coffee and mouth puckering chalky tannins. The finish is very tannic which leads me to feel this is another infanticide. Quite powerful and lots of aging potential here. Really needs a steak to go with it.
BEAULIEU VINEYARD 2007 GEORGES DE LATOUR PRIVATE RESERVE – A classic Cali Cab. Big and rich, redolent in red fruit, still very tannic. Could easily age another decade, maybe even two without any issue.
RIDGE 2012 MONTE BELLO CHARDONNAY – Freshly baked apple pie in a bottle. Light flint on the nose, big but well-rounded apple flavor with a smooth mouthfeel and texture, high acidity, and cream on the backend with a touch of phenolic bitterness. Extremely clean with high acidity. It’s like combining the best of Burgundy and California Chardonnays into one wine. Excellent. And could still probably age a few more years with its superb structure.
TENUTA SETTI PONTI 2020 CROGNOLO TOSCANA – Swet red plums, smooth texture, chewy tannins. 95% Sangiovese and 5% Merlot. This is a Chianti or Brunello in all but name. Just $35 CDN, very high QPR value for the price and could probably age for a few more years.
MYSTERY RED #1 – We then moved on to a couple of mystery reds and had fun guessing at them. I found this first one to have a mild Pinot-like nose with lots of rose water and pencil lead. It was light-bodied as well. One attendee thought it was Beaujolais. Another guessed at a Nebbiolo. Very high acidity, mellow tannins and vibrant fruit to me, but somebody else thought the fruit was fading and that this had 15 years of age on it. This went beautifully paired with a gnocchi marinara.
Revealed to be the Leaning Post 2018 Cuvée Winona. It’s a local Niagara Syrah and Merlot blend. I love Leaning Post wines and would never have guessed this as I’ve never had it from them before. Very good local wine.
MYSTERY RED #2 – An intriguing lemon-lime flavor on first sip, followed by raspberries and a turpentine note. Light bodied but with big fruit and dusty tannins. A stumper. Guesses at Brunello, Cabernet Franc or Cabernet Sauvignon based wine.
Revealed to be the Mayor de Castilla 2014 Ribera del Duero Riserva. Well, we were all pretty far off with this one.
Well, that was all delicious and drunk in no seemingly logical order whatsoever. We had a ton of food to go with it all. We started off with a couple of cheese boards:
Remember I said we had a couple of food items that helped us go from the dry to the sweet wines and back? Normally you think of wines as what you use to cleanse your palate between food bites, but here we did the reverse and used food to cleans our palates between wines. Some homemade pickled beets and cucumbers that were grown in the host’s own backyard. Delicious, vinagery, spicy and acidic, we used these to cleanse our palates in between wines.
Next we had some homemade Crustless Quiche:
This was followed by a homemade Spinach Dip in a Pumpernickel Bread Bowl:
We added a couple of baked sweet goods, some Butter Tarts from the 13th Street Winery bakery:
And my own homemade Chocolate Brownies:
And lastly we had some Grilled Brioche Bun Sliders topped with 3 different kinds of melted cheese:
And keeping us company throughout all this extravagance were Archie and Coco:
And the host’s own dog and cat. Baggins is the dog. The cat’s name escapes me at the moment. Both are living proof that life is good as a pet. I want to come back as a pet in my next life based on this lifestyle:
My thanks to our generous host Walter and his daughter Suzanne and the fellow guests who attended and brought food and wine: Chris, Liane, Paula, Alan, Catherine and yours truly. Can’t wait to return to Coldwater again for more.