TNs:Niagara Region Icewine Roundup

WINE TALK
1

Hi Berserkers,

Another round of Niagara regional varietal icewines. An aged Gewurztraminer and a pair of Vidal and Cabernet Francs for you to check out.

LAKEVIEW CELLARS 2002 GEWURZTRAMINER ICEWINE $30 (20 Bees Retail trailer) – This aged Gewurztraminer icewine has a nice dark amber brown color, a full body, and a nose of mango, banana and caramel. Great tropical fruit flavors in the mouth, especially of mango. Lots of honey sweetness. Due to its age, maderization has given it some nice toffee and caramel flavors as well. It’s got some nice acidity on the end but definitely not as much as some of the younger Gewurztraminer icewines I’ve had recently from Palatine Hills, Stoney Ridge, and Jackson-Triggs and even their own 2006 vintage.

This icewine is the Gewurztraminer twin brother from a different mother of the Daniel Lenko 2002 Vidal icewine I gave my Best Sweet Wine of 2010 Sticky award to in another thread. It’s essentially aged to a perfect balance with a harmonious blend of toffee and honey, fruit flavors and acidity.

Like that Vidal, this one should be consumed this year, if not immediately, as I believe that more cellaring will likely cause it to tip over fully to the toffee/caramel side at the total expense of the acidity. That’s what happened with the 2001 Royal DeMaria Vidal and 1999 Colio CEV Vidal icewines I tried last year. I described those two wines as “Vidal port” in some previous notes and I believe that this wine would turn into a “Gewurztraminer port” if left to age another year or two. Besides, its so good, why wait to drink it? As it is now, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

FLOURISH 2007 VIDAL ICEWINE $18.95 (LCBO) – An intensely sweet icewine. My research shows it has a very high 270 grams of residual sugar per liter, going against the recent trend to make less sweet icewines in Ontario. Amber gold color, nose of apricot and peaches. Very full body, almost syrupy. Very strong sweet flavors of apricot, far more than I usually taste in a Vidal icewine which I find often tends to be more peach and mango-like. Strong honey sweetness for such a young icewine. Has just enough acidity to barely keep it in check, but a lot less than I have encountered in other Vidal icewines.

This would easily overpower any other dessert you serve it with its sweetness. Better to serve this one all by itself as dessert. If you don’t like icewines because you find them too sweet and cloying, this is definitely not the one for you.

FLAT ROCK CELLARS 2007 SWEET REVENGE VIDAL ICEWINE: $34.95 (LCBO) – And on the flipside to the Flourish icewine above, we have a very balanced one from Flat Rock Cellars. Very bright lemon gold color, the brightest and most translucent white icewine I have ever seen. The bottle almost glows when held up to fluorescent light.
Its medium body verifies the icewine’s lightness and is actually impressive when you consider that virtually all Vidal icewines have a full body that push towards canned peach syrup consistency. Tastes of light peach and mango, balanced by some night lemon peel acidity. Not too sweet at all, it’s very close to a Select Late Harvest in flavour.

This is an extremely well-balanced Vidal icewine, probably the most balanced Vidal icewine I have ever tasted so far. Like the Lakeview Cellars line of icewines I tasted recently, this is an icewine you serve to people who don’t like icewine because they find it too sweet and cloying. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Interestingly, I managed to find a single bottle of their 2006 vintage which I purchased along with two of their 2007 vintage. In stark contrast to their 2007, it’s a dark amber gold colour. I haven’t opened it yet but it will be very interesting to try them side by side as an icewine mini-vertical.

MAGNOTTA 2007 CABERNET FRANC ICEWINE $54 (Magnotta Retail stores) -–Strong nose of strawberry with a hint of black cherry. Light body, yet somehow it has the structure to really carry the flavors through despite lacking a gripping texture in the mouth. Really strong sweet strawberry and currant flavors give way to a bright lemony acidity, resulting in a great overall strawberry lemonade finish. Fades just a wee bit on the end, though, maybe because of that light body? Still, it was delicious. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

HENRY OF PELHAM 2009 CABERNET FRANC ICEWINE $39.95 (LCB0) – Light pink ruby color. Medium body. Very light nose of strawberries. I actually had to take a couple of sniffs to detect it. Nice taste of fresh strawberries changes in the mouth to crab apples as the light acidity kicks in. Lightly sweet for an icewine, definitely not the honey sweetness of a Vidal icewine. More like the sweetness of a freshly picked strawberryor peach . There’s even a feather soft touch of tannin flavour at the end! I’ve never had that in a red icewine before. Nice. The most balanced Cabernet Franc icewine I’ve ever tasted. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Just note that the price above is for a 200 ml quarter bottle, not a 375 ml half-bottle, making this icewine a bit more expensive than usual.

OVERALL: It was nice to see how equally respected Niagara winemakers can come up with such different results when making the same varietal of icewine, especially in the case of the two Vidal and Cabernet Franc icewines. I usually like them very sweet myself, but I actually ended up preferring the Flat Rock Cellars and Henry of Pelham wines because of the great balance they had and the fact that they pulled back on the sweetness quite a bit. Sometimes less really is more. Cheers. [cheers.gif]

2

Thanks for the nice notes, Tran. Looks like a very/very interesting tasting.
Was particularly interested in the '02 GWT. Sounds like it is doing well.
Most of my experience comes from Calif freezer ice wines, not so many “true” ice wines. The Calif
versions tend to be much more simple than the “true” ice wines, probably because they’ve not been hanging
out there on the vine waiting for that freeze to come along, so “stuff” happens to them I suppose.
The Calif versions seem quite variable in their aging curves. The two Ojais I reported on were doing very/very well.
But many just remain simple for their entire lives (which can be quite long, actually) and never seem to develop much in the
way of aged/secondary characteristics. I’m still trying to figure it all out.
Tom

3

Thanks for the notes. you never have to talk me into trying a henry of pelham ice wine.

4

Thanks guys. I actually have a hankering to try a freezer ice wine myself, just to be able to compare the two. The “stuff” happening to the grapes when making icewine are more maturing but also a process of freezing, thawing and refreezing that Donald Ziraldo and Karl Keiser describe in their book “Icewine.”

SInce they can’t be picked until at least -8 degrees Celsius per law up here in Canada to be called icewine, they are constantly undergoing this process which concentrates the sweetness even more.

WIth a freezer wine, once frozen in the freezer everything stops cold (pun intended) which may explain their simplicity but I find California wine so fruit flavorful that I can’t help but be intrigued by the thought of a California freezer wine.

Henry of Pelham is a very good icewine maker. Their Riesling is on the LCBO Vintages Essentials program list (every story must have some in stock) and I’ll be trying their Vidal at the end of April when I visit their winery. It’s quite pricey, though, I have only every bought it when it goes on a $5 off sale as it is now. I find $44.95 a bit more reasonable than $49.95 for it.