It’s not every vintage that nature allows for a Cabernet Sauvignon Icewine, but when it happens, it creates magic. A decadent nose of pure strawberry extract, crushed currants and rhubarb. It’s thick and lush on the palate with strawberry pie and rhubarb flavours that are persistent and mouth-filling. There is enough acidity to provide vibrancy through the finish.
This was the best white wine I had from Niagara in 2014, a stunning Riesling and perhaps the greatest ever produced in Canada. It is an enthralling wine from start to finish with a nose of Asian pear, apple blossom, orange rind, lemon, lifted white flowers, stony minerality and beeswax. It is so beautiful on the palate with substance, electricity and flavours that range from pear and ginger notes to apple, apricot, anise and honeycomb. This beauty grabs you from the first sip with its range of flavours, subtle spices and mouth-watering acidity to the complex array of flinty minerals and nuances that build in intensity. It is lithe, yet assertive. It is succulent, yet focused. It is, in a word, seductive.
Such an alluring beauty, and always vying for the top Chardonnay made anywhere in Canada in any given year. All the organic fruit is handpicked, meticulously sorted and whole-bunch pressed. The poached-pear aromas are joined by toasted vanilla and hazelnuts; a bit of marzipan enters the fray, and always that gushing Beamsville-Bench minerality that gives the wine its sense of place, its complexity. It is so young with a glorious future waiting, but in the mouth it still shows a juicy-yet-vibrant core of stone fruit and perfectly balanced spice and minerals. It is complex and finessed, and all leads to a long, delicious, refined finish.
The 2012 version of Southbrook’s top wine, made from organic and biodynamically grown estate grapes, is as beautiful as I can remember. It has a nose of ripe pear, toasted cashew, baking spices, grapefruit and a subtle reductive note. It is seductive and textured on the palate with creamy, rich fruit and toasted vanilla and spice that’s lifted by vibrant acidity through the finish.
This wine is unofficially known as the “Bistro” Chardonnay and is only sold at restaurants. Barrel-fermented and aged for 12 months, the wine exudes ripe pear, apple, peach, honey, spice, white flower, vanilla, cream and toast. It is medium-bodied with excellent length and refreshing acidity. Lobster ravioli in a beurre noisette sauce or filet of halibut are well suited to this wine.
Bright, fresh and lively aromas and flavours of citrus, lime and apricot with a racy crispness, great balance, minerality and lifted acidity on the refreshing finish.
A classy Chardonnay from the Niagara Peninsula. Straw-coloured with a minerally, smoky nose opening on the palate to rich flavours of apple, pear and green pineapple; full in the mouth with great length.