La Gourmandesse

2009 Sandbanks Baco Noir, $15.05, LCBO#110049 & 2008 Dunes, $13.05, LCBO#110031.

This weekend I went into the LCBO with one thing on my mind and one thing only- to pick up some great wine. Although I continue to have fun trying out new $10 wines, the gems seem few and far between lately. Rather than purchase yet another bottle of affordable disappointment, I thought it was time to splurge on some summer favourites.

For this Wine Wednesday I am sharing my two best Ontario wines- which coincidentally come from the same winery and are 100% Ontario grown. When it comes to home grown wines, I really only feel right buying VQA. There’s just something so silly to me about labels that say “cellared in Ontario,” as if you won’t notice the conspicuous absense of the VQA seal.  If you didn’t grow the grape here, where it got cellared does not mean much to me. Hence my beef with most of the wine WalMart and the Wine Rack carries. By these standards, retirees can start putting “cellared in Ontario” on the crappy home made wine they make in their basements. Maybe WalMart will start carrying that?

I discovered Sandbanks Estate Winery on a Prince Edward County wine tour in May 2009. Our tour had the good fortune to bump into the winery’s lovely winemaker, Catherine Langlois, and I can see how her sunny disposition leads to great wine.  In my opinion, her wine is the best that Prince Edward County has to offer, and I’ve sampled most of the region’s vineyards. I love that I get to buy local and get great wine, and I can only imagine how much better things will get as the vines mature.

Their Baco Noir is one of my go to red wines. It’s exactly what I want in a wine; bold and fruit-forward with a touch of oak. I guess it’s just my luck that baco noir is often grown in more difficult climates like Ontario because it is definitely my kind of grape. That said, I have tried some other Ontario baco noirs and they are nowhere near as good as this one. So I must give some credit to the winery for growing a lovely grape and making a fabulous bottle.

Their other great bottle is Dunes, which is a Vidal Riesling blend. Again, it is a fruity and fresh wine. Not too sweet, with some crisp citrus notes that make it very refreshing. This has been one of Kevin’s favourite whites ever since I introduced it to him last year.

We’re having a small dinner party this week, and I think the Dunes will be a good opener with olives and cheese, while the Baco should partner well with some juicy steaks off the BBQ.  Cheers to great summer sippers!

I’m not typically one to browse the German section of the LCBO, especially because smaller stores seem to mainly feature such atrocities as Blue Nun, wine that Germans themselves would never touch.  So I am not terribly familiar with German varietals and wineries.

2008 Pelee Island Gewurztraminer, $9.95. LCBO#135970.

By some strange coincidence, however, two Ontario wines based on German grape varietals have crossed my path this week. Last night, our friends Mac and Stacy dropped by for dessert and brought a bottle of Gewurztraminer that was a great partner for my Fudgy Layer Cake.

Pelee Island Winery’s 2008 Gewurztraminer is floral, fresh and fruity.    Most of Pelee Island’s wines are VQA, but this one is a 30% domestic/70% foreign blend, cellared in Canada. We’ll have to forgive them as a little research has informed me that Gewurztraminer is a very temperamental grape to grow. A crisp pale straw colour, with a typical bouquet of roses and flavours of peaches and pears; it is very balanced with a smooth finish. Definitely on the sweet end of the spectrum, it’s a great dessert choice, but is quite sippable and could pair well with spicy asian food.

Overall, I give this Gewurztraminer 8.5/10 for taste and 4/5 for value.

2007 Trumpour's Mill Riesling, $11.95. LCBO#28258.

Tonight, our spring salad with baked salmon needed a white wine partner, so it was the perfect time to break out a VQA Riesling we got this fall.  It’s from the Grange of Prince Edward County, an incredibly charming little winery on a farm property near Picton, ON. Their Trumpour’s Mill 2007 Riesling is an interesting bottle. We got it as part of a food and wine festival door prize, and I’m not sure I would ever have picked it up on my own.  We had 2 bottles of it, and looking back at my November 2009 notes, this second try has me drawing the same conclusions.

The wine has a strange chemical quality to both the nose and the taste. Kevin and I agree that it is reminiscent of cheap dollar store erasers. I have to admit it ruins the wine for me, I can’t get past it. If the chemical aspect was absent, it would be a nice, crisp, off-dry wine with a taste of apples and citrus. It has a bit of a tart finish that leaves you puckering in a good way.  Maybe future years of this wine will not have the same chemical issues. Until then, I will pass.

Overall, I give this Riesling 7.5/10 for taste and 3/5 for value.

2008 Pelee Island Monarch Red, $9.95. LCBO#107763.

Wine Wednesdays have made me especially fond of the middle of the week. I thought I’d be patriotic and sample a Canadian $10 bottle, which is no mean feat if you want something VQA, and not mass-produced in the Niagara (Romanian juice) tradition.

Pelee Island Winery delivers an exceptionally fun and sippable bottle for a reasonable price. It is a red blend, which they list as Zweigelt: 33%, Baco Noir 40%, Chambourcin 10%…..and 17% mystery if you are able to do simple math.  No matter, as the wine is well worth drinking, even if the vintners were drunk when they calculated the technical data. I really like Baco Noir, and this delivers a lighter version of that extreme fruitiness.

The wine is a ruby colour, with an earthy nose and a fruit forward, jammy taste. Kevn detects raspberries while I say grapefruit. It has a sweet-tart quality but still a balanced finish. Somewhere between light and medium bodied, it would be excellent as a summer wine, and paired well with our BBQ dinner. I feel a picnic related daydream coming on…..

It is a very fun and friendly wine, and I think I may keep some on hand for our inevitable housewarming party.

Overall, I give this wine 8/10 for taste and 4/5 for value.