Review Archive #1

Here are a few wines that I reviewed in March and am sharing with you now. I've tried to increase the description in the reviews since I started in February. As I post them, you will notice that some are more detailed than others.

March 2011 - Tasted the following at a restaurant: Forrest Sauvignon Blanc. Unfortunately this New Zealand wine is not available at the LCBO. I would give this wine a 90.

Tasted March 2011: Beringer Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 $10.95 (JC87). Nice wine after getting some air into it. A structure to it with a smooth finish. Had it with roast pork and vegetables. I'm looking forward to trying some more pricy Cab Sauv's by Beringer in the future.

Tasted Samples Mar 2011: Baron Herzog Cabernet Sauvignon (JC85) and Baron Herzog Chardonnay (JC85). Nothing special about these wines. They weren’t bad but may not be worth the $15-17 price. They were a little too sweet. Not a typical Cab Sauv.

Toronto Wine & Spirit Festival

I attended the Wine & Spirit Festival 10 days ago, but since this blog is new, and I didn't try any new wines today, I figured I would write some highlights about the festival.

The good:
- It was held in a large open area, so there was a lot of room to move around and get to the vendors we wanted to sample from.
- There was a good variety of wine, beer and spirits represented, as well as a variety of food options.
- There were some interesting classes that were available as part of the admission fee, such as whiskey tasting and the steps on reviewing a wine. ($25).
 The not so good:
- It was unclear exactly where and when the free shuttle bus was picking people up from. We had to wait for a TTC (public transit) bus, which took too long to show up.
- The event was hosted at Polson Pier, which was out of the way, making it a little challenging to get to.

The wines:
We tried a number of different wines at the event. Any price I put after a wine is the price the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) sells a bottle for at their store.

Fuzion Alta Reserva Cab Sauv $9.95. This was my favourite of the show. It tasted how a good cab Sauv should taste and could easily sell for $5 or $10 a bottle more. It was smooth going down with cherry flavours. JC89

Fuzion Alta Reserva Melbec $9.95. This was a nice wine, although I’m not a big fan of Melbec, especially when I’m drinking it right after a Cab Sauv. JC85

Fuzion Alta Torrontes Pinot Grigio $8.95. A nice tasting white. It’s not dry, but not too sweet either. I would purchase this wine for a seafood or chicken dish. JC88

Emeri Pink Moscato $14.95. An Australian wine. This was my second time trying Moscato. This was a light, bubbly, sweet wine. It would be good as a desert wine. I probably couldn’t drink more than a glass maximum. JC86

Domaine Hatzimichalis Cab Sauv. A Greek wine that is not sold at the LCBO that I can tell. I did not enjoy this wine. I’m not sure why it tasted odd, but it did and not in a good way. JC80

Barefoot Cab Sauv $9.95. A Californian wine from industry giant E & J Gallo. This is a wine that tasted a big rough on it’s own, but I could see complementing a nice steak quite well. Wine Align rates this as 85, and I would agree. JC85

Citra Sangiovese $7.45. Definitely a solid deal at the LCBO. Similar in price to the Farnese wine of the same grape. This goes down nicely, however not quite up to par as Farnese. JC85

Fazi Battaglia Titilus $9.95. This white wine with the little scroll attached to the bottle has caught my eye before. I don’t recall if I’d ever bought it before though. I didn’t enjoy the taste of this wine. JC80

Rosehall Run Pinot Noir $19.95. The winery on Lake Erie’s north shore tends to have a little higher priced wines. This was the first one that I have tried from them, and also the first Pinot Noir I have reviewed. This is a lighter red with good character. This may be good with chicken or appetizers. JC86

Colchester Ridge Estate Winery CREW 2007 Meritage. Another wine not available at the LCBO. This wine reminded me a lot of my future father-in-law’s home-made wine. It goes down quite easily. It wasn’t a bad wine, but there wasn’t a whole lot of character. A traditional Bordeaux blend of Cabernet franc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot and retails for $20. I would spend the extra $1.95 on Trius Red, which uses the same grapes.  JC84

Trius Art of Red - Blending Experience

I made the 1.5 hour journey to the Niagara region today. I started off the trip with a 7km hike along the Bruce Trail, then after lunch went to the Hillebrand Winery. This is a beautiful winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake. There is a very nice restaurant, a large gift shop/tasting center, and a number of different tours/experiences that people can do. Hillebrand makes wine under their own name, as well as the Trius label.

My significant other and I decided to partake in the Trius Red blending experience. However before I get to that, we tried a few wines before the experence started. The first wine was the Trius Brut Rose. As the name suggests, a pink sparkling wine. It had a clean, crisp taste. A dry bubbly that is not overly flavourful, yet goes down nicely and tastes very good. The wine retails for $29.95. JC88

The second wine was the Trius Grand Red 2008. This is a wine that is not sold in LCBO stores and other than the winery, I'm not sure where else you can get it. It is made only in years that have produced grapes up to the standards for this wine. It is still a young wine and could easily age for a number of years. There was an oaky taste and a nice finish. This wine was retailing for $55, with the 2007 retailing for $60. JC90

The third wine was the Trius Red 2006. This is an older vintage than what is available at the LCBO (2009), and each year the wine-maker determines the blend that will be used between Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Cabernet Franc. A combination of these three wines have been used every year since 1989, except for 2008 when Malbec was used for 3%. JC87

The Trius Red Blending Experience
We were brought into a room with a long table, bottles of the three wines in the Trius Red: Merlot, Cab Sauv, and Cab Franc. There was also paper for recording our findings, and a couple of different measuring cups. I almost felt like I was in a science lab about to do an experiment. In a sense, I was.

We got to try all three types of reds on their own, then got to mix them to determine what combination we wanted for our own personal bottle of Trius Red. We weren't told beforehand what the combination that the wine-maker actually used in the 2009 vintage (45% Merlot, 48% Cab Franc and 7% Cab Sauv), however I knew from talking to a staff member beforehand. Personally, I don't care too much for Cab Franc in general. I probably liked the Merlot the best, with the Cab Sauv coming in a close second. I decided to mix 45% Merlot, 40% Cab Sauv and 15% Cab Franc. I thought it tasted like heaven, and I am ready to quit my day job. If only it were really that easy to make good wine!

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Hillebrand. The staff are friendly and knowledgeable. In addition to my partner and my custom Trius Red bottles, we purchased a bottle of Trius Rose Brut and a bottle of Trius Sauvignon Blanc 2010. Everyone is saying that 2010 is expected to be the best year yet for both white and red wine in the Niagara region. I am looking forward to finding out!

Out of the Gate

For years I drank wine without giving it too much thought. Other than knowing it was a red or white I didn't really know or care to know much more. That recently changed, and I started to try and learn more about the wines I liked versus those that I didn't like. I started to get more and more curious about different wine regions, grapes, storing wine, etc.

I began reviewing wines that I've tried, anywhere from sampling to drinking a lot of, in February of this year. Since that time I have personally recorded notes and rating on the wines I have tried. I started to understand what I like an what I don't like. I'm not sure if I should put all my reviews to date on here, or just start with new reviews. I'll give you a sample:

Tasted June 2011: La Vieille Ferme Recolte 2009 $11.95 (in Ontario). This was an excellent wine from the Rhone Valley in France. A mixture of four different grapes. I thoroughly enjoyed the smooth taste of plum, cherry and apricot. I had it the next day after not taking the air out and it wasn’t as good, but still satisfying. JC92

By the way, the JC## is my rating system. If I really like a wine, I will give it 90 or above. If I think the wine is vey good, but not excellent, I will give it 85-89. If the wine is decent, it gets 82-84. If I don't like the wine, it gets 80 or 81. You may think that this is an odd rating system, since 80/100 still sounds pretty good. Well, it's odd to me as well, however I'm trying to base my system on the one that a number of professional wine tasters use, including the Wine Align website.

I will end my first blog post with a couple of links that I enjoy.
http://www.winealign.com/
http://www.winefox.com/