Icewine

Getting Back to the Roots

While the Ontario wine region is considered young when it comes to the art of growing wine grapes the taste of these wines demonstrates that this wine industry has aged well.  The reason is simple:  the roots of major wineries in Ontario go back to Europe. 

You can savor these wines at Cave Springs Cellars in Ontario. The roots of Cave Spring Cellars  http://www.cavespringcellars.com/  can be traced to Giuseppe Pennachetti who emigrated from Fermo in Central Italy in the early 1900’s.  When Pennachetti arrived in the Niagara region of Ontario he established a concrete business but upon retirement developed a passion for wine making. This is no surprise since Giuseppe grew up in a region of Italy the Greeks called Oenotria, meaning the “land of wine”.  If you look at a map of Italy’s wine-producing regions you’ll see those regions cover close to 50 percent of the land in Italy. And yes, you’d be correct in saying the Italians love their wine.

The winemaking that began as a hobby became Giuseppe’s calling.  As the winemaking business grew Giuseppe needed help and who better to enlist than his son, John, and his grandson, Leonard? Little did Leonard know then that he was in training to become President of Cave Spring Cellars.

Though Pennachetti knew that Niagara, Ontario was unlikely to be called the “land of wine” the region did offer major advantages for wine-growers. For starters the soil is ideal; for growing grapes. A gentle sloping terrace drains excess rain from the vineyards because they rest on a bench above the valley bottom where colder air is usually found (colder air can result in frost damage).

So much of successful grape growing depends upon location - the family’s vineyards rests on limestone bedrock, a fortuitous investment when Pennachetti purchased the land in 1973. The limestone brought out the best in what was quickly becoming established as a famous and unique taste, their Cave Spring Cellars Riesling. That’s not all - their other wines have a nice crisp taste including Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, and Gewurztraminer to name a few.

What else makes these wines so tasty?  Leonard’s childhood friend, Angelo Pavan, applied old country magic to perfect the wines. Plus, Leonard’s brother, Tom and his wife, Ann Weis, run a separate vineyard. Ann’s roots also go back to the old country as her family’s vineyards were in the famous Mosel Valley in Germany. 

After sampling the wine at Cave Springs Cellars we moved from the Tasting Room to On The Twenty Restaurant run by Leonard’s wife.  The namesake, Twenty, is taken from Twenty Valley which is part of the Twenty Mile Creek drainage.  In keeping with the “twenty” tradition the restaurant is 20 miles from Niagara Falls.

Lunch at On The Twenty was out of this world starting with squash soup to the main course of mahi-mahi (that was nicely paired with the Riesling).  What’s for dessert? We suggest the lemon tart, one of our favorite desserts. 

Better to forget your passport than miss out on the icewines at Cave Springs Cellars; they use Rieslings grape whereas most establishments use the Vidal.  

What more could one ask? The grand finale  would have been to spend a weekend at the Inn On The Twenty with 24 rooms available and a spa.  Alas, we had to move on with more stops to make on this busy Icewine Festival weekend.

From the Twenty Valley we journeyed a short distance to the Niagara-on-the- Lake region to visit the Reif Winery (http://reifwinery.com/ ), another winery with roots to the old country.  Klaus Reif owns the winery; his roots go back to his hometown in Neustadt, Germany.  Neustadt is located in the Rhine River Valley in the wine region known as Pfalz (also called Palatinate).

Riesling is the most planted wine grape, but Dornfelder (a dark-skinned variety of grape) has also become very popular for red wines.  The Neustadt  region is very popular during the wine festival held every October. In fact Klaus’ hometown is in the middle of the famous Deutsche Weinstrasse (the German Wine Route.) The German Wine Route is a 100-kilometer road (62 miles) that runs through twenty towns, over foothills and along the Rhine River.  

The Reif family’s winemaking roots go back several generations; winemaking is in their blood.  You could say they brought those roots with them. Klaus’s uncle Ewald migrated to Canada and purchased land in 1977 along the Niagara River.  After nurturing the land and the Reif Estate Winery opened in 1983.

Klaus would have joined his uncle then but ended up studying in Germany, receiving degrees in both Oenology (the art and science of wine making) and Viticulture (the art and science of growing wine grapes). 

Klaus came to Ontario in 1987; the same year their Vidal Icewine was named by world-renowned wine critic, Robert Parker, as one of the year’s top ten wines.  The awards keep coming; since 1984 Reif’s Vida Icewine has received over 100 gold awards.   

Klaus came to Ontario in 1987; the same year their Vidal Icewine was named by world-renowned wine critic, Robert Parker, as one of the year’s top ten wines.  The awards keep coming; since 1984 Reif’s Vida Icewine has received over 100 gold awards.    After listening to Klaus talk about the history of his vineyard he suggested we experience the “Sensory Wine Bar.”  There we tasted each of the icewines; Riesling, Vidal, and Cabernet Franc. The wines were paired with local artesian cheese and treats so sumptuous we experienced sensory overload but we’re not complaining.

Drinking icewine at the ‘Sensory Wine Bar” was much more desirable than picking grapes in the winter when the temperatures are -10 C (14 F).  Technically, to be called an icewine by the wine regulatory group, Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA) Ontario, the grapes must be picked when it is at least as cold as – 8 C (17 F).

We’ve noticed that when we bring dinner guests a bottle of Klaus’s icewine we get invited back often.

 

Niagara Peninsula Wine.  No Escaping the Fact it is all about location

The Niagara Peninsula Wine appellation (a designated wine growing region) lies within the same climate belt as the famous Burgundy wine region in France. Is this extreme compliment really a true statement?  In many ways it is! To be more precise this is true for the Cote d’Or region in Burgundy. 

One similarity is both the Niagara region and Cote d’Or have limestone as their primary rock structure, bringing out a unique mineral taste in their white wines (a very crisp taste to be exact).   Furthermore, both regions sit on an escarpment -- in geological terms a transition zone between different rocks marked by steep relief. 

Also of interest are similarities in the grapes that are grown.  Cote d’Or and Niagara both grow Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes. A final similarity is that the Niagara’s escarpment maximum height is 335 meters (1,005 feet) and Cote d’Or’s is 400 meters (1,300 feet).

There certainly most be some differences between these two wine regions and there are.   Wine making for the Cote d’Or region goes back to at least the 1100’s when it is well documented the Cistercian and Benedictine monks studied wine in great detail.   On the other hand the Niagara Peninsula is a new region that many say dates back to about 1975.  

The Cote d’Or escarpment is located on a fault line while the Niagara Peninsula gets its’ geologic form from differential erosion between the more resistant limestone below and the more easily eroded shale on the surface.  A dramatic result of this erosion is Niagara Falls!

The final difference between the two regions is the Niagara Peninsula is famous for their icewine whereas Cote d’Or is famous for their Dijon mustard (made at the town of Dijon).    

Moving from geology we need to discuss the effects of weather patterns. In Niagara effects are created by Lake Eire to the south and Lake Ontario to the north that results in a unique wine growing area.  You could say the Great Lakes create the almost “perfect storm” for wine grape growing. 

To understand this concept a crash course in Weather 101 is helpful.  Simply put it takes more units of heat to heat a body of water relative to a body of land. Conversely, when the atmosphere cools the body of water tends to retain the heat much longer than land. 

How do these differences promote good wine? During the winter locations near the water tend to be warmer than areas away from water. This is good since it keeps the Niagara Peninsula from getting too cold during the winter as too-cold temperatures can cause permanent frost damage to the vines. However, it always seems cold enough for icewine production.

This same differential heating of land and water is especially beneficial in the spring. As the cool air of winter slowly gives way to warmer spring air, the land further away from the lakes heats up faster than land close to the lake. Thus cool air near the lake during early spring retards grape bud development on the Niagara Peninsula that is good since this limits the potential of the buds being exposed to early frost. Late spring is a good thing!

The weather perks from the Great Lakes just keeps on coming.  The famous land and sea breeze is beneficial not only for the birds that use it to help them soar but the vines love the breeze as well. During the growing season the Great Lakes creates a circulation pattern between the lakes and the land (the basic sea breeze). The breeze helps minimize the development of mould on the wine grapes.

Here are some sea breeze basics. During the summer the land warms up faster than water so a breeze forms that from blows from the colder lake to the warmer land mass (this flow is reversed at night). The uplift from the escarpment helps this circulation pattern as well.

Finally, with many vineyards located near or on top of the escarpment this minimizes the impact of cold air drainage that forms on the bottom of the escarpment.  Here’s how it works:  On crisp fall nights the cold air from the higher escarpment is denser than the warmer air so colder dense air flows downward into the valley bottom. It is not that uncommon for these valley bottoms to be up to 10 degrees cooler than the air on top of the escarpment. Thus, these effects minimize the frost issues for many locations during the critical October fall harvest.

I have been to the Niagara region during all seasons and complied this data from field testing, observations, and wine tasting. I encourage you to do your own research - I’m sure you will come up with similar conclusions.

Michael Fagin