27
Sep
2014
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Category: Lost & Found / Taste it Again
Click here to read the original review
(August 14, 2014) ... For those of you with a mind to age ice wine keep this in mind: the sparkling stuff may not age as sparkling. What I mean by that follows.
I had my in-laws in from Michigan, my mother-in-law is a slut for the sweet stuff, so when she is here I open my annual bottles of Icewine. This time I thought to open something special, like an Inniskillin 2006 Sparkling Icewine ... She claims not to like bubbles in her wine and I was about to prove her wrong. But alas once I removed the cage and wiggled the cork out of the neck, instead of a pop of the cork there was barely a sputtering 'phft'. I poured it into a small glass and to my horror it was flat, no bubbles whatsoever. That does not mean my mother in law had to suffer through, she was quite happy to have no fizz. The resulting wine came off as no more than a still Icewine, and an aged one at that: caramelized and slightly oxidized fruit such as apricot, peach and apple ... but it still lacked the fizz to make it truly special.
27
Sep
2014
- Details
-
Category: Lost & Found / Taste it Again
Click bellow to read the original reviews
2004 Cabernet Franc ... 2007 Cabernet
(Re-Tasted August 12, 2014) ... For the second time in less than a week I got to taste older wines with the original winemaker (earlier in the week I sat down with Rob Muscedere in the Lake Erie North Shore). Today I was invited to Coyote's Run to taste through a new selection of reds and brought a couple of my own along to taste.
We kicked the old part of the tasting off with a 2004 Cabernet Franc, the surprise here was that it was sealed under cork ... How embarrassing, at a now all screwcap winery people are running around looking for a corkscrew ... Luckily I travel with one so it was at hand, but it was fun to see the panic on peoples' faces. The nose started off like stinky asparagus, green pepper, and pencil shavings then turned more along the lines of saddle leather with about 15-20 minutes of air. Palate proved to be much better than what the nose let on: silky cherry, raspberry with a touch of caramel. We all agreed that for a 10 year old mediocre vintage wine it was really good. You just had to get past the nose.
Next up was this (under screwcap) 2007 Cabernet, winemaker Dave Sheppard says that as far as he remembered it was a 50/50 split blend of Franc and Sauv (winemakers may not know prices but they are remarkably close with grape percentages from year to year). The nose on this one was much more inviting showing off dried black cherry and hints of vanilla. Palate was silky with flavours reminiscent of dried cherry and strawberry along with gentle spices; it's well balanced and drinks very nicely ... Of the two the 2007 was the winner, while the 2004 was very much a surprise, palate-wise anyway.
