Wine Stuff

Well, believe it or not, we haven't had much of a chance to get out to wineries and taste so I haven't really got much of an understanding of trends or flavour profiles as yet. but I thought it worthwhile mentioning a few bits and bobs.

At first sight the vineyards are really untidy and look unkempt. Instead of the nice neatly hedged, trimmed, plucked and mown vineyards we are used to, these are very vegetative, sprawly, have several trunks per vine and unmmown interrows. In defense of the grapegrowers, it has been an unbelievably wet year, meaning that less time has been dedicated to vineyard maintenance and more time will have had to be spent on spraying etc due to the increased humidity and wet canopies. Mowing would come a long way down the list. on the other side of the coin, I would have thought that putting the time into clearing out the canopy you would get better spray penetration, wind to dry it up and more bunch exposure........... apparently (via Glen!) there is still a lot of basic vineyard maintenance to be put into practice here. Crops look so heavy (10-15T/a) but at least some of the better vineyards have been heavily leaf plucking around the fruit. Interestingly, most of the wine grapes hang right at the bottom of the canopy - which is quite low for most of the vineyards. Veraison is very late this year (about 3 weeks) and when you have a short autumn, 3 weeks is a hell of a long time to make up. Added to this, disease pressure is very high this year. there is an adage that you have to pick when the fruit reaches 20 brix or 30% rot - LOL - this will be a case in point this year. Obviously, the several trunks are to help reduce losses when there are severe winters. There are many frost fans about the place as there are frequent spring frosts.

Soils, from what I can gather so far, are variable around the Niagara area - to be expected considering the geology of the place! Most soils are heavy clay - great for Pinot- and in one area there is a red earth similar to Coonawarra red soils.

The wines have been a real mixed bag. I have concentrated mainly on aromatic whites so far, particularly Riesling. There hasn't really been a consistent profile - there are a range of flavours from mineral to peachy tropical - but in general, the flavours seems less citrus and riper than a lot of cooler rieslings in NZ. Which is striking, because the acids are very different - there are a lot greener and sourer than I am used to. And some are just so unbalanced they are hard to appreciate. (is that diplomatic enough???). The pH and acid levels are generally better than ours (ie pH of 3.3 and acids of 8g/l) and alcohols in line - not too hot. The Pinot gris' I have tasted have been similar in the pear drop / floral character but without the heat and astringency at the back palate. The Chardonnay's are tight, tight, tight, and with quite obviously oak. They are trying a lot of Canadian Oak barrels, which I have found to be very sappy and astringent. They have a bit of a chardonnny clone here called Musque which is literally very muscat like in aroma and flavour - really nice with the tight acid saving it from being too flabby and overblown. The few wines that are under screw cap are showing classic reductive aromas and we have found some basic winemaking faults in several wines.

The reds in general surprised me. Although the acids were still pronounced there were some really nice ripe dark berry, cedar, spice, Christmasy aromas. The reds seem so more effortless than the whites..........

However, these are just my impressions and we have only jut started on the wine journey for Niagara. More updates as and when we imbibe............