Niagara College Teaching Winery

For the past few days I've been working in Niagara on the Lake - we had a conference for our system leaders. It was amazing two days. The hotel we were staying in was located about 5 minutes from the Niagara College teaching Winery, a place I've heard much about but never visited.

Yesterday at 4:30 I decided to pop down the street to see what all of the fuss I've been hearing was about. The Niagara College Teaching Winery has been graduating outstanding young local winemakers since its inception in 2000. Its students' wines, made under the hands-on tutelage of much-lauded winemakers, have been outstanding, though often available only in tiny quantities.

I'm so glad that I popped in. I was able to visit the new wine centre which was opened by Prince Charles last October. The Royal Visit was the lead event celebrating the opening of the $3.6 million Wine Visitor + Education Centre, a unique state-of-the-art industry centre set in the College's teaching vineyards. The Centre showcases and promotes the Ontario and Canadian wine industry, provide wine tourism information services, and feature academic and wine industry programming.

I had the place to myself and had an amazing chat with Robin who clearly knew a huge deal about the wine industry in Ontario. He lead me through a tasting of 5 wines and provided a great background of each.

All of the wines were excellent!

First up was their 2007 Cab Franc Rose. This wine is crimson red in colour, emits strawberries on the nose and suggests tropical fruit flavours. Its palate is light to medium bodied, has a great balance and just a hint of sweetness. At only $ 10.95 it is a great deal!

The College has a general label and then they have a reserve label - the Dean's List. They had a Dean's List 2007 Meritage listed so I asked ot taste it. They didn't have any open but they agreed to open a bottle for me to taste.

It was my lucky day! This wine was a deep ruby in colour with a stunning nose of cedar and currants. The flavour emanates from red and black berries. This superb wine has a complex and lingering finish. It wasn't an inexpensive wine at $ 47.95 so I warned Paolo not to open the bottle I purchased unless I was around to enjoy it. LOL

Then I moved on to their two pinot noirs. Both were from 2007 and both were a part of the Dean's List reserve wines. The first was aged in French and American oak barrels.

It was a bright ruby-plum colour; minerally beetroot and raspberry bouquet, a real sense of terroir here. Mature plum and raspberry flavours with a note of violets; medium-bodied, forward fruit with mellow tannins, a fine spine of acidity and a lovely mouth feel. This pinot was a wee bit more reasonable at $ 38.95.

The second was an 'experimental' wine. Because this is a teaching winery they decided to tate the same juice form the press and age it in Canadian oak barrels. This excellent wine has a ruby garnet colour with strawberry, black cherry and mocha aromas. It has a silky smooth taste with flavours of spicy vanilla and oak which concludes with a long finish. This 'experiment' was also priced at $ 38.95.

It was stunning to taste the difference between the two wines - a difference created by the type of barrel that the wine was cellared in for close to 2 years. Both wines were excellent but they had very subtle differences. of course, both made it into my wine carrier.

The final wine I tasted was a Baco Noir. Not a big wine nor a famous wine but one of our favourites nonetheless. Little known in the rest of the world, Baco is a signature hybrid for Ontario. It is also one of Paolo's favourite grapes.

This wine is intensely coloured with ruby-black highlights and sings ripe black fruit from the depths of the glass, in this case rounded out by aromas of tobacco and pepper with blackberry, rhubarb, vanilla and smoke. The mouth feel is full with concentrated black cherry and sour cherry flavours. At $ 13.95 it was a huge steal!

The Niagara College Teaching Winery is producing our winemakers of the future (as well as their own wines) and they seem to be teaching these, for lack of a better term, “kids”, good technique, if these wines were any indication of what is being taught there.

Comments

[sandrac]

Sounds like a great experience (with or without Chuck!)

[Kayte]

How fun and what an education to just get to experience and taste and learn. Striking architecture on the building and the surround.

[JDeQ]

It was a fun visit - quick, informative, with great wines. I enjoyed it so much that it will be the first stop on Mom's Mother's Day wine tour next week!

[nancyhol]

Great reviews, Jerry! I have never tasted a Canadian wine, so it was interesting to hear about them.

Is Prince Charles known as a wine aficionado? Wow! I didn't know.