Tag: Niagara

This past year I tasted a tremendous number of wines from around the world, but some wines really resonated with me.  It may have been the great balance of fruit, sugar, acidity for a white wine, or the fruit, tannins and minerality in a red wine, or something else. Something that made the wine stand above the other wines.  Could…

While attending the International Cool Climate Chardonnay Celebration (i4C) I tasted a small lot Chardonnay, 2015 vintage, by Thirty Bench Wine Makers from the Beamsville Bench in Ontario.  That wine stood out among the other Chardonnays that I had tasted at i4C.  So once the i4C was over, and I had some time to visit a few wineries, I made…

As promised I have enclosed my tasting notes for the wines I sampled at the three International Cool Climate Chardonnay Celebration seminars.  Many of these Chardonnay come from Ontario, but there are also wines from BC, California, Chile, France and more.  My notes are not as detailed as notes I make from my structured tastings at home, but should give…

Don’t we all love sparkling wine, whether it is high end champagne, or cremants, cavas and more? At the third of the International Cool Climate Chardonnay Celebration seminars, we learned more about how dosage affects sparkling wines aromas, flavours, and balance.  This was a bit more technical in details compared to the other earlier seminars, but well worth it.  Sparkling…

This was the second seminar in our three seminars on Day 1 of the International Cool Climate Chardonnay Celebration.  This seminar’s goals according to the organizers are to answer the following, “Winegrowers love Chardonnay for its versatility. 10 winemakers will defend the stylistic decisions they make with each vintage, from homages to Old World classic styles to innovative interpretations that stretch the…

The Seventh Annual International Cool Climate Chardonnay Celebration (i4C) has wrapped up in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.  It was a series of seminars, lunches, and dinners that filled an entire weekend from July 21-23, 2017.  I was privileged to be invited to attend this event; coming from British Columbia.  We are also a cool climate region, and I was glad to see…

At the i4C+ Celebration on July 21-23, 2017 there will be 59 cool climate chardonnay producers; 25 wineries from Ontario and 34 from around the world.  There will be 2 wineries from BC too.  And as I mentioned in my previous article on the i4C+ Celebration, while the focus is Chardonnay there will also be Pinot Noir, Gamay, Cab Franc,…

If you have not heard of the International Cool Climate Chardonnay Celebration, held in the Niagara region in southern Ontario, it is something not to be missed.  The i4C+ Celebration started in the summer of 2009 with some Ontario wine makers celebrating their success at the 2009 Cellier Wine Awards in Montreal.  These wine makers believe in the renaissance of…

Canada should be proud of its recent wine history.  We started getting serious about vitis vinifera in the 1970s.  BC and Ontario started growing wine grapes and producing wines.  Nova Scotia and Quebec have followed, and I heard, but have not seen, that there are also wines being produced in New Brunswick.  Our climate since the 1970s has warmed up…

Who is Bruce Nicholson? Bruce Nicholson joined Inniskillin Wines, Niagara-on-the-Lake as Wine maker on January 1, 2007, after working for 20 years in the Okanagan where he was the first wine maker, and then became the Senior Winemaker for Jackson-Triggs Okanagan Estate in British Columbia. Half of Bruce’s awards in 2012 were for ice wine.  Does he want to be…