Niagara Ice Wine Festival
Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 9:30PM Well I had a great time at the Niagara Ice Wine Festival, how about you? Since I was out with the kids I only had a chance to visit 3 wineries but it was a great afternoon nonetheless. We stopped in at Stonechurch Vineyards, Southbrook Vineyards and Strewn Winery. We also tasted a lot more than just ice wines, however for this post I'll focus specifically on the ice wines from Southbrook. Southbrook offered 2 Vidal ice wines for tasting, a 2004 barrel fermented and a 2005 steel fermented. I thought both of them were fantastic. At the time, I thought I liked the 2005 better but now that I think back, I really want to try the 2004 again! The 2004 barrel fermented Vidal tasted like baked apples to me, delicious. A lot of people think that it actually tastes like Christmas cake! It definitely has a sweetness and breadiness to it that the 2005 steel fermented ice wine does not have. The 2005 was much lighter in both taste and colour. Much more of the tropical notes came out, making me think that it would taste awesome with coconut.
On top of having the chance to taste some great ice wine, I also ran into Ann Sperling, the Director of Winemaking at Southbrook Wineries, and had a nice chat. We had met previously at Wine Camp TO. It is really nice that I'm starting to recognize people out at the wineries.