New York Cork Report

American Wine Society National Conference Recon

By Bryan Calandrelli, Niagara Region Editor

Last Saturday I did something that I’d never had the chance to do before: I led an all-Niagara (USA) wine tasting for a national audience as Rochester played host to the American Wine Society’s National Conference.

Of course, anyone with foresight and the ability to plan their lives accordingly may have actually taken advantage of the perks of being a presenter at a conference like this by pre-registering for other seminars, booking a hotel room to fully let loose and confirming whether they wanted beef, fish or the vegetarian entree at the banquet. But I did none of these.

So I’m a procrastinator who only experienced one-third of the event. But even with this limited of exposure to the society and its members, I still came away with plenty of thoughts and observations.

New York’s Presence at the Conference

The only seminar I attended due to my aforementioned lack of planning was Jim Trezise’s “New York Gold – World Class, Next Door” and I was excited to see what would represent the state as a whole. The first wine – a wine that took a double gold at the NY Food & Wine Classic – was Bellhurst’s Sparkling and it showed some reductive H2S aromas on the nose and finish. Knowing that the wines selected for this tasting were based on past gold medal awards I suppose this could have been due to some bottle variation.

Luckily, wines like Tierce’s 2008 Riesling, Corey Creek’s 2010 Gewurtztraminer, Ventosa Vineyard’s 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon and Fulkerson’s 2009 Lemberger all impressed. During the seminar there were a few specific winemaking questions, such as what grapes went into the sparkler, but unfortunately Jim wasn’t prepared for anything too geeky.

Since the AWS prides itself on scoring sheets, wine education and details I would have thought the NYWGF would know its audience and be well-prepared to present what was billed as NY’s winning-est wines.

I did find it odd that Jim’s NY Gold Seminar included seven wines from the Finger Lakes while only including one from Niagara, one from Long Island and none from the Hudson Valley. You could make the argument that this was simply because the conference was in Rochester, a short drive from the Finger Lakes, but I don’t think that should have been the point of an all-New York seminar. Besides, Rochester is actually smack in the middle of the Finger Lakes and Niagara regions.

I’m also not sure what level of interest other New York regions had in the conference or if this event was simply off their radars. I owe my awareness and participation in the conference to longtime AWS member and owner of Arrowhead Spring, Duncan Ross.

My Presentation

At the beginning of my session a quick show of hands revealed that a good chunk of attendees thought they were getting a Niagara, Ontario-focused presentation. I gave an insincere apology and assured them that they wouldn’t be let down by the wines they were about to taste from across the river.

Since an opportunity like this is few and far between, I had to go big. The whites I chose were Arrowhead Spring’s Reserve 2009 Chardonnay, Schulze’s Semi Dry Vidal 2010 and Leonard Oakes’s 2008 Icewine. Eveningside Vineyards’ 2009 Cabernet Franc, Freedom Run’s 2010 Reserve Pinot Noir, Arrowhead Spring’s 2008 Syrah and the as-yet-unnamed experiment that is Freedom Run’s 2010 Appassimento of Cabernet Franc made up the red flight.

Instead of giving them a list to accompany each flight, I let tasters form opinions, make some assumptions and guess the grape before making the big reveal, something I thought would make the tasting more interactive. How would they react to one of the most sexy Vidal Blancs I’ve ever tasted without knowing it’s a hybrid? Would they pick out a Niagara Cabernet Franc from a cool year that lacks the overt bell pepper aroma they associate with it? 

Moreover, would they recognize a pinot noir from a warm vintage that shows cherry fruit with assertive tannins and a voluptuous feel? Would the residual sugar left over in an appassimento style red make them think it was more of a dessert wine than a dry red?

The overall reaction was what I’d hoped it would be. Questions ranged from comparing how grapes do on the lakeshore vs. the escarpment to how much botrytis-infected grapes went into the icewine.

On the AWS

Seeing 550 people from across the country gather in the spirit of tasting wine was a reminder that the AWS has dedicated members and leaders alike. It was obviously no small feat to organize and pull off the three days of competitions, seminars, tours and tastings. 

Having personally attended events like TasteCamp and other, more winemaking-oriented seminars, I couldn’t help but notice some obvious differences between last weekend’s conference and what I’m used to.

The most noticeable difference was simply age. The under-40 crowd seemed largely unrepresented during my albeit-limited exposure to the attending members. While there were some funny moments that brought attention to this – like my “If you’re around next year to taste these” faux pas during my seminar which earned several giggles – anyone who I talked to about the future of the AWS mentioned the need to expose the society to the younger generations.

(Just to clarify, my comment was alluding to next year’s national conference in Portland, OR.)

Something else I noticed – a lack of social media buzz – is most certainly tied to my previous point since I was maybe one of a handful people using Twitter during the seminars.

I was impressed after meeting its leaders, taking questions from its members and sharing in its banquet, which recognized the dedication, service and passion of its volunteers and members. But it’ll be interesting to see how the society adapts to a rapidly evolving wine buying demographic.

Leonard Oakes Estate Winery's Double Gold Rush

By Bryan Calandrelli, Niagara Region Editor

The timing of Leonard Oakes Estate Winery’s party celebrating their two double-gold medal winning wines from the annual New York Food & Wine Classic couldn’t have been more appropriate. Two weeks before, their 2008 Vidal Icewine and Steampunk Cider both received this award, with the Icewine even taking home the honor of “Best Dessert Wine” in NYS, but the real story behind the appropriately named “Double Gold Rush” event: it was the first public release of the aforementioned hard cider.

Being a lucky member of the industry and media, I was invited to the early tasting before the general public arrived and as I walked through the door I was greeted with a glass and some info on the wines, a pulled pork slider and a pour of the new cider. Jonathan Oakes was socializing with some growers and I had a chance to compliment him again on the deliciousness in my glass and get some more information about the newest addition to the winery’s tasting menu.

As diverse as the Niagara USA growing region is with vinifera, native, fruit and hybrid wines, Leonard Oakes is the first to make a true cider and their decision to go traditional was made a decade ago with LynOaken Farm’s planting of ten different English Heritage apple varieties.

After years of experimenting with small batches Oakes was convinced he could create a cider with the complexity and funk of the English ciders with the crisp, clean forward fruit flavors he thought the American palate would appreciate.

“We wanted to go away from the syrupy sweet over processed additive heavy ciders and go for a pure reflection of the apple with the structure of the English style combined with the American ideal of cider,” explained Oakes (pictured below left).

The winery’s own description of Steampunk says it all:

"Using a mélange of traditional English bitter sweet (Elllis Bitter, Binet Rouge, Chisel J, Dabinette, Harry Master, Major, Michelin, Madaille, Brown Snout, Sommerset Red Streak, Tremalt ) and new age dessert apples (Fuji and Braeburn), Steampunk CIDER is the geared up infusion of old world style with new world flare."

  From what I’ve tasted, combined with what I’ve seen firsthand from when people taste it, it looks like Oakes has achieved exactly what he set out to. One sip of Steampunk inspires a flurry of words akin to refreshing, crisp, complex, clean, mouthwatering and addictive. The result is a dangerous combination of deliciousness and drinkability.

As the public portion of the event began, a sizable line formed from outside the tasting room through the door past the pork sliders and in front of the winemaker pouring his cider.  Jonathan’s enthusiasm and excitement was contagious and everyone I saw was just happy to shake his hand and congratulate him and the winery’s success.

And judging from an equally long line at the cash register as I was leaving, there’s no doubt that Steampunk cider’s popularity will quickly grow among the cider, wine and beer drinkers who can get their hands on it.

I hesitate to even mention what will happen if just a small percentage of grocery stores that carry LynOaken Farms produce are allowed to sell Leonard Oakes’s ciders. Let’s just say there will be more planting of English heritage apple trees in their future.

Extreme Grape Makeover: Chardonnay Edition

By Bryan Calandrelli, Niagara Region Editor

We all know it. Chardonnay has an image problem. It lost its way by rooting itself all over the world without regard for its culture, forgetting what made it so great in the first place.

It’s been taking acid left and right, tartaric acid that is, and hanging out in some dark places, mostly new oak, for way too long. It is a grape that is in desperate need of a PR boost, an image makeover and a primetime comeback appearance in front of the wine world. One wine region has taken this on with the hopes of boosting its own reputation as a producer of world-class chardonnay.

With the International Cool Climate Chardonnay Celebration (IC4), Niagara Ontario has pulled off the unimaginable and unleashed a not-so-new but considerably improved image of chardonnay – and it can only be described as cool.

Fifty six wineries from across the globe, including several from Canada, brought their chardonnays to Niagara Ontario last month for a series of lunches, tastings and celebrations in hopes of raising awareness that chardonnay produced in cooler climates retains a distinctive character that resembles what made chardonnay so great in Burgundy.

The makeover process involved a few gradual steps. First the organizers had to define “cool chardonnay.” They took the political strategist approach by defining “warm climate” chardonnay – their opponent if you will – on the event’s website as being “over-oaked and lifeless.” Ouch!

Next, IC4 organizers laid the groundwork for what regions could be considered cool-climate. Defining a region as such isn’t all that simple, but they described cool by altitude, by latitude, by marine influence and/or by climatic conditions. Most importantly, they needed to convince us, the rank and file drinkers, why we should seek out chardonnay grown in these regions. As the IC4 website states, “Chardonnay vines that are grown in cool climates and encouraged to allow a sense of place to shine through can produce a wine that is balanced, refreshing, complex and elegant.” Sold!

With cool chardonnay now redefined, there was only one thing left to do: nail that primetime appearance at the IC4 event. I was lucky enough to make it out for two events – a winemaker luncheon and tasting at Southbrook Vineyards and the Grand Tasting at Tawse Winery – and I feel like a born again chardonnay lover.

So who was cool enough to pour at the Chardonnay world tour, aka the Grand Tasting? Wineries from Ontario, Burgundy, Oregon, British Columbia, New Zealand, Austria, South Africa, Italy, Australia, Chile and New York were all represented. But for me, this is where the message can get a little muddy. Many would question how Australia, Italy or South Africa would be considered a cool climate or question what they have in common with Burgundy or Niagara.

The impression I got after speaking to a few winemakers was that it’s all relative.

Obviously Burgundy doesn’t need a PR makeover like the rest of the chardonnay-growing world, but I did find Burgundian-turned-Oregonian winemaker Gilles de Domingo of Copper Mountain Vineyards to be a good source for explaining his view of cool climate.

“The essentials of cool climate include a relatively late harvest of the chardonnay grapes in late September or even into October following a late bud break during the spring,” he says. Simply put, de Domingo believes a cool climate is one moderated enough to allow a gradual warm-up in the spring, while keeping daytime temperatures low enough during the summer to allow the grapes to hang late into the season.

There were a number of standouts wines at this tasting, including some from regions most people wouldn’t assume were cool climate. Josef Chromey Winery of Tasmania made a good showing, and Ataraxia’s 2009 Chardonnay from the lesser-known South African sub-region of Hemel-en-Aarde Valley were impressive. Pyramid Valley Vineyard from New Zealand poured chardonnays that were zesty and refreshing, and that may have even bordered on grassy, leaving the impression that the Canterbury region’s climate may have even been too cool for chardonnay.

It goes without saying that many of the Niagara Ontario chards were outstanding. The organizers and participating wineries obviously did their homework and poured the best the region has to offer.

My favorites were from Southbrook, Hidden Bench, Pearl Morisette and Tawse. Poured side-by-side with the international wineries, there’s no doubt, to me at least, that Niagara chardonnay can stand with the best of them.

What was the common thread in all these wines? Similarities became transparent in lively acidities, delicate balances, lower alcohols, and fruit profiles resembling citrus and stone fruit as opposed to melon and tropical aromas. There was an obvious lack of over-oaked wines, and not one of my notes included the words buttery or butterscotch, indicating that maloactic fermentations were closely managed.

But should New York now jump on the cool chardonnay bandwagon?

Interestingly enough, Dr. Konstantin Frank was the only New York producer at the event. We are certainly the textbook definition of cool climate and there’s no shortage of chardonnay growing across the state, so there’s nothing stopping New York from making wines like these – and educating the consumer as to why they’re special as well. I think New York can learn from Niagara’s coordinated marketing campaigns and meticulous quality control.

There may even be a few other grapes in the state that ready for an image makeover too. How about merlot on Long Island or Lemberger in the Finger Lakes? Maybe even baco noir in the Hudson Valley is ready for its closeup.

TasteCamp 2011: Going International this May 13-15

The Niagara River divides two wine regions as an international boundary between the USA and Canada.

By Bryan Calandrelli, Niagara Region Editor

As you’ve probably heard by now, TasteCamp is going where it’s never gone before: international. With an agenda that reads like a wine industry A-list, organizers Rick Van Sickle, Remy Charest, Suresh Doss and I have put together an all-star lineup of Niagara, Ontario and Niagara, USA wineries and restaurants that are eager to open their doors to this year’s attendees.

TasteCamp kicks off on Friday, May 13 with a Grand Tasting at one of the region’s oldest wineries, Chateau des Charmes. The afternoon will be spent at Hillebrand Estate Winery with winemaker Craig McDonald, followed by a tasting of Stratus, Lailey and Thirty Bench wines.

Icewine will be the main focus later in the day as Inniskillin, Jackson Triggs and Le Clos Jordanne guide us through tastings at the official hotel of TasteCamp North, the White Oaks Resort and Spa.

The first night wraps up with a dinner at Ravine Estate Vineyards, hosted by two of the most interesting and knowledgeable people in the Canadian wine industry, Ann Sperling, winemaker at Southbrook and Sperling Vineyards, and wine consultant and industry veteran, Peter Gamble. The focus will be on Bordeaux varieties, organics and biodynamics in the Niagara region. I can’t stress to attendees what an opportunity it is to have this husband-and-wife team available for our questions at this venue.

Saturday begins with a vineyard walk, tour and tasting at Tawse Estate Winery. Tawse makes a serious lineup of vineyard-driven biodynamic wines, and winemaker Paul Pender will be on hand to demonstrate the differences between their cuvees. The morning doesn’t end until we head over to Vineland Estate Winery for a tour of St. Urban vineyard, one of the oldest in the region. Lunch will follow with a grand tasting of wines from the Bench area.

Saturday afternoon also includes a tour and vineyard walk of Flat Rock Cellars, one of the most progressive in the region. Inside the winery’s picturesque tasting room, Ed Madronich, president of the winery and of the Wine Council of Ontario, will talk Niagara wine with attendees. The day is capped off with a sure-to-be-epic BYOB dinner at the region’s premier farm-to-table restaurant, Treadwell’s, located in Port Dalhousie.

Sunday May 15 begins with a trip back across the border for brunch and a grand tasting of Niagara USA wineries at the region’s most influential farm-to-table restaurant, Carmelo’s, located in historic Lewiston, NY. Area wineries will be showcasing their best as we explore the early success and overall potential of the United States side of the region. The afternoon will be spent on the bench of the escarpment at Arrowhead Spring Vineyards and Freedom Run Winery, with barrel samples and production and vineyard tours.

Niagara is without a doubt one of the most exciting and cutting-edge wine growing regions in the world. Ontario, which is now hitting its stride with a diverse collection of world-class wines, is virtually unknown to most American wine drinkers.

Ice wine may be the only Niagara wine in your store but there are exciting Bordeaux blends, cabernet francs, pinot noirs, sauvignon blancs, chardonnays, rieslings and much more in these tasting rooms. The same geography that created Niagara Falls lays the foundation for a diverse growing region influenced by the Niagara Escarpment itself, the Niagara River and Lake Ontario. It also created a wide range of limestone rich soils, elevations, aspects and microclimates. 

The unique geography doesn’t end at the border. The Niagara, New York area benefits from the same influences. Even though the Ontario industry is some 20 years older, there’s already a common thread in the best wines from this side of the river.

TasteCamp North will bring all of this together in an action packed weekend of events thanks to this year’s organizers and the welcoming spirit of the wineries and restaurants. We’d like to let everyone in on the secret that is the Niagara region, from the wines, to the cuisine, to the geography and the people.

If you’re interested in attending, the official agenda is posted here and the link to the TasteCamp North website can be found here.

Looking back at the Niagara Wine & Culinary Festival

Two weeks ago the Niagara Wine Trail hosted its second annual Niagara Wine and Culianry Festival at Artpark in Lewiston, NY, welcoming close to 1,100 guests to taste local wine and eat local food during a weekend that saw perfect weather. In its second year, the event drew twice as many people as its first.

I had an insider’s look at this year’s festival as I spent all day Sunday pouring wine and schmoozing with food vendors. Having just participated in the much larger Finger Lakes Wine Festival I was impressed at how coordinated the Niagara event was despite its youth and small size.

Honestly, when I first heard of the event and its tie into the monthly wine trail event schedule I didn’t know what to expect. Even though I’m not a fan of the monthly themed events hosted by the trail, they really do get people in the doors and sell wine -- despite all the commotion that comes with giveaways, costumes and entertainment. Why put all the wineries in one outdoor festival space when you already have a loyal following that packs into cars, trucks and buses to get to the wineries once a month? When that outdoor venue is Artpark, however, it starts to make sense.

Located on the Niagara River (literally) a stone's throw from Canada, Artpark is a cultural gem that has been hosting camps, theater companies, live music and organizations such as the Buffalo Philharmonic for years. Since the wine trail is still in the crawling period of its evolution, it still hasn’t worked its way into the collective subconscious of Western New York, especially the Buffalo area. The festival’s association with Artpark enables it to reach an appreciative, city-centric public that hasn’t quite been convinced to drive out to Niagara County’s rural areas for local wine.

In its first iteration, the festival didn’t exactly get a ton of promotion from the venue. “They didn’t know what to make of us,” explained one winery owner. But after a calm weekend of wine tasting and music, the plans for this year’s event were bigger and better.

Wendy Oakes Wilson of Leonard Oakes Winery saw the difference. “Anytime you have a year's planning under your belt, you’re bound to have a well-planned event,” she said. “Because we purposely kept things small, we are learning on the fly without stressing the organizers out too much.”

The venue handled the music and entertainment and the Niagara Wine Trail was behind the marketing and setup. Promotions included print literature, radio spots and television commercials along with the online promotions. With the press being so widespread it’s Wilson’s view that some wineries from other parts of the state will want to take part next year. They also hope to see more food vendors and more tent real estate to spread it out while keeping everyone under cover just in case the weather doesn’t cooperate.

The wineries appeared to be selling more than enough wine to make it worth participating. The crowd was much more serious and curious than what makes it out to your average winery-hopping wine trail event, and most importantly, it wasn’t the same old event crowd that I recognize once a month in the tasting rooms.

Anytime the wineries can associate themselves with people who support the local arts scene, they are likely to pick up loyal customers with experienced palates and expendable income. Indeed, says Wilson: “Great wine, live music, culinary delights and the beauty of Artpark -- does it get any better than that?”

 

Barrel Tasting Friday: Tasting the Future of a Region

By Bryan Calandrelli, Niagara Region Editor

This past Friday, I hosted the second Barrel Tasting Friday event at Freedom Run Winery in Cambria, NY with cellarmaster Kurt Guba. The focus was pinot noir and the turnout was amazing. More than 50 guests reserved seats and showed up in the dead of winter from as far away as Rochester to taste the barrels they’ve seen in the tasting room during previous visits.

I have to admit I pitched the idea to the owners after having taken part in similar, though less formal, events last spring. At TasteCamp on Long Island, we experienced some red carpet treatment, which included a barrel room tasting at Paumonok and tank and barrel samples with Eric Fry of Lenz Winery. The intimate setting and the interaction with the winemakers left me with an undeniable connection to the wines.

Fry made a great impression with his casual and completely unpretentious presentation, which seemed spontaneous though was anything but. His approach was to show wines in progress and follow them with older vintages to illustrate where they should be heading. It was a great way to give context to young wines that hardly resembled what will go into the bottle, and I used it as inspiration when helping to plan Freedom Run’s event.

The first Barrel Tasting Friday was last month and focused on Bordeaux varieties. About 30 people made reservations and took part in what was an exciting night comparing the 2009 and 2008 vintages, all of which are still in barrels. There were comparisons of new oak verses used oak, French oak verses Hungarian oak as well as comparisons of cabernet franc that had juice bled off before fermentation to concentrate flavors to non-bleed cabernet franc.

Not only was I amazed at the turnout, but I was surprised by the questions asked, the studious note-taking and overwhelmingly positive response to nearly finished wines as well as the rough and raw 09s. Before the night was over people were already asking me when the next one would be and that’s how last Friday’s pinot noir tasting came to be.

The idea for this barrel tasting was to focus on showing off the differences of one estate vineyard block to another. Kurt and I didn’t stop there: we also wanted to highlight the differences yeast strains can have on wine, showing one vineyard fermented with two different yeasts, RC 212 and 2056.

The tasting also included un-oaked pinot, used oak and new oak barrels. Since the 2008 pinot noir was already bottled and for sale, we also decided that the 25-case experiments of upper and lower vineyard lots needed unveiling as well. Freedom Run also erred on the side of caution last year and kept a barrel that had a hint of brett (the barnyard kind) out of its main cuvee by bottling it separately, so that was poured as well.

The last wine of the night was the 2007 estate pinot that shows more like a Russian River than a Burgundian pinot. Tasted back to back with the 2008, it’s just an unmistakable lesson in vintage variation which still seems to take the general public by surprise.

Once again the reception was encouraging. Kurt Guba, Cellarmaster and soon to be certified sommelier, made an impressive presentation as he usually does and I got to do my best Gary Vaynerchuk impression by using cute words like sniffy sniff and referencing pop culture candy for aroma descriptions. Overall I think we were a good one-two punch of wine knowledge.

While it’s easy to fixate on the wines or how they were presented, the real story here is that all these people threw down a decent chunk of cash in the middle of winter after their day jobs to taste unfinished wine and learn more about what’s happening in their region. They all came to taste dry reds from an area that doesn’t have a history for the style. 

Knowing how young the trail is here and how its reputation is still being misunderstood in the local media (for making only sweet wines), events like this are a good indication that things are moving in a different direction.