On January 28th I was given the opportunity to attend a tasting in Downtown Toronto putting Italian and Ontario wines side by side. We had the opportunity to taste through 37 wines. It is amazing to see how well the Ontario wines hold up to the Italian wines. I still believe that for many casual wine drinkers there is a sort of inferiority complex when it comes to drinking local. To get over this complex I have been wondering what is going to help define us internationally. This is why tasting Ontario wines compared to Foreign wines is so important. Ian D’Agata, Journalist and Wine Educator (pictured on the right) said that the problem in Ontario is that so many different kinds of wine are being produced successfully it’s hard to pick a standout (although he did single out Cabernet Franc).
Our first flight was of Riesling and other Aromatic Whites. The Ontario wines not only stood out of the mix but stood up. The Rieslings from Charles Baker and Thirty Bench had more depth than any of the Italian offerings on the table. This isn’t to say that the Italian winer weren’t any good … the Canadian wines were just better.
Our second flight was Pinot Gris/Grigio. Sometimes I forget about Pinot Gris when I’m writing and tasting wines. This was a welcome refresher course. I was especially pleased to see the Malivoire Pinot Gris on the flight. I look forward to the release of the wine every year, but I have forgotten about it for a vintage or two. I am not going to make that mistake in the future. The wines on this panel were on a more even keel than the knockout punch delivered by the Ontario Riesling in the first flight. I was a big fan of the Gris from Lis Neris from Italy.
There were a couple of flights that were a bit of a “grab bag”. In the White Flight the 2011 Sémillon from Stratus had an intensity that no other wine on the panel could match. It had a nice creamy texture with bright tangerine orange and slight vanilla and spice on the finish. In the Red Flight we were treated to the 2013 Cabernet Franc from The Old Third. Light with lots of Cherry and Raspberry flavours and slight pepper on the finish. There is not a hint of unripe fruit in the bottle. Clean acidity will make this a great match for food once it is released in the Spring.
The heavier Red wine flight of the day also created the most surprising moment of the day. In the photo above you can see that there are three appassimento wines on the far right. Two are from Italy and one is from Ontario. I’ll admit that I am a fan of most of the appassimento wines that I have tasted in Ontario. Appassimento is the process of letting the grapes dry before you press them. It concentrates the juice (and sugar) creating rich, full bodied, fruity wines. This takes me back to Ian’s statement that there are a lot of different wines coming out of Ontario that are great. The wines were Tommasi Amarone, Tedeschi Amarone, and the Rennie G. The remarkable moment of the day was when the room of about 30 wine industry and media were asked to identify which of the appassimento wines was the Canadian wine no one in the room could say with certainty one of the three was from Rennie.
