I want to start this post with a pronunciation clarification. This winery is named for the Muscedere family and it’s pronounced Moo-Said-Ray.
Muscedere Vineyards is a family run winery in the Lake Erie North Shore. I had the opportunity to taste some of their wines last year and it’s something that stuck with me. When you visit the Muscedere website you can see that they still offer many back vintages from the stellar 2012 harvest. I had to reach out to see what wines they were going to be offering in the near future.
The cold winters of the 2014 and 2015 have ravaged the vineyards of the Lake Erie North Shore and it’s going to take a few years for them to recover. When I reached out to Muscedere they told me straight up that they do not have any wines from those vintages for sale but we should start to see some fo the 2013 wines hit the shelve soon.
For the Niagara Peninsula we are met with red varietals that have an elegance and restraint that were absent from the hot summer of 2012. So when I had the opportunity to taste both the 2012 and 2013 vintages of the Muscedere Cabernet Sauvignon I was excited to see how the grapes of the Lake Erie North Shore fared in this vintage. I was not disappointed.
2012 Muscedere Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon – $30.00 – ****½ – If you were to blind taste this wine I guarantee that you would not guess Ontario. The nose on this wine is like chocolate covered cherry and strawberry. When you take your first sip this wine is immediately approachable and frankly gulpable. Flavours that range from ripe cherry, strawberry, black currant and cocoa. This wine is very approachable now but should do well in a cellar for another 5-7 years while holding on to some of its fruit. This is a beautiful example of the Lake Erie North Shore and something that should be sought out and even at thirty dollars this is worth seeking out either by heading to the Lake Erie North Shore or ordering from the winery because this is produced on a small scale and will not likely see the shelves of the LCBO.
2013 Muscedere Vineyards Cabernet Franc – $30.00 – **** – 2013 was a more typical vintage in Niagara and it would seem that it was much the same from the Lake Erie North Shore if this bottle is any indication. This is very much Cabernet Franc, but there is no green note on the nose or palate of this wine. While this vintage may be a little cooler than the hot 2012 summer the extra time from the spring and fall given by the geography comes through in this bottle. The nose and palate both bring rich black currant and blackberry to the table with just the slightest hint of smoke. The fruit is really the story about this wine. The tannin is already smooth and approachable but there is some nice structure to this so the wine should last for 3-7 years in a cellar.
