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Ontario Wine Review:  Point Scales – wine as poetry
(Print a .pdf version of this newsletter.)

Over the holidays, I was taking a long lonely train ride back to Toronto (from Windsor) writing my Vintages report for January.  I was confronted by all these scores from Robert Parker, James Halladay, David Lawrason, etc. and it struck me like a thunderbolt ... suddenly I had Robin Williams shouting in my head as he did in the Dead Poets Society (TouchStone 1989) about the essay written by Dr. J. Evans Pritchard Ph.D. ... I invite you to see the movie again - or just go to chapter three on your DVD and replace “poetry” for “wine”.  J. Evans writes: "To fully understand poetry [wine] we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme and figures of speech, then ask two questions: one, how artfully have the objectives of the poem been rendered? And two, how important is that objective.  Question one, rates it's perfection; question two rates its importance - and once these questions have been answered, determining the poem’s [wine’s] greatness becomes a relatively simple matter.”

After drawing the graph with “perfection” as the horizontal and “importance” as the vertical and plotting a few points for poems by Byron and Shakespeare, Williams’ character, Professor Keating, calls it all "excrement" ... "We're not laying pipe, we're talking about poetry [wine].  How can you describe poetry [wine] like American Bandstand?  Well I like Byron, I give him a 42, but I can't dance to it."

By the same token, how can you really put a number on a wine using a chart or a graph ... sure this is okay for competitions, when you need to score wines and come up with a winner head to head - but what about you at home - do you rate your wine by that method?  Do you sip the Yellow Tail and say, "I’d give that an 86" or a bottle of Dr. L. Riesling and say "that's an 89 for sure"?  No ... you describe it as smooth, soft, or fizzy ... you may say things like fruity, pleasant or "I really like this".  I doubt numbers ever even come up when discussing the wine, unless you are discussing the price - "you paid $12.00 for that, really - no way it's that cheap"; or if your host tries to impress you, "Parker gave it a 92 " - to which your response is one of two things:  "oh, really" or "I wouldn't give it a 92".  Wine is subjective and we must be objective when drinking and tasting it ... though objectivity gets thrown out the window depending on your day, what's going on in your world and your surroundings ... company also plays a big part, but that’s a subject for another day, or see my Clark Smith review.

I don't use a rating system; though I have been asked on many occasions to either do so or asked why I don't.  I like to follow along with the teachings of Professor Keating: "Armies of academics going forward, measuring poetry [wine] ... no!  We will not have that here  … here you will learn to savor words and language [flavours and smells]."  It hit me on that train ride that wine is like poetry and that parallels can definitely be made.  When I arrived home, I watched the movie again, and yet another line from the same scene struck a cord with me.  There they are in the classroom and Keating has the boys "huddle up" around him as he explains why we read and write poetry ... again substitute the word "poetry" for "wine" and you’ll see what I mean: "We don't read and write poetry [taste and drink wine] because it's cute, we read and write poetry [taste and drink wine] because we are members of the human race, and the human race is filled with passion ... But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for."

Now maybe I'm overstating it a bit, most of us don't have a passion for wine that rocks the very foundation of our souls - but think about wine and its role in your life ... happy occasions, sad occasions, festive occasions - whatever the occasion, where does wine fit in?  Do you rate your occasions on scale of 1 to 100 or do you use words like: awesome, amazing, fun, incredible, the best, the worst.  Wine is always about you ... you make the choice to buy the bottle, you decide when to pull the cork, you make a decision about how long to keep it open and you decide on what occasion to pour it ... you also decide whether you like it or not.  You can agree with me about red fruit, cranberry, chocolate, peaches, apples – and thus derive your own review - but I'm not going to defend a 92 or 86.  I guess if that's how you're going to rate your wine, then that too is a choice that's up to you.

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Grape Guy’s Picks of the Bunch:  Special Pinot, Gamay, Rosees, and a Feathery Merlot

Cattail Creek 2007 Gamay Noir - $15.00 (W)

www.cattailcreek.ca

 

Hot Dog!  Another winery on board to make Gamy – I love it.  Such a versatile grape – you can oak it and make it stand up for a decade or you can leave it light and fruity, as a perfect summer red.  Gamay is one of those grapes that can turn your white-only friends into budding young red drinkers.  Here’s the wine to try that experiment.  Cattail’s Gamay is in the light and fruity style with red currants and strawberries on the nose … black raspberries, red berries and a nice smooth red fruit finish.  This is one wine you could put a light chill on and enjoy on the patio in the afternoon, then let it warm up (back to room temperature) and turn around and serve it up during the evening meal – and I would be willing to bet most folks will think it’s a completely different wine.  Fifteen bucks is a steal … but don’t let the cat out of the bag about that.

 

www.featherstonewinery.ca

If you’re thinking, “I’ve never seen a Merlot from Featherstone,” you’d be right.  This is the first vintage from these 3 year old vines and they produced so little fruit in 2006 that only 60 cases of this wine was made.  Louise Engel, co-owner, told me that each vine produced one cluster and they meticulously hand harvested every one (the good news is 2007 was a completely different story for these vines – producing enough fruit to get 500 cases made – but we’ll save that review for next year at this time).  The wine spent 15 months in French oak and has developed a mixture of blackberries and red fruit on the nose.  The palate has sour cherry and juicy blackberries with some cassis and a little tannin bite on the finish.  Quite lovely and a good first effort with this grape from Dave Johnson (winemaker).

 

Sink the Pink – a look at some great Ontario Rosés:
The last time Pink was this popular Happy Days was on the tube.  But seriously, whatever you’re looking for in a Rosé, Ontario has it.  Here are a few you’ll want to enjoy this summer:

Huff Estates 2007 Rosé (W, WTH) – Henry of Pelham 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon Rosé (W, L, WTH)
Flat Rock Cellars 2007 Pinot Noir Rosé (W, WTH, L) – Strewn 2007 Cabernet Rosé (W, L, WTH)
Malivoire 2007 Ladybug Rosé (W) – Reif Estate 2006 Gamay Rosé (W, L, WTH)
Muscedere 2007 Rosé (W) – Hillebrand 2006 Gamay Noir Rosé (W, WTH)
Thirty Bench 2007 Pinot Meunier Small Lot Rosé (W, WTH)

 

Something exciting from Prince Edward County:

Picard-MacLaurin 2006 Pinot Noir (available only at Huff Estates)

Weekly Wine Notes and More:  Lost & Found - Taste it Again - On the Road

The Grape Guy presents the "Weekly Wine Note"! A savoury selection of Ontario wines to impress, enjoy, or just plain drink!  A NEW Wine Selection is added every Tuesday or listen to the Podcast.

Here are the Weekly Wine Notes that were added to the Blog and Pod in the past two weeks:
June 24, 2008 – Jackson-Triggs 2006 Delaine Vineyard Pinot Noir (read) (listen)
July 1, 2008 – Lailey Vineyard 2007 Vidal (read) (listen)

Four (4) NEW Reports in the On the Road with the Grape Guy section:
Discover Australia
Made in Italy – part 4 of 4
Meeting Clark Smith
New Vintages Festival – Passport Program and Grille
Pillitteri 2002 Family Reserve Merlot