Doktor Weingolb

I took a week off work, but now it is over.

My vacation was one big week-long wintry cloud and I'm more than eager that things get cleared up.

Blog absence and travel have created a messy backlog. Here's one outstanding piece of correspondence I failed to respond to last week. I hope an answer to this reader's query is not too late.

An emailer writes:

I was wondering if you could help me. I have a friend who is planning on visiting Niagara with a view towards picking a few bottles of icewine.

Can you recommend some labels? Nothing too expensive but maybe in something in the $25 to $50 range.

Also, my friend is curious about those flavoured icewines (hot peppers, berries etc.) What are your thoughts?

Any advice would be appreciated.

My response:

I was actually in Niagara for Good Friday so it seems appropriate that your "friend" poses this question now.

First of all, you can tell your friend not to worry. We all know that icewine is expensive. None of us can afford to live off this kind of wine. It's what I would classify as a true luxury item.

Icewine costs a lot because its production is a tall order that involves arduous work, nighttime cultivation, and tiny yields of heavily concentrated juice. Poor conditions can play havoc with the harvest and global warming is frequently mentioned as a major threat. Since we find ourselves in April and under a thin blanket of snow, this can be hard to believe. But in some years there is no icewine vintage. In fact it was only last year the harvest came perilously close to not even happening in Niagara. All of this goes to show you how rare and sought-after this stuff can be.

With that in mind, I can absolutely respect your friend's budget. Although it is a delicacy, there's no reason why icewine should be prohibitive. Knowing all that, do you still really want to meddle with hot peppers? In my mind, even so much as a single blueberry denigrates the final product, like smacking the end of a big glass bottle of Heinz while it is pointed at your filet mignon.

But that's just my impression of these products which -- if Google supplies any accurate indication -- are finding a bit of a niche in Niagara. I admit to never having tried flavoured icewines. I'm willing to be honest. But after sampling beer flavoured with grenadine last week I don't think I would want to. Little good that does to help you though.

LCBO INVESTIGATION ON ONTARIO'S FLAVOURED ICEWINES

So on my way out of the region, I stopped at the LCBO's large warehouse outlet at Yonge and Queen's Quay in Toronto. I enquired about flavoured icewines with one of the employees stocking shelves. She, like myself, had never heard of it. She directed me to LCBO VQA Expert Steve MacDougall (Vintners Quality Alliance is an Ontario regulatory designation for wine). If anyone at the Ontario liquor monopoly knew about flavoured icewines, it would be Steve.

Steve also had never heard of flavoured icewines, and asked me whether the blueberry version, for instance, was blueberry wine and not real icewine with blueberries added to it. I told him that was apparently not the case, or least it wasn't what was presented by the web sites of a few little-known wineries.

For example, Crown Beach Estates (clickable image above) explains how their flavoured icewines are made from real wine grapes and then flavoured. Steve recalled carrying Crown Bench icewines in the past though they were definitely not with added flavour. (At $90 a bottle, they were also definitely not cheap.)

Seeing that the Crown Bench flavoured icewines were not listed as VQA, I asked Steve whether VQA limitations could be part of the reason why they were not "mainstream" and not appearing on LCBO shelves. He wagered that if they used Ontario grapes there shouldn't be any reason why a VQA seal would be denied. He suggested that these flavoured icewines might be just the thing that is bubbling under the surface and that the right regional sales rep for the LCBO could know more. They could be coming in and be big at Christmas, he said.

HAS ANYBODY TRIED THESE WINES?

Once again, little good that does to help you. Since no one seems to have tried the stuff I'm going to stick my neck out and give you my own personal recommendation. [Ed. note: Someone very knowledgeable in this department has just left a comprehensive comment at the link below.]

Riesling-flavoured icewine is where my money's at. Icewine made from Riesling grapes typically is pricier than the more commonly found Vidal icewine, but you can find some that fits your price range to be sure.

Reif Estate Winery in particular makes one I'd recommend. Unfortunately for you, I'm not the only one singing its praises. This award-winning icewine is currently sold out.

Well I can't say that I haven't tried. Perhaps consulting this flight of Vineland Estates icewines could help inform your purchasing decisions in the meantime?

It was a pleasure to be able to have my first encounter with an Austrian wine for WBW #27 Icewine, hosted by the The Kitchen Chick. And, being the Niagara boy that I am, I've had plenty of icewines, but never an eiswein. (Rarely does the New World obscure the Old World in my wine repertoire -- I think this must've been the only exception to that.) It's great to have finally tasted the European stuff with this bottle of Graf Hardegg Riesling Eiswein Steinbugel Seefeld Weinviertel 2002, which is quite a mouthful -- both saying it and drinking it. But before I get to the tasting notes...

Ahead of uncorking this eiswein, I found myself taken in by some interesting cultural-political markings on the bottle label. The crest was beautiful and the label it was on was even more striking. A minimal design on lovely parchment. To top it all off, the capsule was one of the most miraculous I've seen. It was copper-swathed along the shaft and at the cap a round version of the Austrian red-white-red triband proudly displayed a clever dot-matrix black eagle surrounded by more dot matrix printing, somehow done in a circle. A little background on Austrian symbology and legend is here, if you're interested. Personally I just liked admiring these decorations, making sure I got my money's worth.

Yes, all icewine is expensive, and this eiswein is no different, though I did get a good deal on Graf Hardegg Riesling Eiswein. So finally I went in to taste it.

A golden hue and an immediate aroma of petrol poured out, reminding me of the best Rieslings I have tried. This was a good sign. On the palate, the first sensation was of buttery viscosity. There was honey, agrume flavours, great depth. A nice prickly feeling around the edges of my tongue confirmed that this Riesling expressed its acidity and forged great structure and length. I found this assessment of the wine online:

Schlossweingut Graf Hardegg, in the Weinviertel, "produces brilliant eisweins from riesling with a very fresh, clean bouquet that brings to mind extremely cold but clear winter days in northern Austria." These eisweins, he believes, "are not sticky but quite lean, elegantly structured and very, very impressive.

I would agree. (Jamie Goode has a page on the wines of Graf Hardegg.)

As this was an occasion to taste such luxurious stuff, I had planned ahead for a suitable dessert pairing. A tart of apricots and pistachios echoed the sharpened and sweet fruit flavours. And it was while having dessert that my fellow diner Eric pondered over the Graf Hardegg back label, written in German -- a language he knows well. We could tell that the information was describing the harvest of the frozen grapes, supplying the exact location, date, and time of day, but most was not a term he made sense of, as in Most 31° KMW. I blurted out something about wind direction and then we proceeded to go through about four translation dictionaries before we finally figured it out by simply pulling out the Oxford Companion I bought last month. It ain't wind.

THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS

The entry for the initialism KMW was the easiest to locate immediately. I found that it stands for Klosterneuburger Mostwage, which is Austria's standard measure for grape ripeness or "must" weight. And must weight is important because it indicates the concentration of dissolved compounds -- about 90% of which are sugars. This of course determines fermentation and what the final alcohol content of the wine will be.

In this case, 31° KMW came out to 11% alcohol for this eiswein. But I what I still need to examine is why -- after drinking no more than 150 millilitres of this, and after having had only a couple of glasses of red wine, all of which taken with plenty of food -- why did I wake up the next morning with a cloudy head that shaped up to be one of the nastiest headaches I have had in a long while?

Eiswein virgin perhaps?

Schlossweingut Graf Hardegg, Steinbugel Seefeld Weinviertel, Österreich. 11%.

Vineland Estates Winery is nestled along one of the most gently rolling slopes of the Niagara Escarpment. With a view of Lake Ontario below its low hills to the north and rich undulating vineyards sprawling around in every direction, it's not surprising how much tourist business it attracts. During my first visit, the 2000 Red Meritage -- a benchmarked Bordeaux assemblage with a $125 price tag -- drew most of my attention. Today I was able to concentrate on their icewines. Currently composed solely of Vidal grapes, Vineland Estates' speciality wines include a new Late Harvest as well as two icewines, one from 2002 and another one recently released as their 2004 vintage.

I started with the 2004 Vidal Select Late Harvest (just released and not pictured above). It's a bracing concoction with notable acid and strong citrus flavours. Its silky texture reminded me of the lemon-lime syrup at the soda fountain: crimp the hose that dispenses the carbonated soda and you double up on the concentrated sweet stuff. But that's not to say that the 2004 is too sweet. It's grounded by that palpable acid and real nice note of butter. Great.

For the 2002 Vidal Icewine (pictured third from left), hints of syrup flow like divine nectar. It has more honey than the Late Harvest -- a delicious sweetness that suggests pear or that juice you get in fruit salad. It has great balance in its rounded attack. I was able to linger over a few small portions of this wonderful treat since I had just finished a full plate of lunch. A full stomach is not factor because of the alcohol content, which is low (around 9% for each of these three bottles), but rather for the richness and intensity of this golden exilir.

On to the 2004 Vidal Icewine (pictured first): I immediately sensed a bigger "throat feel". It's what I would describe as a puckering tannin effect that you get as the icewine goes down. For me, the 2004 icewine offers more than I am apt to take. It was at this point that I wished I had some of Riesling icewine that had kicked off my 2005 almost a year ago now.

It would be remiss of me not to mention that the Vidal has been good to Vineland Estates, garnering many accolades including the Grand Vinitaly Award. Aside from that, Vidal icewine is more commonly produced by Ontario vintners than Riesling icewine and is generally more affordable too. And for that reason I would heartily recommend any of these wines. I think that in particular the 2004 Select Late Harvest and the 2002 Vidal Icewine, which is priced in Quebec a few dollars cheaper than it is in Ontario (yes, it does happen!) are both wise selections.

Finally, John arranged these wines for me. Thanks to him for the suggestion. This flight is the first one that Doktor Weingolb has taken, so it only seems perfectly suitable that eiswein be the feature.