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TasteCamp Day 2: up on the Bench Where it's Crisp

The focus of day two of TasteCamp was the Bench. The Bench is a colloquial term used locally to describe the wineries east of St. Catharines that are located along the escarpment. Higher-up, with vines on slopes and deep limestone-rich clay soils it really is a remarkably different growing area than Niagara-on-the-Lake.

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The first stop was Tawse. In its ten years Tawse has made a name for itself as a quality-focused producer. Its big coming out party was winning the Canadian Wine Awards Winery of the Year in 2010 under Paul Pender who was also recently recognised as winemaker of the year in 2010 at the Ontario Wine Awards. Pender is as passionate as he is humble. He's a firm believer that good wine begins in the vineyard and as such he has led Tawse through its organic and biodynamic certifications. The most likely spot you'll probably find him is amongst the vines so it was fitting that he led the group on an abbreviated version of a vineyard tour that he took bloggers on last year. After a tour through the gravity flow facility Pender poured a blind tasting of Tawse's two flagship Chardonnays. One was Robyn's Block from the home Cherry Ave. vineyard and the other the eponymous chardonnay from the Quarry Road vineyard. The Quarry Road Chardonnay is more linear with a tight focused minerality. The Robyn's Block is also an elegant taught chardonnay but it had a roundness and depth of flavour to go along with the pear, citrus and mineral-rich core. The wines taste quite different. Given that the winemaker and winemaking is identical it's a strong argument that terroir matters. But it's also an argument that vine age matters. Entering into its fourth decade Robyn's block is one of the oldest chardonnay plantings in Niagara. If you've followed Tawse for some time you know that Robyn's Block has evolved over time depending on who was making the wine at the time, but the current style with just enough oak to give it structure has been winning critical and consumer praise with elegance.

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Post-Tawse it was a visit to the house that Weis built—Vineland estates Winery. Under the care of the Schmidt family this Twenty Mile bench winery, located high-up on the escarpment on Moyer Rd., has a well deserved reputation for making some world class riesling. Winemaker Brian Schmidt believes that the St. Urban vineyard, where the Hermann Weis planted his Mosel Riesling clone, is a perfect place on the bench for the grape. The choice grape of Germany is a bit strong willed. As Schmidt explained when he was younger he tried tweaks to force the vines to do things he thought would make a better wine. For example, thinning down drastically to concentrate flavours. The vines just ended-up doing as they pleased anyway by doing things like growing bigger berries to compensate for the thinning. Over the years Schmidt has come to terms with fact that he's merely the caretaker for the vines and that the vineyard is truly the winemaker of the St. Urban Riesling. Now riesling is certainly a terroir-driven grape but it still doesn't make itself. One of the key areas where a winemaker shows his or her skill with riesling is in the blend. Schmidt showed this by isolating a 2010 riesling sample from a portion of the St. Urban vineyard called Field D. This sample came from fruit that was left on the vines until mid-October and had some botrytis. Made in an off-dry style it had ripe peach, apricot and tangerine flavours. The ripe flavours were balanced by mouth-watering acidity. Although this wine was brilliant on its own when it was added to the grapefruit, orange blossom, lime and minerality of the blended sample it really was on a whole other level. If you've ever done a blending session of a single variety wine the layering of flavours and complexity you can get simply by blending fruit from different blocks and sites is truly remarkable.

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Next was a trip to Flat Rock and blends were also the name of the game. The Jordan winery has always thought a little differently from passionately embracing the screw cap across its entire line (even changing the VQA rules to do so in the case of its recent sparkling) to being one of the first to promote a crisp, aromatic white blend like its Twisted. It's also taken the attitude that wine doesn't need to be pretentious as proprietor Ed Madronich likes to say. It just needs to be good. Since rain kept us out the vineyard staff did a great job with a retooled itinerary of various activities. One of the most engaging was trying to guess the blend of Twisted by tasting all the individual components. As humbling as blind tasting is guessing the composition of blend is even more. It might seem easy since you know precisely what makes it up but nailing down the proportion of the Riesling, chardonnay and gewüztraminer isn't easy.

The finish of the evening was a TasteCamp tradition—the bring your own bottle dinner. This is a chance for the group to share a special wine and stories with their fellow attendees. This year's was at Treadwell Farm to Table Cuisine. Service was attentive while allowing this large group the freedom to mingle and chat. The standout dish of the meal was a cold mint and pea soup with a perfectly seared scallop. It was done well enough that the caramelisation brought out the natural sweetness of the mollusc but rare enough that it was still tender. The fresh bright flavours the of peas and mint also really complimented the scallop's inherit creaminess and the light briny ocean flavours. Between the food, the conversation and the special bottles from all over the world being shared it really is a one-of-kind experience that any oenophile would be lucky to attend.

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