Tag Archives: Chenin Blanc

Sweets to the Sweet!🎄🍭

It’s holiday time! 🎅 Time for some fun, and time for tasting!🍷🎄

Click the video below for a little wine round up!

👇😄

Typically, the rule is sweet wines with sweet treats, but we might take a few little twists and turns in candy land! 🍭🍬

Candy Cane Ice Cream –

Peppermint has always seemed like a tough pairing with wine. And I guess because brushing your teeth before a wine tasting always makes for a wonky flavor. Maybe it’s a toothpaste thing (heavier concentration of mint, surfactants in toothpaste that maybe coat the tongue) rather than a mint thing?🤷🏼‍♀️

But since peppermint is an aromatic herb, why not try it with an aromatic white wine or rosé?

•Gewürztraminer – intense floral aromas, grapefruit and lychee. Higher sweetness pairs with sweetness and mint. And just saying Gewürztraminer makes you sound kind of drunk. Don’t believe me? Try it!

•Sauternes – dessert wine from Bordeaux with Botrytis cinerea (which makes it delightfully sweet). Flavors of honey, quince and apricot make it sweet and oh so smooth. 🍯

•Sparkling Rosé – nothing better than bubbles to cut into some of the creaminess of the ice cream. The gentle acidity of the delicate fruity notes play hide and seek with the minty sweetness of the ice cream. 🍨🍾

Gingerbread Sticky Toffee Pudding

Combining gingerbread with dates, cloves, allspice and toffee is basically a carnival on your palate!🎪

•Chenin Blanc – sweet golden nectar of pear, yellow apple, chamomile and honey, little more acidic to help carve through the richness of the toffee and cake consistency.

•Riesling – aromatic variety ranging from bone-dry to quite sweet. If you like dry, look for “Trocken” on the label. Anything sweeter: look for “Pradikat” – Kabinett (sweet) , Spatlese (sweeter), Auslese (sweeter still), all the way to Eiswein (sweetie sweet). Flavors range from dried apricot, citrus, green apple, green papaya, jasmine, depending on the growing region. High acidity again cuts into the rich cake.

•Port – Beautiful notes of black plum, chocolate, dries cherry and cinnamon complement this ooey gooey dessert as you nestle deeper into a spicy bliss with each sip.

Fruit Cake

I always feel a little bad for the nutty fruit cake. It’s so maligned. True, some can be as dense as a brick (and maybe even taste like one). But the combination of the buttery rum cake, rich nuts and dried fruit can be a lovely melt-in-your-mouth experience. Aromatic whites are a terrific pairing but so are some light-medium bodied reds.🍷

•Torrontés – From Argentina, this white wine can smell sweet but is dry and matches well with the spices, and melded aromatic flavors in fruit cake. Flavors of rose petal, geranium and peach round out this interesting wine.

•Cabernet Franc – Flavors of strawberry, raspberry and a hint of chili pepper make this a nice complement to the fruit cake’s nutty vibe.

•Merlot – Merlot is a softer red, and often blended with Cab Sauv soften its harsher nature. Yummy flavors of black cherry, plum and chocolate add to the fun, making that fruit cake the best you’ve ever had.

And if you find yourself overwhelmed, Ice Wine goes with everything!

So there ya go! Sometimes the best pairings are unexpected. Feel free to try your favorite holiday treats with different new, and fun wines.🍷🎄

♥️Thank you so much for stopping by, and supporting my blog. It’s fun to write, and I hope it’s fun to read.♥️

Wishing you all a happy and healthy holiday season, and we’ll see you in the new year for more wine adventures!🥂

Be safe, everyone!🤗

Cheers!🍷

©️Copyright. The Wine Student, 2022.

Field Trip ~ Colaneri Estate Winery, Niagara.on.the.Lake ON

@ Colaneri Estate Winery

@ Colaneri Estate Winery

One of the things I love about going home to Niagara for the holidays; apart from seeing family and friends, is picking a new winery to try. Since I left almost 5 years ago, there has been an explosion of great wineries with something to please every palate.

When HubbyDoug and I were walking the main street we slipped into a little bar for a glass to take away the chill. We were treated to a Colaneri Estate Winery ’09 Cabernet Corposo. I noticed a distinctive richness and old world vibe from the very first sip. To be honest, my experience with many Niagara reds has been somewhat disappointing. They have a tendency towards a lightness and a green, vegetal quality that I don’t always care for. While they eventually settle into a pleasant flavor, it’s generally when you get to the bottom of the glass. I like a red to look me in the eye as it gently takes me by the collar and eases me back into my chair. This wine winked as it looked me in the eye.

I had to find out what made it so unique. A trip to the winery became my top priority.

Colaneri wines are made using an appassimento process that dates back to ancient Roman times. Harvested grapes are hung to dry before winemaking, to remove any excess water, thus shriveling the grapes. And why would you want this kind of shrinkage? All the better to concentrate the sugars and flavors in the resulting wine.

  • Recioto ~ also an ancient style of winemaking and also incorpporating the drying of grapes to concentrate the sugar content. Recioto may be red or white, dry or sweet. The dryer wines in this style are Amarone which can be intense at 16% alcohol.
  • Ripasso is a style that means to revisit or go over. It involves a double fermentation process in which additional dried grape skins are added. The sugar content has been heightened by drying and this increases the final alcohol and phenolic content in the wine which is known as passito.

Our winery guide, Pam, explained that Colaneri was one of only three Niagara region wineries to use this process. Their wines are kiln-dried, using both greenhouses with industrial fans and tobacco kilns. ”Since the kilns were no longer being used to dry tobacco, they have been put to use in winemaking”, she said. In the tobacco kilns, the fans push air up through the floor; where the greenhouse fans circulate the air around the fruit. The drying process can take up to two months with skin contact completed within 7-10 days.

After harvest, the grapes for Amarone and Recioto are set aside to dry in trays in kilns, or are hung in lofts ~ the hanging and careful placement in trays allows for complete air circulation so no mold develops. There they stay for approximately four months after which the semidried grapes are crushed and fermented with the grape skins. The grapes not used for Amarone or Recioto are crushed and fermented to be used later.

Once prolonged skin contact has finished, the wine is stored for aging. The additional wine (that had been fermented seperately) is introduced by being pumped over the Amarone | Recioto skins, thus starting the second fermentation. The saturated skins are still quite full of unfermented sugars, making them high in aromatics and tannins.

It was time to began our tasting with a spectrum of lighter fare: Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc, Gewurtztraminer, Chenin Blanc. The Chenin Blanc was my favorite; it had a taste of pear, pineapple and cotton candy (yum) with lots of citrus on the nose. Pam then took us into the reds starting the Red Blend ~ a combination of Cab Sav, Syrah, Merlot, Cab Franc and Petit Verdot. She mentioned that it was their everyday wine that pairs well with everything from pizza to red meats to chocolate.

We then turned our attention to the Cabernet that we had enjoyed the day before. The scent of rich molasses was prominent on the nose with sweet tobacco, blackberry and raspberry resonating on the palate. Awesome.

The Cabernet Franc was rich and flavorful, with an distinct essence of plum. Pam mentioned that some who tried it but don’t enjoy prunes/plums weren’t always fans. She recommended pairing with tomato-y dishes to counterbalance the prune essence.

We spend a good part of the afternoon sipping and learning a lot about some very special wines. Pam was friendly, knowledgeable and made the field trip to Colaneri so much fun.

I came away from the trip feeling happy to have discovered a jewel of a Niagara wine. I’ll make a point to look for more wines created using this time-honored method.

Cheers!

©TheWineStudent, 2013