We’re still trying to settle down after what was an extremely exciting night for Creekside and it’s sister winery, Wayne Gretzky Estates Winery.  Gretzky grabbed top honours in the Red Assemblage category for the 2007 Estate Series Shiraz/Cabernet and I have to say, if you haven’t tried it yet…shame!

Creekside actually bested last year’s performance, winning four awards, all for white wines.  I’m not sure about the rest of the winemaking team, but I for one am super chuffed that it was a white night for Creekside.  We work darn hard to create interesting, varietaly, Creekside-tinged whites for your enjoyment.  Although our Reserve reds garner much of the (well-deserved) attention, our Reserve White program is outstanding so it’s very satisfying to get recognition for the other half of our portfolio.

Best Viognier: Creekside 2008 Queenston Road Vineyard Reserve Viognier

Best Limited Edition White: Creekside 2008 Queenston Road Vineyard Reserve Viognier

Best Sauvignon Blanc:  Creekside 2007 Creekside Estate Vineyard Reserve Sauvignon Blanc

Best LCBO White:  Creekside 2008 Pinot Grigio

Cellar Club members, you folks who grabbed bottles of the Viognier and Sauvignon Blanc can add the words “Cuvée 2010 Winner” to your custom sheets.  Hope you’re as excited about these wines as we are.  As always, send us a note, or comment here on the blog and let us know what you think when you pop a bottle.

Some pictures below…

Congrats to all of the award winners and participants at Cuvée 2010! From the remarks of the judging panels it was widely considered one of the most competitive, overall high quality years in the competition’s illustrious twenty-two year history. Says a lot about the focus and drive of the province’s wineries and the continued commitment to producing better and better VQA wines. A full list of winners can be found here.

Knowing that our 750mL Reserve bottlings were still holding well at 8+ years of age, we decided to open one of these beauties to assess how the larger format wine was progressing through its aging process.  What we found was a beautifully aged blend that had ventured into a gorgeous leathery, tobacco-y, dried fruit style, still possessing plenty of fruit and a surprising amount of structure.  We feel that it’s pretty close to peak drinking for these magnums and are excited to be able to offer them to Cellar Club buyers at an astounding price of $60, which not only nets you a big bottle of awesome, but also gets you a hand-written label courtesy of winemaker Craig McDonald, but also a showpiece for your cellar because we’re in the process of waxing the bottle top and neck, and packaging these into wooden crates.

A little bit of back info on this wine, from the original winemaker’s writeup:

Considered the biggest wine in a very impressive portfolio of 2001 Reserve Reds, this Meritage is a blend of 30% Cabernet Franc, 60% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Merlot. The ‘dripper’ technique was employed on 20% of the wine. The ‘dripper’ is a method employed at harvest where left over caps (Un-pressed skins and grape pulp) from fermentation are left out for 24 hours. Gravity naturally presses this material extracting wine rich and soft tannin which is funneled directly into barrel. This adds to the structure, polish and fullness of the wine. Aging for this wine was almost a three year process: Aged in new oak for 11 months followed by further refining in older oak barrels for another 11 months and then bottle ageing for another 11 months. The result is a highly refined, elegant and complex red.

Marketing Propaganda Link (aka Official Wine Info)

Look, we’ll be honest…we wish we had tales of struggling ferments, crazy blending trials, and other tidbits of insider information, but this wine all but made itself.  Clean fruit, clean careful ferment, clean filtration…just plain clean, crisp, varietally correct aromatics and a really refreshing palate.  In a difficult, rainy vintage, our gris was like a glowing beacon of comfort amid panic about later-ripening varieties.  It was a delight and we love it not only because it happens to be quite smashing (biased? us?), but also because it was like a happy, healthy baby: a joy to be around, well-behaved, and lacking in poopy diapers of all descriptions.    It’s all grown up and left the tank now, spouting egotistical slogans about its party prowess, but we like to remember it fondly as unfermented juice fresh off the press and so full of (now realized) potential.

One would think that the path from juice to wine wouldn’t differ much from vintage to vintage, winery to winery, but here at Creekside we do something just a little crazy: we name our equipment.  Cellar jobs that read like “rack T0-01 to T0-07″ are like nails on a chalkboard to our production staff. We’d rather have a root canal than say crusher/destemmer thirty times a day during harvest.  Why not make operations easy to remember and actually (*gasp*) entertaining?

Take this 2008 Pinot Grigio for example…its literal path to you, the consumer, was very different from the 2007, despite the fact that the vinification process was identical.  Whereas one may have been touched by great philosophers, the other may have been blessed by stellar musicians.  Where one may have conversed with great political minds, the other might have hung out with the great characters of fictions past and present. To demonstrate, here’s what the 2008 Pinot Grigio’s workflow would have looked like through the eyes of the production team.  If anyone can figure out that diagram without explanation, we’re not sure whether to be ecstatic or concerned for your mental well-being.  Click the thumbnail below and the image will open in a new window.  Buckle up and follow along, this is The Story of Creekside’s 2008 Pinot Grigio.

In The Making: 2008 Pinot Grigio

It started with two main batches of fruit from the Niagara Lakeshore appellation that came in two weeks apart in the fall of 2008 (note the cool colour of the grapes in the picture, a great identifier for gris).  The fruit was then dumped from the picking bins into Mad Max (the fruit hopper), whose giant auger moves the delicate bunches into Beverly (the crusher/destemmer), who spits out all the stems and gets everything ready for Barney (so named for being a giant purple must pump, slow moving but still somehow creepy).  Barney passes the fruit along to Paparazzi, or Papa for short (the press), who squeezes the fruit to yield the juice that will eventually become our Grigio.  Papa’s pressing are pumped into tanks, left to cold settle, and then racked off gross less to fermentation tanks.  In this case, Simon (Paul Simon, a 156hL tank) and Winston (Winston Churchill, a 256hL tank) were chosen for ferment duty and inoculated.  The juice fermented to dryness pretty smoothly, with no major alarms, and when a trial blend of roughly half of Simon + 100hL of Winston was decided on, the two batches were filtered and blended to Buddha (a rotund 315hL tank) before bottling and release to you (that’s you at the bottom, a very excited Grigio fan).

No oak, no lees stirring, no muss, no pretension.  This wine proudly wears its heart on its sleeve and expresses the best that a crisply styled Grigio has to offer, unfettered and unadorned.

]]> http://www.creeksidewine.com/blog/wine-profile-2008-pinot-grigio/feed/ 2 http://www.creeksidewine.com/blog/2008-single-vineyard-whites-in-bottle/ http://www.creeksidewine.com/blog/2008-single-vineyard-whites-in-bottle/#comments Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:18:47 +0000 admin http://www.creeksidewine.com/blog/?p=92 The first bottling run of 2008 vintage wine might have gone to Pinot Grigio (now available for sale at the winery!), but May 7th and 8th saw the bottling of two equally as exciting products: the 2008 Butler’s Grant Riesling and the 2008 Queenston Road Vineyard Chardonnay.

The 2008 BG Riesling marks the return of an annual favourite, this is now the fourth vintage of Creekside Riesling to be made from fruit sourced solely from that vineyard and every year, it’s following seems to grow. Keep an eye out for a wine profile, with all the behind the scenes gossip, coming soon to The Cellared Life.

Just as nifty, the 2008 QRV Chardonnay makes history as the first single vineyard chardonnay to come out of our prized vineyard on the St. David’s Bench. It seems bound and determined to show up our reds with it’s energetic stainless steel fermented character and high-toned personality. Wine profile to come on this quirky guy as well.

How do we get these lively whites from tank to bottle as quickly and gently as possible? Why with a high speed bottling line of course. Visitors are always fascinated by how the line works, so we thought we would share a glimpse of the process online. Generally speaking we can do 1500-1700 cases per day, or an astounding 18,000-20,000 bottles. For reference, our standard old line could manage 1100 cases per day on a perfect day. Needless to say we much prefer speed and consistency!

Rob Power and Craig McDonald have won so many awards for Creekside Estate Winery that I’m beginning to lose count.

He also spoke very fondly of his family’s on-going connection to Creekside and said a whole bunch of very nice things that has us all blushing.  Read it all here.

One of Creekside’s strengths is its relationship with regional growers of the highest calibre.  There is a strong sense of community on the Niagara Peninsula where long-term business arrangements often morph into long-term friendships.  It’s extra nice to receive a pat on the back from the Lowreys, who have been staunch supporters of Creekside for the past decade and whose fruit, from the St. David’s Bench, comes with a consistency and characteristic uniqueness that speaks volumes for their connection to and care of the land.

Howard, Wilma, and winemaking son Wes have now embarked on an exciting project of their own:  crafting premium, small batch wines from their own vineyard reflective of the fruit, the land, and the family’s rich history.  Please check out fiverows.com for more information on their fantastic wines and celebrate the success of both Creekside and Lowrey Vineyards.

Thanks for the warm words Wes, right back at you!  As the old adage states: “All great wines begin in the vineyard”.

Rob Power and Craig McDonald

Canada played host to a couple of Irish journalists during the Christmas season who sought to track down all that was Irish in the GTA and Golden Horseshoe.  In addition to giving people an idea of Christmas spirit, Canadian style, presenters Michael Ryan and Mary Kennedy outlined the history of the Irish in Toronto and explored the niches that some Irish immigrants have found for themselves in Canada. While Kennedy got up close and personal with the Falls in a helicopter, Ryan paid a visit to Creekside on his jaunt through Southwestern Ontario to investigate the booming wine industry on the Niagara Peninsula, try his first sip of icewine, and catch up with our very own luck o’ the Irish winemakers: Rob & Craig.

The “Christmas In Toronto” show proved to be a wild success in Ireland.  Viewed on December 22nd, 2008by 420,000 RTÉ Nationwide watchers, the show on Toronto received the highest audience share for the entire year for RTÉ , thus making Rob & Craig, in our estimation, bonafide international television icons.  Keep it up guys, and you may yet get that star on the Walk of Fame.   Unfortunately we weren’t able to track down a separate Creekside clip showing the gents at their best, but the entire “Christmas In Toronto” segment can be viewed at the RTÉ website by clicking this link: http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/1222/nationwide.html . Watch our winemakers make their Irish television debut around the 13:40 minute time point of the video and learn out how an Aussie and an Ontarian are very much….Irish!

What’s so experimental and special about Heinz?  So many things!  He was Creekside’s first venture into demi-muid barrels and so got the star treatment.  A local cooper was called in to knock off the top rings and essentially remove the barrel’s head.  A selection of the very best Shiraz from the 2006 vintage, along with some lightly pressed Viognier skins, were then fermented right in the barrel.  When all was said and done, the fermented must was bucketed out by hand, pressed, and the juice returned to the same barrel, where it has sat until now.

He has been the unparalleled star of every tour to go through the Creekside barrel cellar since the fall of 2006 and was constantly stalked  by the camera-toting, devoted paparazzi of wine fans who cuddled, straddled, kissed, and otherwise harassed (though we really don’t think he minded…he’s not exactly shy).

We thought for sure that this barrel would be part of the 2006 Broken Press Shiraz, but in a flight of other stellar Shiraz barrels from the same vintage, dear Heinz was like a beacon that practically screamed “I’m different damn it!  You WILL bottle me separately!”

We don’t argue with demi-muids…frankly they’re a little scary when they get agitated, so Heinz was the last 2006 Shiraz barrel brought up from the cellar after nearly 24 months of sitting pretty on his original lees, and was racked separately as part of a new line of very limited production, experiemental bottlings.  Keep an eye on the Creekside website for more details on the release of the 2006 “Headless” Shiraz…at an expected bottling size of 60-65 cases, you can bet competition for bottles will be fierce.

Please click on the Full Screen Mode button (the button in the bottom right corner of the photo show)for a better look, and click any image for a description. Meet Heinz:

Not to worry though, if you’re unable to come in for a visit because the 2006 Broken Press Shiraz is being prepared for bottling as we speak! Watch The Cellared Life for updates on how the process is moving along, as well as a special chance to sample the final blend before it’s bottled.

The end of July saw the winemakers huddled over barrel samples of the best Shiraz that 2006 had to offer and we caught them on camera! To learn more about our Reserve selection process and see it in action in the photo album below.

Larger versions are available for viewing both at Picasa, and Flickr.

• 2005 Reserve Merlot
• 2005 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon
• 2005 Reserve Meritage
• 2006 Reserve Pinot Noir

If you like huge, structured reds, the 2005 Reserves will be right up your alley, with big fruit, big tannin, and a big frame. Everything about these wines is enormous. The winter of 2004/05 was brutal. Damage to the Niagara region’s vineyards was extensive and resulted in a harvest only 50% of the normal size. The decimation of the vines left many vineyard yields low, leading to some remarkably high quality fruit from what plantings could be scavenged. The hot, hot, heat of 2005 bumped sugar levels, bumped concentration, and gave some serious oomph to the reds.

The 2006 Reserve Pinot Noir certainly isn’t shy either! The vintage was literally a killer for Pinot Noir grapes, with many vineyards losing substantial proportions of their crops due to rot in the wet, humid lead-in to the 2006 harvest. Our site on the St. David’s Bench not only avoided all the trouble, but came in looking pretty darn fab. After a lot of patient ageing, this wine is nothing short of stunning. We’re pretty darn pleased and would ask all you Pinot-philes out there to take it for a test-drive.

We’re going to let them settle in to their new homes for a while before releasing them, so watch this space for updates, including a profile for each wine as it’s released.

Good food, good wine, good friends, pre-breakfast icewine shooters, and a frigid dip into Lake Ontario will all become cherished memories and part of the patchwork fabric that makes the production team a tight-knit crew. More of a family really, if you discount the obvious disconnect in genetics and a random Aussie accent.

Many thanks to our friends at the following PEC wineries for showing us around, answering our questions, and making us feel welcome!

Rose Hall Run

Norman Hardie

The Grange of Prince Edward County

Huff Estates