{"id":7740,"date":"2013-07-21T21:38:32","date_gmt":"2013-07-21T21:38:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=7740"},"modified":"2013-07-22T21:22:14","modified_gmt":"2013-07-22T21:22:14","slug":"more-fun-in-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/canada\/more-fun-in-canada","title":{"rendered":"More fun in Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

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My Canadian adventure continued with a chance to live the Canadian dream – a quick trip Lake Muskoka with some of my new Canadian friends, and all-round good guy Ruud Madsaam of Staete Landt in New Zealand. We went out on a boat, swam, drank beer, chatted, went for a long run in the heat, had a candlelit dinner (the power was out), drank some interesting wines (I’d brought along Craig Hawkins’ Testalonga Cortez Chenin Blanc), and sat in front of the fire, while Ruud, Andrew and I debated philosophy of wine and life, while Svetlana and Nicole fell asleep. It was just lovely.<\/p>\n

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As an aside, I have had some great Canadian beer on this trip, including Oast, Muskoka Brewery<\/a>\u00a0 Mad Tom (lovey IPA style), and the couple pictured here.<\/p>\n

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The next day it was back to Niagara, for the cool-climate Chardonnay conference. This began with a nice dinner for winemakers and speakers,\u00a0hosted by Harald Thiel of Hidden Bench, and held at the Vineland Estates restaurant.\u00a0There were a few good wines on the table, including\u00a0a very good Vineland Estates St Urban Vineyard Riesling 2009 (with just 9.5% alcohol), Hidden Bench Brunante 2010 (a big Bordeaux blend), 13th Street Winery Gamay Noir 2010, and Inniskillin Sparkling Vidal Icewine\u00a02011 (the only\u00a0icewine I tasted on this trip).<\/p>\n

Vineland Estates Winery St Urban Vineyard Riesling 2011 Niagara Escarpment, Canada<\/strong>
\n9.5% alcohol. Livelly, fresh and quite mineral with citrussy fruit and some sweetness. Lively, pure and quite lovely. 91\/100<\/p>\n

Vineland Estates Winery Pinot Meunier 2011 Niagara, Canada<\/strong>
\n12% alcohol. It is not often you see a red table wine made from Pinot Meunier. Some green herby notes, with plum and cherry fruit and a hint of cola. Sweet and sour notes. Fresh and distinctive. 88\/100<\/p>\n

Hidden Bench La Brunante 2010 Beamsville Bench, Canada<\/strong>
\n13.4% alcohol. A Bordeaux-style blend. Very ripe and rich with tarry, spicy, blackcurrant and black cherry fruit. Ripe and dense with nice grip. Good weight and structure. 90\/100<\/p>\n

13th Street Winery Gamay Noir 2010 Niagara Peninsula, Canada<\/strong>
\nCherries, plums and spice here. It’s quite ripe and sweet textured with subtle reductive notes adding interest. 88\/100<\/p>\n

Inniskillin Sparkling Vidal Ice Wine 2011 Niagara Peninsula, Canada<\/strong>
\nRipe, sweet and fizzy. Viscous with notes of grape an spice. The fizz adds a bit of bite which helps carry the extreme sweetness well. Quirky but delicious. 93\/100<\/p>\n

This was the start of what was to turn out to be an epic weekend…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Canadian adventure continued with a chance to live the Canadian dream – a quick trip Lake Muskoka with some of my new Canadian friends, and all-round good guy Ruud…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7740"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7758,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7740\/revisions\/7758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}