Icewine Tales

It was pretty exciting.  And it didn’t smell as bad as I thought it would, and it was more beautiful than I had expected.  The Amorphophallus titanum had bloomed on May 4, 2012.  Here are a few pictures.

Amorphophallus titanum Blooms

Closeup of the Amorphophallus titanum flower

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“It is really going to stink up the place”!

Niagara Parks manager Joan Cornelius is excited about the Amorphophallus Titanum plant that has grown more than 2 meters in just 30 days.  “It grew 6 inches in a day but now it is slowing down, getting ready to bloom”

May 31, 2012 The Amorphophalas Titanum in Niagara Parks is expected to bloom within days.

Amorphophallus Titanum is commonly known as the Corpse plant for good reason.  When it flowers, it emits the foul smell of a large rotting dead mammal.  The spath also turns blood red to resemble rotting flesh.  This attracts carrion eating beetles and flesh flies, insects who pollinate the plant.

Cornelius adds, “It is still growing, so it is not ready to bloom yet.  It grew 1 ½ inches today, so we think it will open late  Tuesday, perhaps Wednesday.  And it will bloom for about three days and then die”.

Cornelius points to a second, much smaller corpse plant beside Morph.   “This one is only 10 days behind so we’ll have two plants blooming within 10 days”

Six of these rare plants were donated to Niagara Parks by Mr. Louis Riccardiello a New Hampshire collector.  Mr. Riccardiello  holds the Guinness Book of Records title for the tallest Amorphophallus titanium ever grown in captivity.  It grew to 3.1 meters in June, 2010.

Two of these plants are blooming this May.  The others are being carefully tended by Niagara Parks gardener  Wayne Hoeschle.  He says his secret is to water and fertilize it very well as soon as the shoot breaks through the earth.

Amorphophallus Titanum was first bloomed in captivity in the Kew Royal Botanical Gardens in 1889 and since then, about 150 blooming events have been reported from around the world.  Hoeshle believes that this is the first blooming event in Canada.  “And we have two of them” he adds with a smile.

There will be Amorphophallus Titanum excitement from now until approximately May 20^th at the Niagara Parks Floral Showhouse in Niagara Falls.

Contact VinoCanada for Export of Icewines and Canadian Wine Exports at www.vinocanada.com

I was looking at the table wine grapes being harvested now in Niagara and wondered whether to hazard a guess at what the Icewine harvest might be like when January, or February comes.  Then I thought about how wrong we would all have been to take early guesses at the Niagara table wine harvest.

Niagara had a lot of rain this summer, and then 25 days of straight sunshine in September, which were almost perfect conditions for a wonderful grape harvest.  But then it started to rain. It rained through October.  Then it got cold last week.  The  farmers had taken a lot of the white grapes off, but with a lot of the reds still hanging on the vine, an early frost hit overnight.  A crop that promised lots of quality and quantity still has the quantity.  However, the stellar quality is now less than stellar, but certainly not as bad as  ‘bad’.

However, it has the local media in an uproar reporting a massive (in Niagara, 12,000 tonnes is ‘massive’) surplus of grapes that will make farmers go bankrupt, and so on.  News media makes their money on bad news.

I asked a couple of my suppliers if they were affected by this glut of less than ideal quality grapes.  They didn’t seem concerned because they had commitments for all of their grapes.

One said, “Sure, the guys who are trying to grow 10 tonnes per acre have too much crop and the brix and flavour just isn’t going to be as concentrated as it should be so of course it will be hard to sell.  I grow two to three tonnes per acre and they are all sold.”

Farmers can control how large a harvest will be by pruning the fruit in early season.  By pruning back many of the grapes early, the remaining grapes will have better quality because the vine will focus on feeding less fruit with more goodness. This is as much art as science.  Farmers who don’t prune or prune very little are making far more grapes, but they will be of a lesser brix or flavour and the crop, while bigger, will be less valuable, and harder to sell.

“What about the frost damage?”  I asked another family winemaker who grows his own grapes. When the frost kills the leaves, development of the grape ceases.  If a farmer doesn’t have wind machines to protect his vineyards from frost, his crop runs the risk of fungus, rot, and damage, and the grapes will have ceased to develop normally.

“Some farmers will be claiming crop insurance.  I’m happy that the frost has killed off the canopy.  The grapes are finished growing, and now I’m going to let them desiccate on the vine a little bit, concentrate the sugars, and then pick them.  It’s kind of a mini-amarone thing happening right on the vine.”

I like this kind of innovation.  In an industry where one doesn’t expect so much innovation, a little frost allowed this grower to make use of weather that couldn’t be expected to improve some of his grapes, and he had a plan that he had thought forward through fermentation and probably right to his shop shelves.

Innovation is good.  Almost 200 years ago German farmers had their grapes frozen by an early winter and invented Eiswine, which was adapted to become Icewine,  Niagara’s, and Canada’s signature wine.

Another farmer will be grafting Malbec buds onto 30 year old roots and protecting them against the frost.  He’ll have something close to an old vines Malbec crop to take off next year and since as a winemaker, he lives and breaths his reds, I can’t wait to see what Malbec comes out of that winery.  Malbec is a rare variety in Niagara.

At Pillitteri, they have just released another sparkling  Icewine. This time it is a sparkling Cabernet Franc.  Pillitteri is the leader in bringing different varieties to market.  They are still celebrating that they have been able to keep the sangiovese vines alive through the winter so we may see another vintage of Icewines reminiscent of Chianti.   Pillitteri is also plotting to make a ripasso style wine, but beyond that, those in the know won’t share the secrets until it is in the bottle.  They already make a winning sur lies Chardonnay, so Pillitteri is not afraid of a little innovation with secondary fermentation

Over at Reif Winery, Klaus Reif was walking around his tasting room offering customers samples of his first batch of raisins.  He’s adopted an as yet, still secret technology from another branch of agriculture and dried out a few tonnes of Coronation table grapes, virtually inventing a new foodstuff, the Niagara raisin.

The Niagara Region is developing culinary and innovative local ingredients like Klaus’s help make the experience truly local.   If a Niagara raisin is on the menu next time I’m out dining, I’m ordering it!

Reif Winery, on the Niagara River

Contact VinoCanada for Export of Icewines and Canadian Wine Exports at www.vinocanada.com