Icewine Tales

Tyler Philp of North of 9 Fine Wine  shared an article on wine tasting that got me wondering: how could I create an appetizer that paired with almost any wine. 

The dish looks great, is colourful, evokes fragrance, texture, taste, and is easy to enjoy one handed while standing at a social event or a wine tasting.

Perfect appetizer for Icewines and wines

There was no recipe or link provided so I called him to ask what the original ingredients were.  Philp described the original dish as goat cheese in a phyllo purse sitting on Ontario strawberry coulis with blades of wheat grass.   He went on to say that the small appetizer was served during a Sauvignon Blanc tasting that he was hosting.

Then we began discussing various ways to make this dish pair with any wine.  The dish consists of two things that don’t change: Phyllo pastry and the dish itself.   There are three variables that one can change to suit the occasion:  Stuffing, sauce, and garnish.

The basic recipe to make 6 servings looks like this:

• Phyllo pastry
• 12 ounces of stuffing  (estimate 2 oz. per portion)
• 18 tablespoons of sauce (estmate 3tbs. per portion)
• Garnish

Place the stuffing in the phyllo and bake at 300^of or 150^oc until the phyllo is starting to show brown.  Assemble the plate as shown.

What could be easier than this?  This a great way to give leftovers a noble end! All we have to do is create a list of logical combinations and we’re set for all occasions.  What stuffing, sauce and garnish and matching wine could be used? The answer is, “anything you would like”.

Philp suggested a number of options but it became clear that there were literally thousands of combinations of foods and wines to try using this simple recipe.  Here are some of the leaders:

Stuffing	Sauce	Garnish	Wine
2 ounce Lobster pieces	Melted butter	Arugula and Riesling	Riesling,Champagne
Shrimp	Thai sauce with ginger	Lemongrass	Vidal Icewine, Gewürztraminer
Pork cubes	Applesauce	Serrano pepper slices (if you are adventurous)	Fruity Chardonnay
Beef tenderloin cubes with blue cheese	Olive oil, chives, salt &  pepper	Sprig of rosemary	Cabernet Sauvignon (try  a jammy warm climate Cab)
Chorizo sausage meatballs cooked up with onion, chickpeas, cloves and garlic to taste	Vegetable stock	Sprig of thyme	Shiraz (Syrah) or perhaps Malbec
Seared foie gras	Applesauce	Fresh raspberry	Tokaji, Vin Jaune, Vidal Icewine, Sauterne
Grilled BBQ chicken pieces	Spicy peanut sauce	Cilantro	Sangiovese
Smoked gouda cubes	Primavera	Savoury biscotti	Gewurztraminer, off-dry Riesling
Lamb pieces	Curry sauce (spiced to taste)	Red peppers (cool) or Serrano peppers (warm)	Pinot Noir, Rioja Reserva, Malbec

 

It is easy, versatile, and a wonderful way to assemble a great appetizer.  Check your fridge or wine rack and start creating!

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

In 1954 James Bond ordered the first ‘ultra cool martini’ by uttering these words:

“A dry martini,” he said. “One. In a deep champagne goblet.”

“Oui, monsieur.”

“Just a moment. Three measure of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large, thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?”

“Certainly, monsieur.”

The barman seemed pleased with the idea.

Gosh, that’s certainly a drink,” said Leiter.

Bond laughed. “When I’m..er..concentrating,” he explained, “I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad. This drink’s my own invention. I’m going to patent it when I can think of a good name.”

Every one of us remembers Bond and his Martinis and almost all of us at one time or another wish we could have pulled off something that cool.

With whimsy, I suggest that if you have the nerve to walk into a fine establishment anywhere in the world and say to the waiter…

“I’ll have a Vidal Icewine, chilled, with two spicy Thai shrimp on the side…

“and my friend will have a Riesling Icewine, also chilled, with two Malpeque Oysters on the half shell and a thin twist of lemon zest.

“Serve it first, and then we’ll order.”

..no sommelier in the world will mess with you.

You will have just pulled off that thing James Bond did with the Martini in 1954.

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I was writing this passage in my Icewine book, (which you can download free at www.vinocanada.com) and was struggling to explain that after reading the book the reader would be one of the most knowledgeable people in the world about Icewine.

So I started doing some math.  6 billion people.  There are probably 6,000 people who know something about Icewine, including (and I love you all dearly) many sommeliers who would claim to know, but don’t quite.  So then I did some math and I had to use a calculator to make sure I got the decimal point in the right place.  6000 out of 6 billion is 0.000001.   If you read the Essential Icewine Companion, you’ll know more than 99.999999% of the people on this earth do.

Here’s a bonus: If you catch me making a mistake with the decimal place, you’ll prove you know more than me about statistics!

I wrote this for one of the chapters in my Icewine book.  The Essential Icewine Companion is guaranteed to give you the tools to be cooler than Bond!!

Download the Essential Icewine Companion for free at the VinoCanada website.

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