Niagara Wine Festival returns to its roots

The Niagara Wine Festival is strengthening its community roots. After spending a few years pursuing a more cosmopolitan crowd from outside Niagara, festival organizers have turned their attention to making the marquee event a real homecoming in St. Catharines.

Expect more local musical acts on stage at Montebello Park in September, and look for more of your neighbours walking in the popular annual grande parade.

Kimberly Hundertmark, the festival's interim director of events, said organizers are taking stock of what the festival means to Niagara and listening to calls from the community to bring it back to its roots.

Two years ago, many St.Cat h a r i n e s residents balked at beefed-up entry rules for the grande parade designed to make it more polished and ended up cutting out some local groups.

"When you look at it, it is a homecoming," said Hundertmark, the city's tourism and attractions manager who was brought in last month to organize this year's festival.

"There's a lot of people from out of town coming to it. But essentially the people that are in the cars (on parade day), and that are lining the parade route are people that have grown up here, people that live here. It just made sense to make it more local."

News Source : Niagara Wine Festival returns to its roots

Interesting Facts about Wine Tasting Tour

Wine country tour is planned to enlarge the taste of the tasters, and it could really be enjoyable, since many wine generating regions of the world are very gorgeous.

Characteristically, any wine tasting tour moves around wineries, letting the tasters to view the winery, and possibly meet the wine producer also. In other cases, the trip visits chosen tasting rooms that might pour wines from a unique winery, or several wineries like Niagara on the Lake Wineries. Organizing and managing a wine tasting tour could actually get complex, as the director desires the people on the tour to taste as many wines as probable, while harmonizing the wish to remain in some spots higher than others. The journey may take the shape of a day trip or a more comprehensive quest, and habitually comprise lunch, dinner, and other lodgings as well.

In many cases, a winery or tasting area is open for people during pre set hours. In few cases, a scheduled time needs to be fixed. Scheduled time only wineries are apt to be small, and apprehensive about overwhelming their services with the tasters. By asking visitors to make appointments, the wine producer makes sure that people get a bespoken and frequently cherished experience in the winery tour. In some other cases, the vineyard might in addition offer tours of the wine lab and making rooms that could actually be interesting for people who desire to be acquainted with more about the course behind making wine.

Washington wines comparable at better-than-California prices

A MARKETING-SURVEY company has released some telling statistics about wine drinkers. According to the Pointer Media Network, 7.5 million wine drinkers purchase 80 percent of the wine sold in this country. That includes wines at all price points, but the cheapest wines are showing the growth, while expensive wines are losing customers.

Another industry bellwether — Gomberg, Fredrikson & Associates — notes that sales of California wines priced at $14 and below are still increasing at a healthy clip, while wines priced above $14 are dropping. So $14 has somehow become the magic number for consumers.

I was chewing on these stats while snarfling through a lineup of pricey California merlots and cabernets the other day, and wondering who actually buys these wines. Why they don't opt for something twice as good at half the price from Washington?

I have frequently opined that California merlots, for example, are almost always watery plonk unless you pony up at least $40 a bottle. The Three Palms vineyard merlot from Sterling Vineyards, perhaps the most iconic California merlot of the past three decades, is a pretty nice bottle of vino. It retails for right around 50 bones. It's also worth noting that, unlike most Washington merlots, it is blended with considerable amounts of cabernet sauvignon and petit verdot, presumably to beef it up.

In Washington it is usually the merlot that is blended in to beef up the cab, rather than the other way around. Most quality California cabernets start their pricing where the merlots leave off. The number of so-so $60, $80 and even $100 bottles being produced is staggering. One fine exception is the Hess Allomi Vineyard cabernet sauvignon, an estate-grown Napa Valley wine, aged in one-third new American oak barrels, meaty and substantial, and widely available (Noble distributes). It retails for about $24.

Being perfectly honest here, those looking for comparable quality in wines priced under $15 are not going to find it. But the Hess wines — their Su'skol Vineyard chardonnay is another gem — offer the sort of quality in the mid-$20 price range that I find in a growing number of Washington boutiques.

News Source : Washington wines comparable at better-than-California prices