A belated Happy Valentine’s Day to all our readers. I recently said during my Cockfighter’s Ghost review that I could recommend 3 to 4 Niagara based Chardonnays that were better then the Pooles Rock wine I thought I’d try and add to that list by trying several $15 to $20 ones. This is the first of many reviews to come of wines from the region. Last night was Chardonnay night, we served a three course meal of seared scallops over baby greens, 40-clove garlic roasted chicken and homemade apple pie. Not only did Mrs CWG and I have a fridge full of chilled Chards but our guests brought us a TAWSE 2004 Chard as well, quite a nice treat. This was the first wine we launched into (in fact I used some of it in the chicken recipe). At $16.95 you will find this wine in the Vintages section of the LCBO. It is the table wine offering from Flat Rock Cellars, a winery that was founded in 1999 on the Jordan bench, just outside of St-Catherines. The winery does some much higher end Chardonnays and just like it’s top of the line brother, this wine was also from the Twenty Mile Bench vineyards. Flat Rock uses the Stelvin concept screwtop on 100% of it’s wines. While most hardcore wine enthusiasts believe this is a sin, more and more wine knowledgeable folks are appreciating this. It really takes the guessing out of the possibility of “corked” wines and provides consistency while doing so. While I miss removing the cork from the wine, I do not miss broken corks, tainted wine (corked) or cork fragments, so I guess you can say I have converted to the dark side! Well let’s move on to the tasting of this wine!
Immediately upon opening you will get hit with green apple on the nose. The initial sips bring out more apple, solid acids (hrmm) and a good amount of oak. As the wine warmed up (it may have been served just a tad too cold) it started to soften a tad and more fruit came out. Peach and apricot started to compliment the apple and tone down the oak. There was a slight bit of butter texture to the wine but overall the wine did not fulfill me the way I was hoping. I think it is even enough to drink now but in reality 1 or 2 more years might (stress might) smooth this out more. Tall in fruit with oak and some acidity, that sums this up pretty accurately. Would I stock my fridge with these? No, I simply did not enjoy this enough to make a regular table white, I think you can get better quality for similar money.
The “Subjective CWG Rating” for this wine is 83 out of 100.
Mrs CWG had nothing to add to this, for once strangely quiet!
2006 Flat Rock Chardonnay
