Chiu on this

Through the little I’ve read/watched about keeping a wine journal, I’ve learned that marking down the vintage (year) of the wine is just as important as noting the winery and kind of wine you drank. Also, it doesn’t hurt to put down where you drank it with and with whom. Wine, like food, is just as much about what’s around the table as what’s on it.

So here we go. My first wine entered into my digital wine journal comes all the way from Beamsville, Ontario in the Niagara region. Please be gentle, I don’t speak “wine.”

Cave Spring
Chenin Blanc (Estate Bottled)
2007

We first had this wine at Oyster Boy more than a year ago. We were celebrating our first anniversary, I think. This may have made it special, but it’s also the first (and so far, the only) white wine my partner and I both love. She doesn’t like sweet wines and I dislike anything very dry, but this Chenin Blanc was the perfect balance.

Notes: Sweet like honey at first, and smooth, not very acidic which I think gives it a nice, soft mouth feel.

After the dinner, I looked up the wine online. I was sad to discover the bottle is only available at restaurants and at the winery. We returned to Oyster Boy a second time and ordered the Chenin Blanc but our meal was far less enjoyable.  Despite our favourite wine, we decided not to return. Thankfully, Cave Spring is just an hour and a half (with traffic) from Toronto. We stopped in to pick up a couple of bottles last month. We’re done with bottle number one, but we’re saving the second for a special occasion. I just hope my taste buds can wait.

New term: As you can see from the photo above, Cave Spring’s Chenin Blanc is estate bottled. This means 100% of the grapes used come from vineyards controlled (but not necessarily owned) by the winery, in this case, Cave Spring. Cave Spring describes its estate bottled wines:

In addition, to ensure that our Estate Bottled wines display power, purity and elegance, considerable focus is put on using fruit from some of our oldest vines, planted as far back as 1974.

Questions: Do you like Chenin Blanc wines? Can you recommend one you think I might like?