Viewpointe Estate Winery has a beautiful tasting room overlooking Lake Erie. They craft good wines. Lake Erie North Shore (LENS) is the appellation and is largely ignored by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) in favour of the wines of Niagara. Mention Lake Erie North Shore and most Ontario wine drinkers just might look at you with a puzzled expression. Given my experience much of that in the past due to the tight-fisted LENS wineries carefully guarding samples, I would give a thumbs up to many LENS wines particularly those from Colchester Ridge, Cooper’s Hawk, Sprucewood Shores and Viewpointe.
This Cabernet Franc from Viewpointe is well aged. Has it aged well? On the nose there is an almost lush black cherry bouncing up to the nose. There is also some red plum, red currants and cola. If aromas solely defined a wine this would be a classy wine. On the palate the tannins are moderate. The carnival of rich black cherry on the nose transcends into the palate along with some cranberry and date squares. The wine is almost struggling to present some juiciness to you but something is holding that back. My point of view of this Viewpointe is that it is delightfully corrupted by black cherry. You don’t ordinarily see this sort of corruption in other LENS Cabernet Francs as they are usually lighter.
Yes a good sipping wine. Try it with some Quebec Oka cheese topped with cherry preserves. For pairing with a main course if you like your turkey with cranberry sauce this might be the perfect wine. It will sail nicely into 2025.
(Viewpointe Estate Winery Cabernet Franc 2012, VQA Lake Erie North Shore, Viewpointe Estate Winery, Harrow, Ontario, $19.95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 24772, 14%, 750 mL, Robert K. Stephen A Little Birdie Told Me So Rating 92/100).
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