RKS 2024 Wine: A High-Risk Endeavour from Riverview Estate Winery: Baco Noir and Foch Blend!

Ontario Baco Noir flops more often than not. It has flopped many times in my glass but when managed in the vineyard and in the vat it can make exceptional Baco Noir e.g. Henry of Pelham. And Foch ripped out aplenty years ago can make some exceptional wine e.g. Malivoire.

54% Maréchal Foch and 46% Baco Noir. Fermented and aged separately for 6 months in American oak.

311 cases produced.

Can Riverview Estate Winery manage bad boy Baco Noir?

Aroma: Smoke, blackberry, black cherry, plum and blueberry.

Palate: Smooth and silky with minimal tannins. Dark fruit abounds. Fine acidity which is not disruptive but strongly suggests this wine flourishes as a foodie wine. Full bodied, winning and a creative blend.

Personality: I think I have shown my creators can manage Baco Noir which in the glass can exhibit enticing dark fruit but on the palate crumbles into nothingness. Gamay compliments me or is Baco Noir complimenting the Foch?

Food Match: I will not argue with the label stating the wine “pairs very well with smoked pulled pork or cheddar burgers”.  Great match for a celebratory turkey dinner! Vegheads would enjoy with stuffed field red peppers.

Cellarbility: Drink by 2024-year end.

Price: $20.15 CDN (Ontario).

RKS 2024 Wine Rating: 92/100.

(Riverview Cellars Estate Winery 2021 Baco-Foch, VQA Ontario, Riverview Cellars Estate Winery, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, 750 mL, 12%).

RKS 2024 Film: “The Contestant”: Can Anything Positive Emerge from Reality Television?

Inanity and reality television are bedfellows. The specialty of reality television is humiliating people for audience snickers. A prime example would be “90 Day Fiancée”. What is next “Romans Feeding Christians to the Lions: Live at the Coliseum!”

It may well be that reality television was born with the Japanese television show “Denpa Shonen” specializing in endurance tasks for its younger contestants. In 1998 a version of the show “A Life of Prizes” was launched. Tomoaki Hamatsu aka “Eggplant” (nasubi in Japanese) because of his longish face was selected to participate in the show. Not knowing if the show would ever be broadcast, he was placed in a room stripped naked and left to survive with magazines and postcards offering prizes including the food he needed to survive which include dog kibble. When his total prize value reached a million yen the contest would end. Real intelligent television. 

To the amusement of a television audience that reached 30 million people Nasubi demeaned himself and delighted the younger viewers. The older generation and his own family were not amused by what some family members referred to as cruel exploitation. Nasubi also maintained diaries which later became best sellers.

And when he reached one million yen there was an immediate spinoff Denpa Shonen in Korea. 15 months later that show was wrapped up and Nasubi was taken in front of a live audience and the shock on his face when the blindfold was removed was gigantic. He simply could not comprehend what was happening. I query if the audience enjoyed clips of his desperation in that room? He said that suicide was contemplated and he suffered loneliness. He had lost the ability to connect with people. He felt broken, lost his faith in humanity, his heart wrapped in loneliness, shame and an inability to keep up with people’s expectations.

Years later the Fukushima nuclear disaster and a deadly avalanche at the Everest base camp, which Nasubi survived unlike 19 people who lost their lives, healed, through the reaction of Nasubi, the devastating effects of a reality show.

Directed by Claire Titley.

“The Contestant” has its Hollywood Suite on Demand premiere on 1July2024 with a broadcast release on 20July2024.

RKS 2024 Film Rating 84/100.

PORTHEAD ALERT!  Kopke 2018 LBV

Late Bottle Vintage Port (LBV) is an affordable Port that can age well but certainly not as well as Vintage Port. For example the oldest Vintage Port I  have had was an 1867 and it still had life. The 1932 Vintage Port likewise.

How about the 2018 LBV from Kopke?

Aroma:  If there is one descriptor here it is massive blackberry. It has conquered the soul of this Port and I am not complaining.

Palate: Again massive blackberry with some blueberry and chocolate sneaking in an the after palate. At 20% there is some pleasurable and controlled heat with a finish that simply doesn’t want to get off the tram. Is that tingling good for the gums? Not as deep and expansive as a Vintage Port but pretty jolly good!

Personality: Not to be trite but Port is an affordable luxury. I am rich but will not deplete your pocket. A Port for the proletarian masses?

Food Match: Portuguese ox au jus or rare Prime Rib.

Price: $16 CDN (Ontario).

Cellarbility: This Port is at its peak. Perhaps enjoy at 2025 Christmas or New Year’s Eve at the latest. With a slice of mincemeat pie?

RKS 2024 Port Alert Rating: 89/100. Natalie MacLean 92.

(Kopke L.B.V. 2018 Porto, Sogevinus Fine Wines, Villa Nova de Gaia, Portugal, 750 mL, 20%).

RKS 2024 Wine: Portuguese Wines: The Way of the Dinosaur in Ontario

Over the course of 2024 a question has arisen and that is where Portuguese wines have migrated to as very few are heading into Ontario. Vintages releases of Portuguese wines at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) have disappeared while Spanish wines “flourish” as such a term must be interpreted in the LCBO craze for profits from Housewives of New Jersey California wines. The LCBO sells its soul on the altar of California wines leaving homegrown Ontario wines languishing despite the plethora of LCBO doublespeak touting “local”. You’ll most likely see more wines from Georgia at the LCBO than you’ll see from Lake Erie North Shore!

So in this bombast against a powerful liquor monopoly was a rare drop of a Portuguese wine landing in my backyard courtesy of a rogue unit of the Portuguese Airforce based in Viseu. I am a Cavaliero in the Confraria do Vinho do Porto and have the utmost highest connections in the Portuguese Airforce.

It is from Casa de Cambres in Lamego, Portugal.

Aroma: Blackberry, cassis, black cherry, blueberry and milk chocolate.

Palate: Smoothness here of all variety of black fruit. Low tannins with a moderately long finish complimented by a bit of chalky schist.

Personality: OK Ontario readers let me be blunt. At this price range I will whup your butt as to quality and richness. Considering I am a blend of Tinta Roriz, Touriga Nacional and Touriga Franca I am pure Douro perhaps visually the most spectacular wine producing area in the world.

Cellarbility: In its prime now. Consume by 2025-year end.

Food Match: Spicy Mushroom and Tofu Mazemen https://sneakyguacamole.wordpress.com/2024/04/24/spicy-mushroom-and-tofu-mazemen/

Price: $14 CDN (Ontario). A Penniless Pensioner Biden Triple Gold Medal Winner at the Liverpool, New Jersey 2024 Old Geezer Wine Festival.

RKS 2024 Wine Rating: 91/100.

(Casa de Cambres Colheita 2019, Douro DOC, Solar de Cambres, Lamego, Portugal, 750 mL, 13.5%).

RKS 2024 Wine: Giersberger Crémant d’Alsace

Made with 80% Pinot Gris and 20% Auxerrois. While Pinot Gris is a permitted grape for Champagne Auxerrois is not.

Aroma: Pear, applesauce, Granny Smith apple, mango and peach.

Palate: Crisp and cutting. Granny Smith apple, kiwi, ginger with a hint of bitterness.

Personality: I can’t say I am elegant as I may come on a bit strong but I do the job a sparkling wine can do made by the traditional method. In other words I am made the same way that Champagne is but I can’t call myself Champagne!

Food Match: Food is not essential with a Crémant. Goes well with seafood particularly oysters.

Price: $ 19.25 CDN (Ontario).

Cellarbility: Drink by 2024-year end.

RKS 2024 Wine Rating: 86/100: Decanter World Wine Awards 90.

(Giersberger Crémant d’Alsace, NV, Cave de Ribeauville, France, 750 mL, 12%).

RKS Literature: The Individuality of American Women (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

“The trio of women at the table were representative of the enormous flux of American life. Nicole was the granddaughter of a self-made American capitalist and the granddaughter of a Count of the House of Lippe-Weissenfeld. Mary North was the daughter of a journeyman paper hanger and a descendant of President Tyler. Rosemary was from the middle of the middle class, catapulted by her mother onto the uncharted heights of Hollywood. Their point of resemblance to each other, and their difference from so many American women, lay in the fact that they were happy to exist in a man’s world-they preserved their individuality through men and not by opposition to them.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Tender is the Night”, 1934.

RKS 2024 Wine: A Casa-Dea Rosé from the County

In Ontario when we speak of wine from “The County” we mean Prince Edward County. It is approximately two hours drive from Toronto when the traffic is good which it rarely is. There are over 40 wineries in The County which is the land of second homes of the bourgeoisie of Toronto. But is also an agricultural centre.

From Casa Dea we try a 2021 Rosé. Grape=Gamay.

Aroma: Cherry, raspberry, strawberry and wet rock (crudely said) or “minerality” if you wish.

Palate: Very dry and not much fruit. Some cherry and raspberry manages to squirt in the back palate. If it was a slab of beef I’d call it extra lean. Short tannic finish.

Personality: I fit into a profile of many County Wines. Lean!

Food Match: Mushroom Picatta over polenta.

Price: $19 CDN (Ontario).

Cellarbility: Drink by 2024-year end.

RKS 2024 Wine Rating: 84/100.

(Casa-Dea, 2021 Rosé, VQA Prince Edward County, Casa-Dea Estates Winery, Wellington, Ontario, 750 mL, 11.8%).

RKS Literature: “The Harvard Manner” (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

“McKisco’s contacts with the princely classes in America had impressed upon him their uncertain and fumbling snobbery, their delight in ignorance and their deliberate rudeness, all lifted from the English with no regard paid to factors that make English philistinism and rudeness purposeful, and applied in a land where a little knowledge and civility buy more than they do anywhere else-an attitude which reached its apogee in the “Harvard manner” of about 1900.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Tender is the Night”, 1934.

RKS 2024 Wine: Hosmer 2022 Semi-Dry Riesling from Cayuga Lake in New York’s Finger Lakes: Exceptional! Stupendous!

I encountered this Riesling sitting on a beautiful Great Gatsby deck in Aurora, New York overlooking sunny Cayuga Lake two weeks ago. I brought back two bottles to Toronto. A magical setting and a magical wine I thought or was it just the vista and a beautiful June afternoon? No way! The wine may be blessed by a positive experience but tested in a more antiseptic environment stripped of sentimentality it lost none of its brilliance.

Aroma: Pineapple, apple, pear, Moroccan clementine and would you believe it hazelnut!

Palate: Almost no comparison to almost all Ontario Niagara Rieslings because of its gentle acidity. Almost reminds one of Pfalz Riesling from Germany or please excuse me a Müller Thurgau.  Lots of fruit such as apricot, peach and Ataulfo mango. Long finish.

Personality: I am not bashful and say you won’t find much better Riesling than me.

Food Match: Grilled chicken in a white wine, tarragon and cream sauce.

Cellarbility: It would be hard to keep any of this around but if you have the willpower drink by 2026-year end. 

Price: $20 USD.

RKS 2024 Wine Rating: 95/100.

(Hosmer 2022 Semi-Dry Riesling,  Finger Lakes, Cayuga Lake AVA, Hosmer Estate Winery, Ovid, New York, 750 mL, 11.7%).

RKS Literature: Americans Can’t Out Fornicate Everybody (J.P. Donleavy)

“Do me a favour. See if there are any jobs open for lavatory attendants in London and I’ll come back. But in closing I want you to remember this, that this is America and we out-produce, out-manufacture, out-fight and out-screw the rest of the world but the latter is elusive.”

J.P. Donleavy, “The Ginger Man”, 1955.