Tasting Note – This has been awarded three silver medals in Canadian and international competitions. And I get it – a classic, vibrant yet serious age-worthy cabernet franc, that couldn’t be more textbook Niagara. With lifted red raspberry/currant fruit, spiked fresh herbs, a touch of Bordeaux-esque pencil eraser and finely built in oak spice and vanillin. The remarkable thing is that it is still so youthful and vibrant at six years – from the great Niagara 2020 vintage (see below). It is medium weight, firm and energized, with slightly crusty/starchy tannin.  The flavour intensity, focus and length are very good to excellent. Best now (with aeration) into the mid 2030s.

Backgrounder – Winemaker Ron Giesbrecht may be the most experienced practising winemaker with the “Bordeaux varieties” in Niagara, beginning his career in the red wine research program with Brights Wines in the late 1970s. His prime-time career was as the winemaker at Henry of Pelham, then in 2020 he moved on to help establish Wending Home with Huaying (Ying) Feng and her husband.  It is a 50-acre site in the Creek shores appellation, with fruit also being purchased from elsewhere.  I love Ron’s perspective on cabernet franc.  “It is the honest broker grape, never trying to – or able to, hide what came before. If the season was cool, then the aromas, flavours and structural elements will make a wine somewhat more herbal, bright and red-fruit oriented with lighter tannins. But we experienced a perfect 2020 growing season and harvest period that was warm and dry, thus tending more to black fruits”  To me this wine slides right into the middle.  Fermentation in stainless steel with extended skin contact period of 30 days. It was then aged 24 months in mainly French oak (about 20% new).