Off the Beaten Path #2

This is the second stop on my tour took me to the tiny Iowa town of Selma.  And it is small.  I honestly believe that there may be more different types of wine at this winery then there are people in the town.

Crane Winery, specializes in wines, "that grandpa used to make."  After visiting the winery I got the sense that Grandpa was a renegade fermenter.  The kind of man who separates the world into two groups, fermentable and fermentable with some added effort.  In other words, a man after my own heart.  It seems that wines are a kind of ongoing experiment.  At one point I asked the owner who was pouring me samples of wine if one of them was a blend. She smiled and shook her head, "Nope.  I there are no blends here.  If I blended wine, then I would have to remember what I did."  Grandpa would be proud.

So there is quite the selection here, and I'm not about to cover them all.  I don't think I even want to cover all the wines that I sampled.  Suffice to say that most of them tasted about how you would expect.  They were sweet with the heavy fruit flavors of whatever happened to be in the fermenter at the time.  For the most part, they were sweet but not overly-syrupy.  I'm not a fan of the sweeter wines, but most of these were pretty good.

Wickfields Whisper: A dry Norton like the one I found at Whispering Pines. This one was a whole lot better, though.  I'm not sure if it just had more time in the bottle, but the unique character of the Norton grape really came out in this one.  Earthy sweet caramel aroma.  The flavor is woody with cherry and blackberry fruit.  For those that like their wine sweet they have the Lockhouse, which is the same wine with residual sugars that clear the highest bar in street shoes.

Piestegal: Is a German-American word that evolved out of the Amanda colonies in Eastern Iowa for the Rhubarb plant. It comes from the English 'pie' and the German 'stengel' or stalk.  Piestengal is a Rhubarb wine that comes out of a long German heritage in the area.  This particular example had quite a kick to it.  There was a heavy alcohol flavor marking this wine as drink that would render a man horizontal after a couple glasses.  It poured almost clear and had some light tart and earthy flavors.  I'm still not sure whether I liked this or not and I think I would have been unconscious before I figured it out.

Restless Summer: Strawberry wine.  I don't think I have ever had a wine this sweet in my life.  Even the strange alcoholic Kool-Aid hell brews my fiance insists on bringing home have nothing on the residual sugars of this.  More functional as an ice-cream topping than as a drinking wine.   I mention it here because I'm interested to find out what fans of incredibly sweet wine think of this.

Chocolate Covered Cherry: Exactly what it sounds like, a cherry wine with cocoa added.  The cherry flavor hits right off the top, but it slowly melts away leaving a bitter, unsweetened chocolate flavor lingering in the back of the palate. Fun if only for the sheer novelty.

Off the Beaten Path Part 1: Iowa

I've got another wine tour that I've been meaning to write up.  This one takes us through the wilds of Southern Iowa where wine has developed a culture fairly unique to the area.  In the past I have lumped wine tours like this into one long post that took me several hours to finally compile and complete.  So, like the breweries, I've decided to split them up by individual winery and see how I like that format.
First stop on the tour is Whispering Pines Winery.

The Norton: Most of the wines produced by Whispering Pines focus on the sweet side of the palate.  "That's just what people like out here," said Steve Tucker who owns the winery with his wife Becki.  "We are experimenting with some drier wines, but the sweet ones are the ones people really like."
The Norton is one of those experiments.  It is a wine made from the Norton grape that is very popular Iowa and Missouri.  This particular wine was very young when I sampled it at the winery.  The aroma was yeasty, the flavor was very tart.  It gave me the impression of a wine that would be good eventually, but not now.


Village Red: This is a blend of two varietals, the St. Croix (75%) and the Froch (25%).  This is also one of their dry selections.  It is also a little bit tart with some spice notes and some pepper.  Like the Norton, I think it will improve with a little aging, but this was still a pretty good wine as it was.

Autumn Blush:  Moving into the sweeter wines now, this is a semi dry blush that the winery describes as a 'picnic wine,' although a good friend of mine would describe it as a 'breakfast wine.'  It is light in color and flavor and has a nice, refreshing quality.  There is a lot of grapefruit flavor here with some hints of light berry flavors and a crisp finish. 

Lakeside Red:  This is a heavier sweet red wine made with Concorde grapes.  The flavor is big and intensely fruity with some rich caramel notes in there as well.

Backroads Red: Similar to the Lakeside with a french Steuben grape added for it's peppery qualities.  This wine was heavy and sweet bordering on syrupy.  I didn't pick out a lot of spice, mostly I got a lot of dark fruit, cheery, raspberry, plum, etc. with a heavy caramel richness.

As I came to find out during my tour, fruit wines are big in this area. In the next post I will feature a winery who's claim to fame is an extensive collection of fruit wine.  Whispering pines had two:

Ramblin Rose: Tasted like a sweet cranberry juice.  Simple, but delicious.

Blueberry Bliss:  A blueberry wine mixed with a type of chokecherry that adds a lot of peppery spice to sweet, carmelly flavors of the blueberry.

The Pastime: Green Bay, WI

Title town brewery sits in downtown Green Bay in what was once the old train station for the Chicago and Northwestern railroad.  It stands as a relic to days gone by while playing a part in the new craft beer revolution.
I didn't have a lot of time to spend in the area, so my visit was quite brief.  So this will be a rather quick post.  I managed to sample three off their fairly expansive menu.

Johnny Blood Red: Carmel, malty aroma.  The flavor is sweeter and light but carries with it a decent sized body.  It's tastes like pilsner's bigger, fatter brother.

Hopasaurus Rex: Lemony citrus and piny aroma.  The citrus flavor is very light as compared heavy pine and floral notes.

Dark Helmet: This one has a aroma of coffee and roasted barley.  The flavor has a lot of the same characteristics, but with some smoke and some herbal and liquorice flavors.  The flavor ends dry with roasted barley and coffee.