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.