Niagara Falls Winery Tour and Fireworks 31-5-13

We had a lazy morning, resting and blogging, then went on a tour of some local wineries. This particularly interested us as we wanted to try the real ice wine that is hand picked at 2 am after the grapes have been frozen for several days due to the cold weather. We have tried the Mudgee version of this wine and it was pretty good, so the ‘real deal’ should be even better.

The first winery, called Chateau des Charmes, had an impressive building and gardens. Our guide gave us an extended tour of the vineyards and the wine making processes. At first we thought this would be ‘ho-hum’ after living near the Hunter for so long, but it was actually extremely interesting as the processes are very different to this in NSW.

We had seen wind turbines as we approached the winery and thought they would not generate much electricity as they were hardly turning. They are actually used to change the airflow when the temperature plunge up to minus 20 degrees so the vines do not get affected by extreme frost, as this can disrupt harvests for several years. Before this method they used helicopters to disrupt the airflow in the upper atmosphere above the grapes to prevent frosting but the noise of the choppers at 4am in the morning was a problem.
This winery also had experimental crops where they were trying out close rows of vines and rows where the vines are split in the centre to let in more sunlight to the fruit. We tried 3 wines here and were taught the correct way to smell, swirl your glass, smell again, then taste.

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Next winery was called Jackson Triggs. They seem to have a deal with our hotel as their name is all over the restaurant and they also do tasting in the hotel lobby bar.

Here we paired out wine tasting with cheese and chocolate which was a different touch to how we taste in Australia. They didn’t give us al ice wine to taste, but when we asked in the shop, we were given some. It was great. Paul bought o a small bottle for $20 so hopefully it will get through in our luggage. This will be a treat for New York when we can get some nice cheeses to accompany it.

Next stop was Inneskillen, another producer of Ice wine, but much more expensive. Here our tastings were all of ice wine, and the bottles we tasted ranged from $80 to $100. Not bad for tasting. They had small sampler bottles for $10 so I bought one of these as I really love this wine. (Coral, you would be in heaven here. Really sweet wine without the sticky twang they have in Australia!)

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On the way back the driver took us through Niagara on the Lake which is a delightful little town, very much like Bowral or a more upmarket Morpeth. We wished we had ½ an hour to look around, but that was not on the itinerary unfortunately. The countryside and homes were beautiful. This area is now inhabited mainly by rich retirees as the taxes on homes seems to prohibit families from living here. But the driver said the taxes are now hurting the retirees and there are lots of homes for sale.

Taxes play a big part in life here. We really notice it as they are not included in most prices we see and so we are always calculating what the real price will be. Funnily enough, both wines we bought had no tax added.
We also found out today that the Casino that took our money yesterday is owned by the government so that is just another form of taxation as the general consensus among the locals is that nobody wins.

At 10 pm each Friday night there are fireworks in Niagara falls. This is one of the main reasons we are here on a Friday, this part of our itinerary had to fit in with this. They were great. We could see them from our room so we did not need to go out as it had been raining a bit earlier on in the afternoon.

We thought the fireworks would be over the falls but we now realise that a lot of the promotional material for Niagara has images superimposed and its not actually the way it looks in the ads. When I bought a fridge magnet, I had to really look carefully to get a realistic image, rather than one that had been doctored to make things look differently.

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We have had a great I time here. I have spent many hours in the lounge chair in our room, just looking at the falls. They are mesmerising. I guess its because I’ve grown up in bush fire country so this much fresh water is just incomprehensible. I still cannot understand that the water keeps flowing and does not stop!