If you didn’t know already, (most likely you didn’t), we are on day 7 of the newly created 30 Day Ontario Wine Challenge. The challenge is designed to get you to “ignore your foreign wine and look closer to home” when you are picking wine.

As I’m always up for a challenge, especially those that involve wines, I agreed to participate in a portfolio tasting of a local winery as set up by the lovely folks at Spotlight Toronto.

I agreed to lend my terrace out for the taste experience. Would the Ontario wines impress?

Creekside Winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake, graciously provided a number of wines from their portfolio for us to sample. I’ll pick a few of the standouts for me:

We started with the 2008 Pinot Grigio. I’m not normally a fan of Pinots but this was suprisingly good. Very smooth and crisp. Green. Very nice with the sheep’s milk cheese we had from 5th town Cheese. Enjoyed this very much and was pleased to note that it’s available at the LCBO for $14.

Next - it being summer and all, we cracked the 2007 Sauvginon Blanc. This smelt goregous - was very easy to drink. Great colour. Super easy to drink, but also very complex.

Another interesting one was the Chardonnay. Upon tasting, people immediately exclaimed “Corn!” Indeed, it evoked a sweet buttery taste. Very interesting. Held up well to some of our cheeses.

Enjoyed the 2006 Broken Press Shiraz. It was an explosion of black pepper on the nose. I actually thought I might sneeze! The pepperiness continued into the taste. This was a very interesting one. A comment was that Creekside shows excellent restraint with their wine - this one could have gotten out of hand but didn’t.

The 2007 Shiraz was crying out for a super rare steak. It was sexy, smoky and spicy. Like the kind of guy your friends warn you about but you date anyway. I’m not normally a Shiraz fan but this one I’ll be visiting again if I can.

The wasps, sun and great company made for an excellent afternoon. Creekside Wines made a great showing - opening up our minds to the idea that there are great reds (who knew?) and whites in Ontario. Also suprising - they are at a reasonable price. Great finds.