My 2006 NiagaraCool Picnic Report

Great notes, Paul! Between those and the accounts of the food, I'm thinking I need to book reservations for next year.....

Mike, I think you should come. I know that you would find the food, wine and fellowship truly memorable.

By the way, the captions don't show up in Mozilla on my office machine (a Sun workstation), but they do if I mouse over the pictures when I bring the page up in Internet Explorer. Software. Bah.

You're right, Steve ... I noticed that too at home after opening my page in Firefox, but in IE the captions came through. Maybe if any Mozilla folks are reading, they can suggest that modification to the programming team for the next Firefox update?

Thanks Paul B for the great write-up and all your thoughts and impressions. Keep that flag flying high.

Bob! It is my true pleasure, and you can be sure that the flag will fly high in hopeful anticipation of your arrival at NiagaraCool one of these years. Next year a Finger Lakes expedition is in the works ... think you might come for that?

Paul B. on the '04 Vergennes from Arbor Hill:

I think it's fair to say that, served blind, few would guess this to be a labrusca wine.  It had subdued fruit with a light spicy overlay that didn't hint at any particular white labrusca variety that I've tried up to now.  Delaware and Steuben both have distinct labrusca character.  Diamond has this character too, but then it seems to whisper a kind of "guess who I am" from the glass when swirled.... The mid-palate was crisp and cleansing with healthy acidity, and the finish was minerally and nearly dry (I think I would have rated this a '1' on the sugar scale, just by taste).

That's a great description of a truly unique wine. I also detected a little sweetness, so I tested it by hydrometer. Lo and behold, it comes in a hair less than 1.000 SG. So it's actually quite dry, although the taste suggests otherwise.

Not having had Vergennes before I can't say how characteristic this one is, but the winemaker - John Brehm - certainly deserves a lot of credit. Many believe that Arbor Hill has set the standard for Traminette. They just may be on their way again with Vergennes.

Not having had Vergennes before I can't say how characteristic this one is, but the winemaker - John Brehm - certainly deserves a lot of credit. Many believe that Arbor Hill has set the standard for Traminette. They just may be on their way again with Vergennes.

Dan, I was truly impressed by the Vergennes (and your Diamond, which is absolutely a benchmark style for the wine - period).

I really hope that more wineries across the American heartland start doing what John Brehm has done so successfully with Vergennes. We have so many obscure grape varieties that do well in our climate ... All talk of fashion and marketing aside, we could have a vibrant, uniquely regional wine culture built around dry native wines and native-hybrid wines given the plethora of such vines known to exist in our part of the world. I really hope that any commercial Northeastern winery folks reading this will take the plunge and vinify their non-viniferas dry - and just watch how it goes after that. The times they have-a-changed, and I really feel that people are ready for wines like Arbor Hill's Vergennes and your Diamond.