The UnCorker

Weird Wine of the Week: Dan Ackroyd 2007 Pinot Noir, Ontario

When you’re drinking the weird stuff and it happens to be of a classic varietal, it’s important to have benchmark bottles on which to rest your comparisons – ideally, consumed at the same time. But when it comes to Canadian Pinot Noir, it feels unfair to compare it to Old World (Burgundy, Loire, Germany), Warm Weather New World (California, Australia, Chile), or evenCool Weather New World (other parts of California, New Zealand, & Oregon). I mean, c’mon… it’s Canada. I guess we could have opened a bottle of something from New York State’s Finger Lakes region- the closest semi-major producing region of Pinot Noir – but, hey, why start now? So we didn’t compare it with anything. We just popped this sucker – which, yes, is produced at the eponymous winery of that Dan Ackroyd – and took a big, great white sniff and taste. Fresh delicous smelling fruit, loamy soft tannins, and decent extraction. On the palate, we’re missing some acidity which would have livened things up but overall this isn’t bad at all! And guess what – it’s $14 Canadian at the duty-free shop. For a varietal that we’ve almost completely sworn off if we encounter a bottle under $20 any more.

Welcome to the Ontario’s Niagara region – a thin isthmus between two great lakes about an hour and a half south of Toronto, extending down below the falls on both sides of the border. It’s kinda like the Florida of Canada, although the closest big city to these vineyards is the famously inclimate American city of Buffalo, New York – which is due south, just to put things into perspective. In wine circles, this region is best know for being home to Inniskillen, which is world renown for it’s ice wines. But word of the Pinot Noir grown here, particularly on the US side in the AVA called “Niagara Escarpment” is starting to leak. The truth is that Lake Ontario provides a semi-maritime effect and creates favorable growing conditions for the problem child, Pinot Noir. Some would say Burgundian conditions, but wine marketers have been known to spin those sorts of comparisons to death so hard to say how true that is. One thing we know for sure is that they don’t get the Lake Erie effect – which is responsible for the piles of snow whipping off the lake that have kept Buffalo from being a viticultural hotspot. It’s not clear where DA wines are sourcing their fruit – the website is pretty clear that things are inspired by “Dan’s Travels” – but apparently it’s in Ontario somewhere.

To say that Dan Ackroyd Wines is all over the place in terms of it’s product offering is no understatement. Umm.. have you seen the Crystal Head vodka he’s merchandising? Complete with a pirate mythology and mystical powers ascribed to the macabre packaging. This seems a strange counterpart to his award winning liquid gold, the Vidal Ice Wine. Then there’s Dan’s whole Sonoma County line, which is actually made by DeLoach. Is this whole effort a cynical attempt to license one man’s dopey comic aura and milk it for all it is worth? or is it really about the wine? That we’re not sure of, but it’s peaked our interest in Niagara pinot and now we can’t wait to get our hands on some of the bottles we’ve heard about such as those from Warm Lake Estate, in Lockport NY.