Wine Review - 2009 Grand Pre Vintner's Reserve Castel

Castel is a cool climate hybrid grape that is grown in Nova Scotia. Grand Pre's version is a fairly bold wine that has a nice nose and a deep colour. We were pleasantly surprised by the weight of the wine and the overall flavours. It has a very slight sparkle or light acidity on the first taste. For a cool climate wine it has a nice full mouthfeel which is not overly acidic or bitter.

As a local wine, normally there is a slight bitterness in the wine due to the fact the grapes grown around here are more acidic than your typical wine grapes.  This can be at least partially attributed to the shorter growing season here and the fact that these cool climate grapes don't get the same ripeness when the weather is bad.

We really enjoyed this wine.  You never want to put an caveat on things but for a cool climate wine it has some of the characteristics we enjoy in other more mainstream varietals.  It smells like it spent time in oak which we really like.

Overall, if you want to get more familiar with Nova Scotia wines this is a great wine to try.

	Tasting Notes:	Score:
Sight (0-5)	Dark purple colour, slight sparkle	3.5
Smell (0-5)	Light toast, Peppery, spicy herbs	3.75
Taste (0-10)	Light acidity/sparkle, good fruit, good overall weight but you can definitely tell it is a cool climate wine	7.5
	Total:	14.75 / 20  (73.75%)

Keep on drinking!

Chris & Shannon