All the fun and fascination of the wine world was on show in the offbeat category of the 2023 Decanter Wines of the Year blind tasting, highlighted by a gorgeous array of Greeks, complex Italians, a stunning orange wine from Georgia and a Pinotage to change your mind. We reveal the 35 wines to broaden your horizons. Cream and honey on the nose, along with super-lifted lemon. Unusual style, oxidized and nutty, Riesling character is there in the background. Waxy, rounded with gorgeously beautiful fresh acid. Bright, vivid, salty and dry. Read Less

Cave Spring Vineyard 2020 Chardonnay CSV, Beamsville Bench, Estate Grown – 91 Pts | Top 20 Ontario Chardonnay Riesling and sparkling are the highlights here but this top-end Chardonnay, from the seven oldest rows (47 years) of the estate vineyard, is worth a look. Racy and fresh, with firm, chalky minerality and a bite of cider apple skin bitterness, it spends 20 months ageing on wild yeast lees in neutral oak, giving weighty flavours of creamy bircher muesli oatiness and a nutty cinnamon finish. Cave Spring Vineyard 2020 Pinot Noir Estate, Beamsville Bench, Estate Grown – 91 Pts Shy, but rather deep with aromas of dried herbs, cherry, plum and earthy spice. Sophisticated, showing good concentration with salty tannins and a complex, savoury. Read Less

One of Ontario’s oldest wineries, Cave Spring continues to lead the province’s pack in quality and price. This bottle perfectly balances notes of vanilla, peach and pear, demonstrating what is possible with Chardonnay in Ontario. This may be the LCBO’s best Chardonnay at this price – from any country. Read Less

Wine Enthusiast reviewers uncovered an amazing and wide array of high-scoring, lower-priced wine from around the world for this year’s Best Buy report. How amazing? All of them scored 90 points or more in our blind tastings... 2019 Riesling Estate, Beamsville Bench, Estate Grown – 91 Pts Top 100 Best Buy 2024 | #68 Green apple and Asian pear aromas are joined by ginger, honey and a nice splash of petrol. The palate is more to the citrus, with flavours of lemon, lime, juniper berries, lemon basil, honeycomb and tonic water. A lithe, elegant mouthfeel with elevated acidity. Very refreshing. Read Less

2019 Riesling CSV, Beamsville Bench | 90 Pts | Savvy Shopper Selection This white reveals generous peach, pear, lemon and stone flavours backed by vivid acidity. Linear in profile and long, with a bracing, mouthwatering feel on the finish. From Canada. Drink now through 2030. Read Less

2021 Cave Spring Vineyard Rosé Estate, Beamsville Bench, Estate Grown | 90 Pts Originating from the estate’s Cave Spring Vineyard, nestled on a hillside of the Niagara Escarpment overlooking Lake Ontario, this 100% Cabernet Franc sees eight months of sur lie ageing in French oak barrels. Considerable richness on the nose, with strawberry and white peach alongside notes of mint and creamy lees. The mouthfeel is silky, offering similar flavours. A slight tug of war between sweetness and acidity, with the former winning out by a hair through the lengthy finish. Read Less

2019 Cave Spring Vineyard Riesling Icewine, Lincoln Lakeshore, Estate Grown | Pts Sip this brilliant Icewine to know how Winnie the Pooh feels when he discovers a new pot of honey. Imagine raw honeycomb, apricots, ginger marmalade, Meyer lemons and crisp yellow apples rolled into a pleasing ball. This Icewine's puckering acidity makes this something special. 2021 Cave Spring Vineyard Gamay, Beamsville Bench, Estate Grown | 90 Pts This wine aged for 11 months in neutral oak, with minimal sulphur additions. Its distinctly herbal nose features thyme and lavender, along with macerated strawberries and white pepper. Tangy cranberry meets That basil, cumin and dark chocolate on the palate. The wine's soft texture matches plush tannins and moderate acidity. Read Less

... This differs from the Bench where the hard dolomitic limestone and heavier clays deliver more structure and tension... This was keenly illustrated in a tasting of Riesling at Cave Spring Vineyard. Cave Spring, which was established in 1975, is among the pioneering estates in Ontario, renowned for its benchmark Riesling. It produces forward, open-textured, and accessible Riesling from the friable clay, sandy loam, lighter shales, and sandstones of Lincoln Lakeshore. While above this, on Beamsville Bench, the Dolomitic limestone and heavier clay deliver tight knit and intense Rieslings that require longer maturation. Winemaker Gabriel Demarco matures the Rieslings in concrete tanks. In a bid for greater sustainability these stackable cubes are manufactured using a local company and materials.  ... But there is a trend for dry Riesling which is spearheaded by Demarco. Demarco is one of the most innovative young winemakers working in Niagara. Among his exciting range of wine is the 2019 Riesling CSV, which is savoury, richly textured, and dry. Beamsville’s extended season allows Demarco to wait for full ripeness. It is initially treated oxidatively with up to 16 hours of skin contact before fermentation with a touch, just 5%, of skin fermentation. It’s matured on lees in concrete and barrels for ten months. “Skin contact and lees ageing are much more important than varietal character,” Demarco says. Read Less

The trio of dry or dry-ish Rieslings are the heart of the submissions here (although the sweet wines stole the show in the end). I liked them all about as well in terms of scoring, but for different reasons. The CSV, of course, is the outlier with a bit of oak. You either accept that or you don't, but it is quite impressive. The regular Riesling is a fine bargain. It shows beautiful balance between the sugar and acidity. It is a little less stern than the Estate Riesling. In many ways, it was my favorite of the table wines, but that depends. The brooding Estate Riesling has ample acidity, but also a hint of petrol. They have pros and cons, depending on your likes and tastes. How they develop may be the final answer. None are really easy wines that force you to drink them now, although the regular Riesling comes closest to that profile in theory. These are Certified Sustainable (Sustainable Winegrowing Ontario). 2020 Riesling Niagara Peninsula | 90 Pts The 2020 Riesling comes in with 16 grams of residual sugar, 8.7 of total acidity, 10.7% alcohol and a pH of 2.8. The acidity mostly gobbles up the sugar here, or perhaps it might be equally accurate to say the sugar nicely counters the acidity. This seems mostly dry or dry-ish, even with that little burst of sugar on the end. It is closer to medium dry than medium sweet, easy to use as a table wine. It also shows good concentration, a nice finish and a classic demeanour. The sugar means that this doesn't have quite the purity of expression as the Estate Riesling also reviewed in this report, but it does have purer aromatics and a balanced demeanor. As the submission closest to a bargain price (by all of $3), this is an overachiever that has grip and tension on the finish, plus some chance of aging well. How it develops and holds may be the final answer to how much of an overachiever it is. Let's be a little conservative just now. It will be better next spring, but it is a perfect food wine right now. It should hold throughout the decade, probably longer. 2020 Riesling Estate, Beamsville Bench, Estate Grown | 90 Pts The 2020 Riesling Estate comes in at six grams of residual sugar, 7.8 of total acidity and 12.4% alcohol. Dry but perfectly balanced, this is a little sterner than the regular Riesling, but it never becomes shrill, even if it is always fairly intense. Elegant and classic in aromas, it also adds a bit of petrol on the nose. Then, it follows with considerable grip and tension and a respectably long finish. This is young and unevolved. It seems to have ample potential. The petrol is under control today. I liked how it developed as it aired and warmed in the glass. Needless to say, this dry and somewhat stern Riesling is strictly a food wine. It should age and become more clearly a winner, but it could use a year or two more in the cellar. 2019 Riesling CSV, Beamsville Bench, Estate Grown | 91 Pts The 2019 Riesling CSV was partly aged in neutral French oak (about 45%, with another 5% also with skin contact) for 10 months, with the rest in stainless steel. It comes in with four grams of residual sugar, 9.2 of total acidity and 12.3% alcohol. Wood changes all wines, including Riesling, so this is a little different. However, the old wood on only some of the juice means that this will have no vanilla or flavor alterations as such. Wood mutes the grape a little, to be sure, so that's a given if you object. It still has Riesling character, though, and the flip side is that this becomes an interesting food wine on many levels. (It will really need food.) There is plenty of grip on the finish, the acidity easily asserting itself over the wood and supporting the fruit. The mid-palate also shows good concentration. Overall, it is a wine with both power and focus. It has a chance to age very well, for another decade at least, and probably develop more too. This is nicely done. It will be interesting to see how it develops. Give it another year or two if you can, but it is approachable now. Other Cave Spring Vineyard wines reviewed: 2017 Riesling Select Late Harvest, Lincoln Lakeshore, Estate Grown | 90 Pts The 2017 Riesling Select Late Harvest is unoaked and sourced from partly frozen grapes on the vine. It comes in with 100 grams of residual sugar, 7.8 of total acidity and 13.1% alcohol. This has a touch of petrol, controlled sugar and beautiful focus. It lingers nicely on the finish and shows off good fruit as well as some acidity. The sugar fades a bit with air; this doesn't seem nearly as sweet as that 100 grams might suggest. It is mostly refreshing and not at all cloying. This should age pretty well, but it drinks great today too. It is a far more restrained dessert wine than the Icewine also reviewed this report, but it does well for its very different style. The price references a half bottle. 2019 Riesling Icewine, Lincoln Lakeshore, Estate Grown | 95 Pts The 2019 Riesling Icewine was harvested frozen on the vine. It is unoaked and comes in with 245 grams of residual sugar, 14.9 of total acidity, 9% alcohol and a pH of 2.73, if you're interested in those details. The Select Late Harvest also reviewed in this report is lovely, but when you get to the high-end Icewine here, you're in another ballpark. This has plenty of body and a fair bit of sugar, but the acidity cuts both and shreds the sugar. I loved the racy demeanor. That makes this lively and a little tense. The aromatics are classic Riesling and the flavors are pure and fresh. It always seems transparent. This is a beauty that should age very well. They do tend to change notably in style as they age, so keep that in mind. In the meanwhile, it is drinkable now, likely better in a year or two. The price references a half bottle. Read Less

Savvy Shopper... Around the World A trio of cru Beaujolais, a Spanish red, a Portuguese white and a pair of New World whites (one from Canada, the other from South Africa) caught our attention in the tasting room recently. All are $25 or less. 2019 Riesling Dry, Niagara Peninsula | 89 Pts A fresh, peach and apple-inflected white, accented by lemon and mineral. The rich fruit is matched to a steely structure. Drink now through 2030. Read Less