- Grape: Niagara
- Alcohol: 11%
- Wine: Sweet White
- Vintage: NV
- Winery: Oliver Winery & Vineyards
- Region: Southern Indiana Uplands
- Location: Indiana, United States
- Date: 4/29/23
- Distributor: n/a
Curious Synonyms: Niagara White, White Concord
Nerd Alert: Light-skinned hybrid variety grown mainly in the northeastern United States. Created in the New York county of Niagara in the mid-19th Century from the Concord grape variety (probably a cross between a wild Vitis labrusca variety and an unknown Vitis vinifera variety) and the labrusca Cassady. It’s high yielding and resistant to harsh continental winters. Southern Indiana Uplands is situated on the same latitude as California’s Napa Valley and is made of limestone bedrock.
Personal Note: From not knowing Indiana makes wine, to having 3 participants on the list so far. That’s what this list has done for me. Regardless of the profile’s outcome, I make sure I learn something about it in the process. So, I recently bought a few wines from a store in Florida and this past weekend decided to try this one. I learned how big this winery is and that my wine #118 Chambourcin is from the same company even though they label themselves differently. But what really got me is that I keep coming across wines from Indiana for american grapes when its not even mentioned in most summaries of states that work grapes. Expanding the research, Indiana is now 15 (per 2016 research) among the 50 states in wine production with 1.4 million gallons (or just 0.175% of the countries production. They are even behind Florida. So to find their wines outside their state is pretty cool in my book.
So let’s talk wine profile because unfortunately for me, most wines I’ve found from Labrusca or hybrid American grapes have been sweet wines. It’s been difficult to find dry wines. This wine is non vintage but they establish that they add no flavoring or additional sweeteners to it. The wine was yellow color, light and had a lot of tropical fruit flavors to it. It had a long finish but it was a tad too sweet for my preference.
Have you tried this grape?
*Sources for the wine facts are from sites like: Wine Searcher, Wikipedia, Wine.com, WorldsBestWines and the wineries websites.
