What a lucky find! We were driving along on the way to another vineyard, and happened to catch a glimpse of a sign pointing off down a side road in an area that was essentially the middle of nowhere (in wine country that is). Eventually, after some twists and turns on the windy road, we landed at Crown Bench Estates. Both owners were on hand to serve their creations, lending a nice air of intimacy to our visit. It didn’t hurt that they reside in the same little town outside of Hamilton that, until recently, Michelle also called home.

Peter Kocsis, half of the dynamic duo that owns Crown Bench, proved to be quite the charmer, regaling us with tales of crotchety old men, the shift in wine preferences as you age, and the differences between men and women. He become my hero of the trip by tossing in a bit of hardcore chemistry, chirality to be exact, to explain inter-gender tasting differences. Chirality is the ability of a substance to exist in two mirror-image forms (like molecular handedness if you want to think of it like that) that rotate polarized light in opposite directions. Sugars, like common table sucrose, is one class of carbohydrates where left- and right-handed molecules occur.

Peter was explaining to us that he thinks this sugar chirality may help explain different responses to sweetness in a wine between genders. He finds that even when a wine is labelled as being very dry, that some, in particular women, are able to detect trace amounts of sugar, moreso than their male counterparts. Female visitors have called him out on several occasions about sugar content, and it’s his theory that the ability to detect residual chiral sugars differs between the genders, and varies as to threshholds within those groups. Fascinating stuff.

Although it was tempting to stand there and chat about sugar all day, we had stopped by to taste their wine, and Peter treated us to a sip of whatever we liked. Crown Bench produces what may be one of the most ecclectic collection of ice wines in the region, so despite our general disinterest (prior to that point) in Niagara’s greatest alcoholic export, we focused on their sweeter delights. If you want a truely unique presentation of icewine, having drowned in enough sickly sweet Vidal to last a lifetime, try out Crown Bench Estates if you can.

Our favourite was the Hot Ice, a jalapeno infused icewine that was a curious, yet absolutely delicious combination of sweet and spicy. We used is as the perfect aperitif for a summer’s BBQ for Wine Blogging Wednesday #23. Other possibilities included ‘Ambrosia’, which, as the website describes, is a sinful combination of chocolate infusion and icewine; Altair, which combined two of my favourite things on earth (wine and real maple syrup) into an absolutely heavenly liquid dessert; and the Wild Ginger Ice , a ginger spiced Vidal that was equally interesting and delicious. I desperately wanted to try the Vanilla Ice just for the sake of having the opportunity to use the phrase ‘ice, ice, baby’ at a vineyard, but decided to save it for the next visit.
Aside from icewine, they also produce a good oaked Chardonnay, where the barrel aging of the wine compliments rather than overwhelms the fruitier notes while a crispness is a maintained across the palate. We didn’t sample their reds, preoccupied as we were by their interesting array of sweets.

Livia Sipos, Peter’s better half, was a gracious and entertaining host as well. Hardly small fry, Livia walked off with Grape King honours back in 2004, a regional award recognizing overall grape and vineyard quality. She also demonstrated that she had a flair for packaging, deflty wrapping our bottle of Hot Ice with a snappy piece of red tissue paper and tucking into not a paper sack, but a Crown Bench emblazened gift bag. We’ll be heading back.