Inniskillin Winery

Inniskillin (1499 Line 3, Niagara Parkway, Niagara-on-the-Lake)

A road trip led us to Niagara Falls. Well, we've all seen running water, so we decided to visit the Inniskillin winery. For $5 (tax included), the tour of the winery included a tasting of three of their wines.

While Renée was trying to find the phone number in some sort of Niagara fun book to reserve our spots for a tour, she found a coupon for a sample of their award winning ice wine. (There were coupons for other wineries in the Niagara area as well.) You can sample several of the wines for about $5-7 per glass. All things considered, the visit was pretty cost efficient (for me). 

Our sommelier pouring the white wine:

I have no idea which white wine that is, but that's okay because Inniskillin is mostly known for their ice wines.

A French oak barrel: 
There were Canadian and American barrels too. They say the wines that come from the Canadian ones have a maple syrupy taste. 

Random cellar picture:
It is definitely not as ominous as the Concha y Toro cellar in Chile. 
The white wine:
We also tried a red wine, but to be perfectly honest, it really stank. Literally. I wasn't the only one who thought it tasted terrible and smelled weird. Dorothy noted a scent of vinegar. I think it went bad. From that experience, I'll probably never buy a red wine from this winery. I was so eager to dump it out that I forgot to take a picture of it. 

The last sample was the (award winning) 2006 Oak Aged Vidal Icewine. Check out the golden yellow colour.
It was the same wine that we had sampled earlier with our coupon. The glass we got with the coupon was much more filled. 

Simon poses with our favourite wine:

The grapes can only be harvested once every three years. Also, very little liquid comes out of pressing frozen grapes. This explains the prices of ice wines compared to regular table wines.
Get the one on the left! It's delicious! Even the people who don't drink wine liked it. 

We also sampled the 2006 Sparkling Vidal Icewine (courtesy of Jess), which is on the right side of the picture above. Jess quite liked it. I thought it was nice, but it had nothing on the non-sparkling 2006 Vidal Icewine. I also thought the sparkling part made it taste a bit like ginger ale. I guess it's great for people who want a wine that doesn't taste like wine.

It looks like we all purchased a bottle of something, but they're all Casey's. 

Total damage: $5 for the tour. Go coupons! 

After this trip, I think that attending the Niagara Icewine Festival would be very exciting.

Grand Buffet (at Fallsview Casino Resort, 6380 Fallsview Blvd., Niagara Falls)
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You see all the people in between the camera that took this picture and the Grand Buffet sign? They're in line for it too. The wait was about one hour or so. I was not taking pictures in a casino...
Plate 1: chicken, sausage, pasta thing, mashed potatoes and gravy, fried fish, a piece of cauliflower, and quiche. 
The quiche looked like a Chinese egg tart. The chicken was super dry, but the fish was good.

Plate 2: more mashed potatoes, carved roast beef, other potatoes, cajun chicken, salmon. 
The salmon was surprisingly not dry, but the beef was. The cajun chicken was moist at parts closer to the bones.

Plate 3: pizza, vegetables, carved ham.
Ham was okay. Pizza wasn't great. Vegetables have vitamins. 

Plate 4: salads.
The fake crab in the seafood salad tasted weird. Lettuce was fresh and I really appreciated the crispy croutons after eating at Montana.

Plate 5: pasta.
Simon was kind enough to line up for me and get this. If you want shrimp in it, you can take the shrimp from the salad section and ask them to cook your pasta with it. Simon's a genius. The cheese was super melty, and the added shrimp was great. The sauce was a bit too heavy for me.

 

Plate 6: brown dessert square.
I was not expecting the coconut flavour and texture in the bottom part, but it was interesting.

Dorothy picked up a blueberry dessert from the sugar-free section and decided that it wasn't great. Instead of finishing it, she made her own dessert. Go art school!

The left side is the before side, and the right side is what she made with scraps of a bunch of desserts.
Random notes:

Jess really liked both the salmon and the deep fried fish. 

I agreed with Dorothy when she said that the salmon wasn't dry, but it had no flavour. 

Don't get sugar-free stuff unless you're diabetic. 

Best spoken sentence (comes from Dorothy): "This is why I wore elastic pants."

Damage: $22 + tip. Note that it's $20 (tax included) if you have a player's advantage card.