Pillitteri Estates 2007 Exclamation Reserve Merlot

Found February 2013

This is a disappointing bottle of wine and for so many reasons.  The year was one of the best Ontario had seen to date and the grapes would have been perfect for making a great bottle of Merlot - but there was just something very off and very funky about this bottle.  The best thing I can say about it is that there is some (stress on the word some) fruit in here and it's sweet and dried ... but other than that look out.  There is volatile acidity running rampant (that's a smell of nail polish remover) and it never seems to let up.  The packaging on this wine is quite striking, with it's metal plate front label and silver back label, but that's the only thing that is striking about this bottle - except maybe the fact that it strikes out ... only 6 years old and the fruit has faded and every seems over oaked, oxidized and, well, not very good.  I expected so much more from this bottle and it let me down.  If you have some let me know your thoughts but my bottle just didn't stand up.  Lost & Found Rating:  Trash

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Pillitteri Estates Winery 2004 Dolce Riesling

(Found – March 2008)

Hmmm … an aged (4-years) sweet Riesling, seems like a nice wine to have found on a sunny Saturday afternoon, too bad it’s –3 out or the back deck would beckon. The cork pops and I’m away to the races with this one. Pretty simple wine actually, the smells are apple juice in nature with a touch of lanolin and talc. In the mouth I find it more difficult place to distinguish flavours. There’s a sweet lemonade taste and a very fine nuance of petrol, when aerated in the mouth, and there is a slight bitterness thru the mid-palate. Now swallow, and wait and wait and wait – wow, good extra long finish – a few minutes pass and I’ve still got the taste of the wine lingering in there … too bad they’re non-descript flavours that’re hard to identify. There’s also just enough acidity hanging around to balance the sweetness out. If you’ve got any of this drink ‘em this summer or maybe next, but I wouldn’t hold it much longer. Lost & Found rating: Tolerable+

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Pillitteri Estates 2003 Late Harvest Vidal

(Found – January 2008)

In August of 2006 I popped the cork on a bottle of this wine and the cork slid out without any resistence (never a good sign) … the wine turned out to be flat in the mouth, but still had quite a prominent and inviting nose. Flash forward a year and a half and I located another bottle of this wine kicking around on my mother’s wine rack (we must have each bought a bottle during a visit to the winery). I had her put it in the fridge and on my next visit (a few days later) we opened it. Now believe it or not kiddies sometimes a wine can be too cold, this will mute the flavours and smells, and that’s exactly what happened here. But the good news is, you can always let it warm up – better that than to throw an ice cube in it (you know who I’m talking to out there). At first it was just apples that wafted up from the glass and the flavours were apples and lilac. 20 minutes later there was pineapple, wildflower honey and honeydew melon grabbing the olfactories … the flavours had also come around producing that wildflower honey and dried apricots sensation on the tongue, all with a sweet limeade finish. Lost + Found Rating: TREASURE.

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