Suggested wine pairings rarely match with real family dinner favourites like Dad’s spicy Italian pasta sauce, Five Alarm  chilli or Friday night pepper steak and chips. Connoisseurs’ favourites like Pinot Noir or Gamay can be overwhelmed by heavy spices, strong sauces, salt and oil. Over Valentine’s weekend, I discovered a gutsy wine that is up to the challenge.

Berg-eron 
Cab Franc 

The wine: Bergeron Estate Cabernet. $21.95
Aged in French Oak for 16 months, rich flavours of blackberries, black  cherry,  raspberries, sloes, pepper and spicy tobacco with a dry finish. Plan to let it age for five years.

The winery:  Bergeron Estate Winery
Located on highway 33, near Adolphustown, Bergeron Estates was purchased in 2002 by brothers Ted and Dave Bergeron and opened in 2007. It has been expanding ever since. The tasting room has a lovely adjoining sun room and wide wrap around veranda with a view down to Adolphus Reach. It serves  gourmet pizzas made by Nonna, Dave’s Italian mother-in-law, most weekends year-round and sells a selection of  Estate wines and its Cole Point Cider.

The winemaker: David Bergeron has been learning on the job like many County winemakers. For his first two vintages in 2006 and 2007, Dan Sullivan of Rosehall Run was hired as the winemaker, while he trained at his side. Dave has attended winemaking forums at Brock University and in Prince Edward County and  has completed a sommelier certification program from Algonquin. In 2012, he bought out his brother’s share  and now he and his wife are sole owners.

Accolades: A picture is worth 1000 words and artist Heather Haynes tried to visually express her sense of the taste of the wine on the label. Cool nights, red leaves, black fruit, springing from a peppery soil, rich with life blood of the United Empire Loyalists who first settled here

Why I chose this wine: We attended a winemaker’s dinner at Bergeron Estates over Valentine’s weekend. We enjoyed a lovely gently oaked Pinot Noir with chocolate covered strawberries to start followed by a Vidal Riesling blend with squash soup. For the main course, we had gourmet pizza, mine was paired with a flavourful Gamay, Colin’s prosciutto pizza in tomato sauce was paired with the 2009 Cabernet Franc. The dessert was apple pie  paired with a  unique late harvest dry Gewürztraminer. All good wines, but the Cabernet Franc was the stand out wine of the night.

Bergeron Estates

Two bottles came home with us and seemed to whisper as we left, “Forget the diet, we’re ready for steak and chips!” They didn’t lie, they held their own offsetting tenderloins in rubbed with Montreal steak spice served with home fries lavished with salt and malt vinegar.

The winemaker dinners were so successful, That they are frequently repeated. Price around $50. (about $20 less for the DD)  with a menu of antipasto, fresh pasta, gourmet pizza and tiramisu with four wine pairings.

I have written about Bergeron Estates several times over the last four years.
He’s come a long way from my first visit in 2010. Sadly my examiner.com blogs are no longer on the web but he was mentioned previously in  a Terroir blog
County Terroir 2013 Let the Wine Flow

I’m long overdue for another visit