The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Explore region’s wineries with expert
Expert from The Lodge at Geneva-on-the-Lake guides your palate through area’s terroir in tours of wineries
Lauren Fiala had to cultivate her own sense of taste to achieve the WSET-4 certification she earned in London as a wine expert. She joined The Lodge at Geneva-on-the Lake last year and is helping others learn how to taste the unique terroir of Northeast Ohio through programs she’s developed.
Her escorted Wine Immersion Tour, offered on Saturdays from The Lodge, gives wine aficionados the skills and abilities to understand what they like and why.
“Lauren’s impressive credentials as a wine expert help solidify The Lodge as a serious winecountry destination,” said Donniella Winchell, executive director of the Ohio Wine Producers Association. “Her presence offers consumers the opportunity to gain knowledge from an internationally recognized expert, and that expertise is helping wineries grow, enhancing the reputation of grapes grown here.”
Fiala, a native of Peninsula, fell in love with the world of wines at 18 when she volunteered at a winery. She went on to The Ohio State University to major in agriculture and, as a senior, took advantage of an exchange program that placed her at a winery on the North Island of New Zealand.
“People know New Zealand for its sauvignon blancs, but I was on the North Island, which is red-wine country,” she said.
After returning briefly to Ohio, she went back to the Southern Hemisphere to work a season in Australia south of Adelaide.
Back in the United States, she worked for a Finger Lakes winery and as assistant winemaker to Ed Trebets at Debonne Vineyards in Madison. Trebets left to establish his own Urban Vintner Winery in Willoughby, but she still works with him as an adjunct professor in the viticulture and enology wine program at Kent State University’s Ashtabula branch, where Trebets is program director.
Fiala, 36, embarked on the three-year WSET training when she decided to move toward the educational end of the wine profession, abandoning the long hours and hard physical work of wine making.
“You can train your palate to taste by experiencing tastes,” she said. “If you’ve never tasted a Meyer lemon, a lychee nut or passion fruit, you’re not going to know when a wine tastes or smells like that,” she said.
Training the palate is part of what the Immersion Tour explores.
“We can’t make California or Rhone wines here,” she said. “We just don’t have the climate. But I’m tired of hearing people say Ohio only makes sweet wines. It’s a shame to see prejudice against our own terroir.”
At Hundley Winery, where Tracey Hundley is the winemaker, my Immersion Tour tasted a lovely Baron, an unusual blend of Pinot Noir and Shiraz. It was among tastes of three reds and three whites, all served with small plates of food. Hundley and Fiala guided us through the tasting, showing us how to see body, taste tannins, and discern finish. We assessed color and clarity, aromas and flavors.
A plate of cheeses served us included a Red Dragon cheese from Wales, a mustard seed cheese, and a Cheddar-and-ale cheese.
Hundley Cellars has a big following for its foods, as well as its wines. The winery and its tasting room was built from a former house along Route 307 in Harpersfield Township.
With our wine education underway, our 12-person shuttle whisked us off to South River Vineyard, built in an 1892 church. Before visiting the tasting room we stopped in the cellar, where Fiala used a device she called a “thief” to take wine directly from several of the barrels resting there.
“This is a petit verdot,” she said, partially filling a glass. “It’s usually a blending grape, and it’s rare to taste it like this.”
We reboarded our shuttle to drive around front, where the parking lot had only a few cars. It was a surprise to see the tasting room filled. Obviously, most folks had come by shuttle.
The small buses on other shuttle tours drop off folks to spend an hour and then return to take them to another winery. Several shuttles are operated by The Lodge, which doesn’t require an overnight stay to join a tour. Tours are priced at $35 for three wineries and $45 for an evening tour of four wineries. There’s no interpretation, such as what Fiala provided for our $75-per-person Immersion Tour, although winemakers sometimes are on hand and employees are glad to share what they know.
Our final winery was M Cellars, where we sampled a handful of wines, including a sparkling Brut Rose. It was the first time I’d tasted a bubbly made locally, and I was pleasantly surprised.
I’d purchased wines at each stop, so I asked Fiala how long they would keep after being opened.
“Reds last slightly longer, but I won’t touch a wine after it’s been open for three days,” she said.
Soon the Lodge will debut Sunday tours to three other wineries and a beer-and-liquor tour on summer Friday evenings. On Saturday afternoons in March, the shuttle will take folks to three of the five Ice Wine Festival wineries.