Cannon River Winery

Last weekend, we visited Cannon River Winery in Cannon Falls, MN.

When you go there, there is a mini self-guided tour of their showroom space that covers their wine making process. Actual tours of the vineyard, which is located a few miles away, are sporadic.

Of course, we tasted wines here. For tasting, you have two choices. You can taste their basic wines for $5, or you can pay $7 and taste their reserve varieties as well. Because they were out of one of the three reserve wines, I decided to just do the basic taste. An interesting fact is that this winery creates a white and a red wine for Mancini's Char House in St. Paul. However, you can buy them at the winery too.

I won't comment on every wine I tasted, but I will give you my overall opinion and highlight my favorites. All in all, I enjoyed their white wines more than their reds. This winery, like many minnesotan ones, uses a lot of Minnesota frontenac and foch grapes. These add a slight bitterness that I am not very fond of, which is especially noticeable in red wines because of their higher tannin level.

My three favorite wines:
1) St. Pepin: This one uses a Minnesota St. Pepin grape. Its very light, and has a nose of citrus fruits. The flavor is dry with a citrus flavor as well. This is very light and pleasant to drink.

2) Sogn blanc: This uses the Minnesota Edelweiss grape, which I think is my new favorite! The nose of this wine is sweet like peach and mango, and the flavor is very soft, delicate and sweet in the mouth. I have never had anything like this. I can't even describe the pleasure I had in drinking it.

3) Gunflint red: This red is sweet rather than dry. However, the thing that I remember the most is that the nose of the wine smelled to me like caramel. This was nice when mixed with the sweet wine in my mouth. Very unique.

Overall, this winery puts out a great series of wines that I would recommend you try.