Canadian Ice Wine – Still Only North of the Border

(Gerry Furth-Sides)  If absinthe makes the heart grow fonder, so Ice Wine makes it grow warm.  And as both of these treasured spirits are introduced in local stores and bars locally, they are all the more prized.

Sophisticated Toronto is still known for its Stratford Shakespeare festival, its treasure trove of multi-cultural cuisines, and the Toronto Maple Leafs, but its local, fine wineries, are also earning a reputation as big as Niagara Falls for icewine. (//winesofontario.org)  While Canada and Germany are the world’s largest producers of ice wines (75 percent of the ice wine in Canada coming from Ontario), local Inniskillin is the major producer that put it on the international map.

So what is icewine (in German, Eiswein)? The type of dessert wine is produced from grapes harvested frozen while still on the vine.  And only healthy grapes keep in good shape until harvest, which in extreme cases can occur after the New Year in Canada.  Unlike most other wine-producing regions, Canada, particularly the Niagara Peninsula consistently undergoes freezing in winter and has become the world’s largest ice wine producer

The sugars and other dissolved solids do not freeze, but the water does, allowing a more concentrated grape “must” to be pressed from the frozen grapes.  In Canada, as in Austria and Germany, grapes must freeze naturally to be called icewine, outlawing the mechanical freezing method known as cryoextraction.

Natural ice wines require a specific hard freeze point to occur about several months following normal harvest.  The tricky part is that if a freeze does not come quickly enough, the grapes may rot and the crop will be lost. If the freeze is too severe, no juice can be extracted.  If the grapes are too hard it can break the pneumatic press.  And alas, the longer the harvest is delayed, the more fruit will be lost to wild animals and dropped fruit.  Since the fruit must be pressed while still frozen, pickers work in freezing night or early morning temperatures, and cellar workers press grapes in unheated spaces.

The high sugar level in the mustleads to a slower-than-normal fermentation (months compares to the usual days or weeks) using special strains of yeast.

But the resulting more concentrated wine has a refreshing sweetness balanced by high acidity, a tingly, wintry taste. Because of the relatively small amounts of wine able to be produced due to the labor-intensive and risky production process, ice wines can be  expensive and are usually sold in half-bottles of 375 ml or even 200ml.

Frozen grapes were used to make wine as far back as ancient Roman times, according to Pliny the Elder (AD 23 – 79).  Apparently this wasn’t a big success because the next post-Roman mention didn’t occur until 1830 when commercial production began in Rheinhessen, Germany. Even that was accidental.  The story goes that during a harsh winter, some wine-growers left grapes on the vine for use as animal fodder. . When it was noticed that these grapes yielded very sweet must, they were pressed and presto! Ice wine

Fast forward to 1960 when the pneumatic bladder (looking just like it sounds it might)  press was invented, making production practical.  Next came electrical lighting driven by portable generators to assist harvest in the cold hours of morning darkness before the grapes thaw, and plastic films used for “packaging” the vines to protect them from birds until a frost.

In 1975 Inniskillin Wines founders, Karl Kaiser, a studious, Austrian-born chemist, and Donald Ziraldo, a young Italian Canadian agriculture graduate incorporated and were granted the first winery license in Ontario, Canada since prohibition.  www.inniskillin.com.

By 1984, Kaiser produced his first Icewine to first national and then international fanfare, with participation is highly esteemed wine shows such as Vinexpo and Vinitaly, and placement in the finest venues around the world.  Inniskillin Icewine even found its way to the cellars of the Imperial Palace of Japan.  In 1991 came the international breakthrough when Inniskillin’s Vidal Icewine won a Grand Prix d’Honneur at Vinexpo in Bordeaux for its “astounding luscious freshness.”

Inniskillin also first produced the first commercial charmat method (without using carbonation) sparkling ice wine in 1998, soon internationally acclaimed, in response to a  a challenge by Canadian wine writer, Konrad Ejbich, who in 1988 accidently produced a sparkling icewine in his home cellar.

Ziraldo, a one-man worldwide campaigner for the excellence of Canadian Wines, was founding chair of the Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA) and introduced the VQA system of ratings to the industry in 1989 with strict standards – all of which apply to Inniskillin ice wine.