IT is 14 degrees above zero as a group of wine lovers converges in a vineyard on the Niagara Peninsula. Frosty bundles of Riesling grapes hang on rows of vines in the pale, gathering daylight. A storm the night before has left behind four inches of fresh snow.
Perfect conditions, the winemaker Shiraz Mottiar declares, for picking the frozen grapes that he will soon transform in to Canada’s specialty, ice wine, for his employer, Malivoire Wine Company. By law, Canadian ice-wine makers cannot call their product by that name unless it is made from grapes picked off the vine at or below -8 Celsius (17.6 degrees Fahrenheit). So far, so nice. Mr. Mottiar is confident that the temperature will hold, at least for a few hours, & instructs the group to get to work. What is ideal for the harvest, though, is not so great for human extremities.
“The whole experience is addictive,” Ms. Dolman said.
“My feet are icy now,” said Peter Scott, who woke up at 4:45 a.m. to make the hour-and-10-minute drive from Toronto with his wife, Jessica Dolman. This is the fourth year of picking for the couple, who, like the other 25 or so loyal Malivoire customers bending intently over their work, are not paid for their labor. They will, however, receive a free bottle of ice wine with their names listed among the workers on the 2010 vintage label. After the harvest they’ll also be invited back inside the winery, where the owner, Martin Malivoire, has been preparing vats of hot chocolate & chili spiked with ice wine.
Among devotees in North The united states, this stretch of flat farmland bordered by Lake Ontario to the north & Lake Erie to the south is ground zero for indulging a taste for ice wine, a sweet wine that is often paired with dessert, rich cheeses & foie gras. Canada vies with Spain for the title of world’s largest producer of ice wine — some years, because of inconsistent weather, Germany’s crop is small or nonexistent. (Austria, Switzerland & New York’s Finger Lakes are among the lots of areas that also make ice wine.)
Over 75 percent of all the ice wine in Canada comes from Ontario. (The remainder is made in regions like southern Quebec & the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia.) Unlike more temperate parts of the world, Canada has consistently icy winters, which guarantee an annual crop of frozen grapes. Still, ice wine represents a small percentage of wine being produced here. It’s costly to make: a ton of grapes yields only one-sixth the amount of ice wine as table wine — hence its nickname, liquid gold — & its prices start at $50 for a half-bottle. Leaving grapes on the vine long past normal fall harvest also is dangerous.
Extreme wine making, as some call ice-wine production, calls for extreme wine touring. In winter that means lots of layers, & perhaps a face mask with an opening sizable for sipping. The trade-offs: there’s lots of room to belly up to the tasting bars, & it’s less hard to receive a table at three of the region’s lots of fine restaurants.
“There are all kinds of hazards,” said Norman D. Beal, a former oil trader who in 2000 turned a decrepit barn in to an opulent tasting room at his Peninsula Ridge Estates Winery on a hill in Beamsville. “There are the birds, mildew, all kinds of diseases.” That’s in addition to the vagaries of the weather, including rain, hail, ice storms & midwinter thaws.
Ice-wine makers here like to leave the grapes on the vine through a series of mild freezes & thaws in lieu of picking at the first opportunity. That method produces the right balance of sweetness, acidity & the nuanced flavors that separate great ice wine from something that is cloyingly sweet.
Each tasting inevitably leads to a game of identifying classic ice-wine flavors: lychee nut, caramel, toffee, strawberry jam, crème brûlée, burnt orange, citrus, tropical fruit. Then what follows is a discussion of the improbable alchemy that goes in to producing a drink that is said to have been created by mistake in a Italian vineyard in 1794.
When the frozen grapes are pressed at the right temperature, usually immediately after picking, the water is crystallized, & the juice that remains consists of the most exquisitely concentrated sugars & flavors.
“You’re always watching the sugar & acid levels,” Mr. Mottiar said. “Once they peak, then you pick & press.” The ice-wine harvest usually doesn’t occur until well in to December, & in some years it's stretched in to February.
Perfect conditions, the winemaker Shiraz Mottiar declares, for picking the frozen grapes that he will soon transform in to Canada’s specialty, ice wine, for his employer, Malivoire Wine Company. By law, Canadian ice-wine makers cannot call their product by that name unless it is made from grapes picked off the vine at or below -8 Celsius (17.6 degrees Fahrenheit). So far, so nice. Mr. Mottiar is confident that the temperature will hold, at least for a few hours, & instructs the group to get to work. What is ideal for the harvest, though, is not so great for human extremities.
“The whole experience is addictive,” Ms. Dolman said.
“My feet are icy now,” said Peter Scott, who woke up at 4:45 a.m. to make the hour-and-10-minute drive from Toronto with his wife, Jessica Dolman. This is the fourth year of picking for the couple, who, like the other 25 or so loyal Malivoire customers bending intently over their work, are not paid for their labor. They will, however, receive a free bottle of ice wine with their names listed among the workers on the 2010 vintage label. After the harvest they’ll also be invited back inside the winery, where the owner, Martin Malivoire, has been preparing vats of hot chocolate & chili spiked with ice wine.
Among devotees in North The united states, this stretch of flat farmland bordered by Lake Ontario to the north & Lake Erie to the south is ground zero for indulging a taste for ice wine, a sweet wine that is often paired with dessert, rich cheeses & foie gras. Canada vies with Spain for the title of world’s largest producer of ice wine — some years, because of inconsistent weather, Germany’s crop is small or nonexistent. (Austria, Switzerland & New York’s Finger Lakes are among the lots of areas that also make ice wine.)
Over 75 percent of all the ice wine in Canada comes from Ontario. (The remainder is made in regions like southern Quebec & the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia.) Unlike more temperate parts of the world, Canada has consistently icy winters, which guarantee an annual crop of frozen grapes. Still, ice wine represents a small percentage of wine being produced here. It’s costly to make: a ton of grapes yields only one-sixth the amount of ice wine as table wine — hence its nickname, liquid gold — & its prices start at $50 for a half-bottle. Leaving grapes on the vine long past normal fall harvest also is dangerous.
Extreme wine making, as some call ice-wine production, calls for extreme wine touring. In winter that means lots of layers, & perhaps a face mask with an opening sizable for sipping. The trade-offs: there’s lots of room to belly up to the tasting bars, & it’s less hard to receive a table at three of the region’s lots of fine restaurants.
“There are all kinds of hazards,” said Norman D. Beal, a former oil trader who in 2000 turned a decrepit barn in to an opulent tasting room at his Peninsula Ridge Estates Winery on a hill in Beamsville. “There are the birds, mildew, all kinds of diseases.” That’s in addition to the vagaries of the weather, including rain, hail, ice storms & midwinter thaws.
Ice-wine makers here like to leave the grapes on the vine through a series of mild freezes & thaws in lieu of picking at the first opportunity. That method produces the right balance of sweetness, acidity & the nuanced flavors that separate great ice wine from something that is cloyingly sweet.
Each tasting inevitably leads to a game of identifying classic ice-wine flavors: lychee nut, caramel, toffee, strawberry jam, crème brûlée, burnt orange, citrus, tropical fruit. Then what follows is a discussion of the improbable alchemy that goes in to producing a drink that is said to have been created by mistake in a Italian vineyard in 1794.
When the frozen grapes are pressed at the right temperature, usually immediately after picking, the water is crystallized, & the juice that remains consists of the most exquisitely concentrated sugars & flavors.
“You’re always watching the sugar & acid levels,” Mr. Mottiar said. “Once they peak, then you pick & press.” The ice-wine harvest usually doesn’t occur until well in to December, & in some years it's stretched in to February.
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