Winemaker Notes
Pair with Seared scallops with apple celery slaw; rich creamy cheeses with peach chutney; crostini with goat cheese and a sprinkle of lemon zest; firm aged cheddar; lemon based custards and tarts.
What is Icewine?
VQA Icewine is a highly concentrated dessert wine made by harvesting grapes naturally frozen on the vine at -10 C in December-January. Inniskillin VQA Icewine is internationally awarded and recognized and is exported throughout the world.
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
Home of the Niagara Peninsula wine region, Ontario leads as Canada’s region with the most area under vine. Ontario’s main grape varieties include Merlot, Pinot noir, Cabernet Franc and Riesling. The latter two show great success here for the production of ice wines, along with Vidal blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon.