Inniskillin Sparkling Vidal Icewine 2024 (37.5cl)

Inniskillin is now effectively synonymous with icewine, and it sets the bar higher than the rules require. The winery harvests at a higher brix level than the minimum laid down by the VQA, Ontario's Vintners Quality Alliance, and bottles with more residual sugar than the standard demands, which gives richer and more intense wines than the category norm.

It was founded in 1975 by Karl Kaiser, an Austrian chemist, and Donald Ziraldo, an Italian-Canadian agriculture graduate, who between them held the first winery licence granted in Ontario since Prohibition. Both worked for years to get better vine material planted in a province then dominated by hybrids.

Icewine is made from grapes left on the vine into deep winter and picked frozen, usually below minus eight Celsius and often in the middle of the night. The water in each berry stays as ice in the press, so only a few drops of concentrated juice run out: yields are a fraction of a normal harvest, which is the honest explanation for the price. Ontario is one of the few places on earth reliably cold enough to do this every year rather than occasionally, and the Niagara Peninsula's lake-moderated autumns let the fruit hang healthily until the freeze arrives.