All rights reserved. If a wine lover were asked to rank the world's top wine-producing nations, it's not likely that Canada would be among the first that came to mind. With our mental image of the Yukon and Hudson's Bay, I'm afraid most of us associate Canada with snow and ice, not vineyards and wine grapes. But this vast nation that shares the world's longest unfortified border with the United States is much more diverse than that. While I've made a mental note to check out the British Columbia wine regions in the mild far West of Canada on a future visit, this trip focused on Southern Ontario, the Canadian region southwest of Toronto.
Abundant signs make it easy to stay on the Canadian wine trail.
Or in the case of the Pelee Island Winery, offshore. More recently, noting a kinship in both latitude and climate conditions with Burgundy in France, many Canadian wineries have been enjoying increasing success with reds, not only the Burgundian Pinot Noir but Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. The product that has truly ensured Canada a place on the world wine scene, though, is ice wine . When the first hard freeze comes, the wine maker picks and crushes the grapes while they are frozen, each grape yielding only a drop of nectar-like fluid that is rich and intensely sweet and that makes a wine to match. Most often made from either Riesling or Vidal, Canadian ice wines are produced only in tiny quantities.