page_title: Ice wine
section_title: Canada
hierarchical_section_title: Ice wine / History / North America / Canada
context_page_description: Ice wine is a type of dessert wine produced from grapes that have been frozen while still on the vine. The sugars and other dissolved solids do not freeze, but the water does, allowing for a more concentrated grape juice to develop. The grapes' must is then pressed from the frozen grapes, resulting in a smaller amount of more concentrated, very sweet wine. With ice wines, the freezing happens before the fermentation, not afterwards. Unlike the grapes from which other dessert wines are made, such as Sauternes, Tokaji, or Trockenbeerenauslese, ice wine grapes should not be affected by Botrytis cinerea or noble rot, at least not to any great degree. Only healthy grapes keep in good shape until the opportunity arises for an ice wine harvest, which in extreme cases can occur after the New Year, on a northern hemisphere calendar. This gives ice wine its characteristic refreshing sweetness balanced by high acidity. When the grapes are free of Botrytis, they are said to come in "clean".
  Ice wine production is risky and requires the availability of a large enough labour force to pick the whole crop within a few hours, at a moment's notice, on the first morning that is cold enough.
context_section_description: Ice wine was first produced in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia by German immigrant Walter Hainle in 1972. This ice wine was the result of an early and unexpected frost, and yielded 40 litres of wine, which Hainle originally did not intend to sell, although he did so in 1978. 
  In 1983, Niagara-based wineries Inniskillin's and Reif Estate Winery, as well as Hillebrand, and Pelee Island Winery, two wineries with Austrian winemakers situated in another part of Ontario, all left grapes on their vines in an attempt to produce ice wine. Inniskillin and Reif lost their entire crop to hungry birds, while Hillebrand and Pelee Island were able to harvest a minuscule amount of frozen grapes. In 1984, Inniskillin winery was the first winery in Canada to produce ice wine for commercial purposes, produced in 1984 under the direction of the winery's Austrian-born co-owner Karl Kaiser, often being mentioned as Canada's first ice wine. Kaiser used nets to protect his vines and was able to produce Inniskillin's first ice wine. This wine was made from Vidal grapes and was labelled "Eiswein". 
  After ice wine production established a commercial footing, Canadian ice wine quickly became popular with domestic consumers and reviewers. Other Canadian producers and regions picked up the idea since harsh Canadian winters lend themselves to large-scale production. The international breakthrough of Canadian ice wine came in 1991, when Inniskillin's 1989 Vidal ice wine won the Grand Prix d’Honneur at Vinexpo. The Canadian trend towards increased cultivation of Vitis vinifera (European) grape varieties in the 1990s expanded the palette of varieties available to be bitten by frost. By the early 2000s, Canada was established as the largest producer of ice wine in the world. In 2001, the EU allowed the importation of Canadian ice wine hence recognizing the standard equivalency. More international recognition came in 2007, when Monde Selection, the international institute in Brussels, Belgium, awarded during the International Wine Contest, the Grand Gold medal—its highest honor, rarely accorded to a wine—to Canada’s Northern Ice Vidal blanc Ice wine 2005, the first vintage of The Ice House in Niagara, a winery founded by winemaker Jamie Macfarlane.
caption: Ice wine grapevines at Inniskillin. The winery was the first in Canada to produce ice wine for commercial purposes in 1984.
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