Fostering a taste for icewine in Niagara-on-the-Lake | Canada Voices

As estate manager for Inniskillin, Sumie Yamakawa enjoys introducing icewine to guests who claim not to like sweet wine.

“That’s the fun part of the job,” says Yamakawa, who has worked at the Niagara-on-the-Lake winery since 2007.

People think of icewine as a dessert wine or something for special occasions, but it doesn’t have to be, she explains. “We want to open people’s eyes to icewine’s potential.”

Since Inniskillin Vidal Icewine brought home the top prize from Vinexpo 1991 in Bordeaux, France, the luscious and richly concentrated wine has put Canada’s industry on the map. It’s the reason Canadian wine is featured in textbooks and curriculums for professional accreditations from the Wine & Spirit Education Trust.

Bottles made in British Columbia and Ontario continue to win gold medals and best-in-show awards at international competitions. But Canadian consumers still don’t always see the allure of the product often marketed as “liquid gold.”

That’s why Inniskillin and other producers work to showcase the versatility of icewine, promoting it through tastings and special events. January’s month-long Niagara Icewine Festival, for example, helps boost sales each winter, Yamakawa says, as do Lunar New Year celebrations.

The Inniskillin team is always looking for inventive food matches for their portfolio of icewines, which are made from frozen vidal, cabernet franc and riesling.

During the annual festival, for example, they offer a tasting of its sparkling vidal icewine with a crispy fried chicken and fluffy waffle dish. Pepper, soy and honey in the sauce works to balance the sweetness of the honeyed mango and pineapple flavours of the drink.

“The pairing of savoury and spicy flavours with the icewine works so well,” Yamakawa says. “We have people come back every year to enjoy that experience.”

In other instances, they welcome guests to dinner with a glass of sparkling icewine rather than sparkling wine. Or serve a dry table wine and an icewine made from the same grape variety with each dish to display how flexible the sweet yet fresh character of the late harvested expression can be.

Icewine is expensive, but that’s because of the way it’s made. Yields from grapes are significantly lower for icewine than for table wines – typically just 10 to 20 per cent of the juice volume per tonne. And the longer grapes hang on the vine the greater the risk of dehydration, rot and disease or of the fruit being eaten by birds, deer or other wildlife.

More than 90 per cent of the country’s annual icewine harvest is from Niagara-on-the-Lake, says Jamie Slingerland, director of viniculture for the region’s Pillitteri Estates Winery.

Once the grapes are naturally frozen on the vine, in prolonged temperatures remaining at or below -8, they are harvested and pressed in a continuous process that’s monitored by an appointed agent of the Ontario Wine Appellation Authority, the regulatory body that oversees wines produced under the Vintners Quality Alliance system. The audit process ensures authenticity of the final product, which is made without artificial freezing or sweetening. Fermentation must result exclusively from the sugar in the pressed juice.

Slingerland was excited to get an early start on the 2025 harvest, processing all the red wine varieties, including syrah, merlot and corvina (an Italian grape variety typically used for Amarone), during a cold snap in the first week of December. Heartier vidal grapes, which constitute the largest volume variety for icewine farmed by Pillitteri and the Ontario industry, were picked later.

According to Slingerland and other Niagara winemakers, the thaw-and-refreeze cycle is key, since it produces complexity and concentration of flavour in the finished wine. (Research at Brock University’s Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute confirms wines produced from naturally frozen grapes in a vineyard taste different from grapes that have been picked and flash-frozen before pressing.)

But the weather can’t be controlled. “We are seeing less intense cold periods,” says Slingerland, who has overseen Pillitteri’s vineyards since the family winery opened in 1993. “We grab them when we’re able.”

In the early days of the business, Slingerland would manage teams of 50 to 60 people to harvest icewine grapes in the freezing cold.

“Those numbers would start to diminish after 2 or 3 a.m.,” he says lightheartedly.

While teams of harvesters could collect 15 tonnes each night, switching to mechanical harvesters means as much as eight tonnes can be brought in every hour.

Pillitteri exports its icewine to several countries, including China. Its success selling estate-bottled wines as well as private label brands – Costco in the U.S. is a key account – makes the vineyard one of Canada’s top three icewine producers, alongside Arterra (which operates Inniskillin and Jackson-Triggs), and Andrew Peller Limited (owner of Trius, Peller Estates and Wayne Gretzky Estates).

Despite the threat of increased tariffs from the United States and a general decline in wine sales around the world, Slingerland says Pillitteri has increased icewine production this year. And it isn’t alone in doing so. According to the Ontario Wine Appellation Authority, 2,853 tonnes of grapes have been allocated for icewine production, an increase from last year’s 1,976 tonnes.

As Slingerland puts it: “You have to be optimistic to make icewine.”