Warm vineyard welcome for cold snap
While most of Niagara grumbles about digging out long johns, zipping up coats and defrosting cars, another group watches the thermometer dip with sweet anticipation.
Niagara’s early icewine harvesters sprang into action in the early morning hours Thursday as the temperatures dropped to -10 C (-17 C with the wind chill).
“It’s is an early harvest for sure, but it isn’t unprecedented,” said veteran winemaker Ron Giesbrecht. “I have more than 30 years’ experience with icewine, and I have harvested as early as Nov. 17.”
Giesbrecht, who is chair of the VQA standards committee, started making icewine in 1985 and was the head winemaker at Henry of Pelham from 1990 to 2013.
“We have our challenges with climate and weather here in Niagara,” Giesbrecht said. “We also have an opportunity unlike just about anywhere else in the winemaking world. If you look at a typical climactic temperature graph in Niagara, we are just as warm through most of the growing season as many of the best wine regions of the world. If you look to the shoulders of the graph, our temperature drops in the winter months. We have that cold. That presents challenges but also gives us an opportunity.
“Niagara has a reputation worldwide for these luscious dessert wines. Not every wine region can brag that their flagship wine is of the stature of icewine.”
The legal threshold for icewine is -8 C, as set by VQA standards, Griesbrecht said. If someone wants to make icewine — and call it icewine — they have to follow
the rules. The grapes are pressed in a continuous process to extract the juice while still frozen. The process yields a minuscule amount of juice compared to the usual procedure, which makes the wine pricey.
Giesbrecht tipped his winemakers field-hat to a pair of Niagara legends, Karl Kaiser and Don Ziraldo. “They paved the way for the rest of us in the early 1980s,” Giesbrecht said. “They saw the potential and began the process. They are the reason we have the icewine products. You have to appreciate that kind of vision in any industry. It’s special to me. I’m Niagara born and raised, and I saw firsthand the development of the industry and this special product.
There is a story from the early days when Kaiser and Ziraldo zeroed in on Niagara’s icewine potential. The first attempt was anything but a success. A flock of hungry starlings descended on the vines for a winter feast. Undeterred, they found a solution. They used netting to protect the frozen grapes on the vine.
Not all of Niagara’s icewine makers were out early Thursday morning.
“When you pick later, it is like cutting an apple and having that slight browning the occurs in the grapes as they go through the freeze, thaw cycle,” Giesbrecht said. “It makes a very different wine.
“When you pick early, you get more of the fresh-fruit characteristics. When you pick late, you get a baked flavour, something like a crème Brule. Winemakers know the divide — the public, not so much,” he said. “There are many winemakers that don’t jump on this chance. Others like me do.”