Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Ice Wine Festival
Table Rock Welcome Centre
overlooking the icy falls
40
WInTEr 2016
CAA MAnITobA
Volunteer ice-wine grape pickers
unteer grape-pickers pluck the frozen
fruit from vines. The grapes are then
pressed in an unheated chamber. The
intensely sweet, highly concentrated
juice that results becomes ice wine:
Liquid gold to warm up winter nights.
When the precious harvest is in, the
mid-January Ice Wine Festival warms
up the vino-loving communities of
Jordan and Niagara-on-the-Lake. No
matter how low the mercury drops,
serious oenophiles rub parka-clad
shoulders as they belly up to ornately
carved outdoor ice-bars to savour
Niagara’s finest from frosty ice-glasses.
Live bands heat up the frigid street
parties and, once the crowds have
had a few glasses of the intensely,
seductively sweet ice wine, they’re
dancing their boots off. Ice doesn’t get
any cooler than that!
Don’t worry if you miss the festival:
Many of the Niagara’s 100-plus wineries offer ongoing ice wine tours and
tastings so you can sip, sample and
savour in any season. In fact, many
Niagara wineries also have cafés and
chef-run bistros whose creations
incorporate ice wine and many of the
vintages for which the region is so
famous. One of the season’s greatest
joys is settling in for an afternoon of
sampling Niagara’s best cuisine while
winter winds whistle outside.
That Jérôme Bonaparte was really
onto something. He knew the attraction of one of nature’s most stunning
creations when he captured Miss
Patterson’s heart. And it’s been a
lasting attraction, still going strong
centuries later.
FESTIVAL: JESSIcA FInn; grApE pIckErS: InnISkILLIn ESTATE WInEry
feet to the music—and, presumably,
to keep those feet from freezing off—
at the outdoor celebration in Victoria
Park. International stars rock out
the old year and roll in the new. The
illuminated Horseshoe and Bridal Veil
Falls provide a gleaming backdrop for
the annual NYE blowout.
Everyone loves the big water and
light shows, but the quintessential
Niagara way to toast the snow and cold
is with a glass of ice wine. Discovered
centuries ago by German monks (who
accidentally left grapes to freeze on the
vine), ice wine is a rare delicacy that
can only be produced in a few places
in the world. Luckily, Niagara is one
of them. When temperatures drop to
–10 C for three consecutive days, vol-