COLD weather and ice are normally considered disasters to winemakers. Not in Canada. The makers of some of the world’s best ice wines embrace the cold as it produces some delightfully sweet vintages.

In the Niagara Peninsula, close to world famous Niagara Falls, the grapes from last year’s winter harvest are now just starting to ferment at many wineries.

Ice wines are expensive and Jancis Robinson, an authoritative wine critic, says they “taste like a cross between the purest form of grape juice and a slap in the face, so vibrant is the acidity.”

In China, a small 375ml bottle of the golden liquid starts at 600 yuan (US$97.6) whether it’s imported from Canada or Germany or produced domestically.

“To a large extent the cost is due to it being very labor intensive,” Joseph Pohorly, the founder of Joseph’s Estate Wines, tells Shanghai Daily at a wine exhibition in Shanghai last week.

Pohorly is known for being the first in Canada to use Vidal, a local white grape variety to make ice wine.

Among ice wine producers the general saying is the colder the weather, the better the wine.

“When the temperature goes extremely low, minus 8 degrees Celsius under the VQA (Vintners Quality Alliance, a regulatory system in Canada similar to AOC in France), although my standard is stricter, minus 10 degrees Celsius if possible, workers pick the grapes, usually at night. I pay workers 15 (Canadian) dollars (US$13.06) per hour because of the tough working environment,” said Pohorly, an 82-year-old vintner born in Vineland, Ontario.

Many new to wine consider ice wine a beverage meant to be served chilled. While this is true, the name refers to the grapes being picked and pressed when frozen.

Pohorly says the sugary pulp in a grape becomes more concentrated when the water inside is frozen.

“That’s why its tastes so sweet,” he said.

Although Germany is respected as the home of ice wine — the first post-Roman ice wine was made in Franconia in 1794 — Canada dominates the modern ice wine scene and is the world’s largest ice wine producer thanks to its consistently cold winters.

“When the fruit-growers of Niagara hit on the formula for their vineyards in the 1970s they created Canada’s contribution to the world of wine,” says the famous wine writer Hugh Johnson in his book “A Life Uncorked.”

Ice wine pioneer

Pohorly is one of the grape growers mentioned in Johnson’s book.

His story can be traced back to 1979, when Pohorly started Newark Wines with 30 acres of farmland in Niagara, the heart of the Canadian wine industry and where he grew up.

Since then he has devoted himself to finding the most suitable grape for the land.

He calls Niagara, known as the “banana belt” along the south shoreline of Lake Ontario, “the warmest area in Canada.”

Its distinctive micro-climate gives the grapes and other fruits, especially peaches, an ideal growing environment. Every January the cold northwest wind picks up warm air from Lake Ontario to moderate the temperature.

Three years after starting Newark Wines he sold it to Hillebrand and became its president and chief winemaker.

“In 1983, a German winemaker working for me suggested experimenting with ice wine,” he said. “I decided to use Vidal, a grape that is thick skinned and doesn’t rot easily. It lasts longer on the vine compared to fragile Riesling grapes. Finally we succeeded. Regretfully there was little promotion of ice wine at that time until Inniskillin President Donald Ziraldo promoted it by traveling the world.”

Inniskillin is now the world’s ice wine leader and considered the most reliable Canadian brand among many ice wine drinkers.

In 1996, Pohorly left Hillebrand and established Joseph’s.

“It was originally a 20 acre peach orchard, distinguished by its sandy and deep soil,” he says.

This soil provides moderate water stress, allowing vine roots to penetrate deeper and giving both the grapes and resulting wine a concentrated flavor.

“Niagara sometimes suffers from not having enough rainfall. That soil helps me grow grapes without irrigation, which many other nearby farms need to do,” he added.

Pohorly is somewhat unusual in the wine world because he didn’t grow up in a family that owned a vineyard. His interest began when he was 14 and his neighbor had a farm with a small vineyard.

“He was a professional winemaker in Hungary. However his arm was in bad shape and I helped him make wine, from pruning to pressing,” says Pohorly, now on his third trip to China.

He later went to summer winemaking courses at Cornell University in the US and completed an internship at Vineland Experimental Station, a small local winery.

Pohorly pours some cold water on domestic ice wines.

“They (Chinese producers) are cheaters. The so-called ice wine here is just wine with sugar added,” he said. “More surprisingly, people here are willing to pay.”

Chinese wine industry professionals agree that there are problems in the domestic ice wine industry, but add there are some wineries that adhere to international standards.

According to Stephan Li, a leading wine educator in China, most of the country’s ice wines are produced in northeastern China in places like Tonghua City, Liaoning Province, where local winery Century Tonhwa is now a publicly held company.

Gansu Province in the northwest also produces some ice wines, as does an area in southern Yunnan Province.However, a Chinese wine insider who asks not to be named admits he believes there are a lot of fake domestic ice wines on the market.

“Real ice wine, according to VQA regulations, should be made from naturally frozen grapes, which leads to extremely low production. That seems to contradict the bountiful supply of domestic ice wine in the market,” says the insider.

Another Chinese wine professional, who also declines to be named, says most ice wine producers in China freeze the grapes in freezers to reduce costs and boost profit.

“Even though they sell these so-called ice wines at an incredibly high price. Some drinkers who really know, love and appreciate wine prefer the ices wines from Canada and Germany as they obviously have a much higher price performance,” says the insider.

Li isn’t convinced the ice wine market will succeed long term in China because many drinkers want to gain face with friends or business partners when buying wine, thus first growth Bordeaux wines are preferred.

But wine columnist Jancis Robinson thinks otherwise.

“So popular has Canadian ice wine become in Asia, however, that an increasing number of producers are attempting to satisfy another Asian passion, for red wine. Cabernet Franc ice wine is the result and increasingly commonplace in Canada, if strange to taste and only faintly red to look at,” she writes.

Pohorly says its true.

“Recently Canadian winemakers are experimenting with more grape varieties to make ice wine, including Cabernet Franc.”

Stay tuned to see the results.