2019 Cabernet Franc Icewine, VQA Niagara Peninsula, Ontario, Canada
Inniskillin was founded by Donald Ziraldo and Karl Kaiser in 1975, making it the first winery to be granted a license in Ontario since prohibition. The late Karl Kaiser, who was born in Austria, first successful attempt at making Icewine came in 1984. And it was his 1989 Vidal Icewine that won top honours at the Vinexpo wine competition that put Canada on the wine map.
Now, the production of Icewine in Canada is regulated by the VQA - Vintner's Quality Alliance, both the VQA in Ontario and BC. This is essentially the appellation of origin system here. Ontario represents about 90% of Canada's Icewine production. And actually, Icewine production in Canada is made to the exacting standards that it is in Germany and Austria, and only these three countries have an agreement within the framework of the World Trade Organization, as to how Icewine should be produced. So that is to say that if you see a bottle of Icewine produced anywhere else in the world, you can not be guaranteed the method of how it was produced.
So, the grapes must be left to freeze naturally on the vine, and a sustained temperature of at least -8C (17F) is required by law to harvest. This can happen in December, it can happen in February, it depends on the vintage, but it is the temperature that is critical more that the date. Often the grapes will go through several freeze and thaw periods before harvest, which is critical to the achieving complexity in the wine. Generally speaking in Ontario, most grapes are picked between -10 to -12 degrees Celsius ( 14F to 10F), and this generally happens overnight to avoid temperature fluctuations. The grapes must be pressed while frozen, which insures the water content in the grape is frozen solid, so when pressed, only the tiniest drop of very concentrated juice is extracted, and this is what is fermented into wine.
There is a correlation between the temperature at harvest the brix level - or the sugar level in the grapes. So the minimum brix for Icewine is 35 degrees brix, or around 350g/L starting sugars. The lower the temperature, the higher the brix level in the juice. Now of course, the natural freezing process not only concentrates the sugars in the grape, but also the acidities, so we get that all important balance we seek in naturally sweet wines. The minimum residual sugar for Icewine is 170g/L, and typically your alcohol after fermentation comes in at around 10 to 12%.
The main grape for Icewine production in Canada is Vidal, which is a hybrid grape, and it is the only hybrid grape permitted for Icewine production in Canada. Vidal typically represents about on average 73% of production. So where does Cabernet Franc fit into all of this, well Cabernet Franc is typically the #2 grape variety for Icewine production after Vidal, at around 14% of production, so it is #1 vitis vinifera grape for Icewine production. Now this of course depends on the vintage, a great red wine vintage like 2020, there was very little Cabernet Franc grapes left on the vine for Icewine production. But in most years, Cabernet Franc will be #2, ahead of Riesling, primarily because Cab Franc has a bit thicker skin and isn't quite as sensitive to rot as what Riesling is.
And this freeze/thaw cycle I mentioned earlier is particularly important for Cabernet Franc Icewine, because this is how we achieve the colour of the finished wine. It is impossible to extract colour from frozen grapes. So the freeze/thaw process breaks down the skins, and essentially the grape self-macerates on the vine, and when we press the Cab Franc Icewine grapes, you will actually extract red juice. So the colour in Cab Franc Icewine is totally dependent on the vintage conditions, that freeze/thaw process, and the patience of the grape grower and the decision of when to pick. If you pick at the first opportunity when the temperature dips to -8C, you may not get the additional complexity and colour you'd achieve by waiting. But if you choose to wait, then you have to hope that mother nature delivers you another window of perfect weather conditions to pick.
So, for today's wine, this is from the 2019 vintage, which happened to have the earliest Icewine harvest date on record of November 12th. But the team at Inniskillin opted to wait to harvest the grapes for this wine. So this was harvested at around -10C in late December at around 37 brix, so that's around 370g/L starting residual sugar. The juice was cold settled for about 7 days before being inoculated with selected yeast. A long slow, cool fermentation took place over about 21 days in stainless steel, and then bottled in late January.
Key wine facts below:
Producer: Inniskillin
Region: Niagara Peninsula, Ontario, Canada
Appellation: VQA Niagara Peninsula
Soil: Clay-loam till, Queenston red shale bedrock
Residual Sugar: 265g/l
Alcohol: 9.5%
