History Of Wine in Canada

For most of its history, Canada seemed far too cold to make serious wine. Then, in the 1980s and ’90s, a country better known for its winters turned that very cold into its greatest asset — freezing its grapes on the vine to make icewine, and beating the world at it. It is one of the most unlikely success stories in modern wine¹.

A false start in a cold land

Canada’s wine story began slowly. A retired German soldier, Johann Schiller, is often called its father for planting vines near Toronto around 1811, but for generations Canadian wine meant hardy native and hybrid grapes making sweet, often fortified drink of little distinction. Provincial Prohibition in the early twentieth century and decades of protected mediocrity kept the industry small and unloved¹.

Two valleys, two climates

Two regions carry Canadian wine. In Ontario, the Niagara Peninsula sits between Lake Ontario and the limestone Niagara Escarpment, whose waters and slopes temper the brutal winters. Far to the west, British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley is almost the opposite — a dry, sun-baked near-desert of lakes and benchlands that ripens everything from Riesling to Syrah².

The frozen miracle

Canada’s masterpiece is icewine. The grapes are left on the vine deep into winter and picked, by law, only when the temperature falls to −8 °C or colder, so that the water in them freezes solid. Pressed while still frozen, they yield just a few drops of intensely sweet, concentrated juice. It is risky, labour-punishing work — and Canada, with its reliably savage winters, has become the largest icewine producer on earth³.

The bottle that changed everything

The turning point came in 1975, when Inniskillin won the first new winery licence granted in Ontario since Prohibition. Its founders persevered with icewine — an early crop was famously eaten by birds before they learned to net the vines — and in 1991 their 1989 Vidal Icewine was awarded the Grand Prix d’Honneur at Vinexpo in Bordeaux. Overnight, the world began to take Canadian wine seriously⁴.

A Canadian wine, made from frozen grapes, taking the top prize in the heart of Bordeaux.— Inniskillin at Vinexpo, 1991⁴

Pulling up the past

Success forced a reckoning. When the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1989, sheltered growers could no longer hide behind tariffs, and a government-backed scheme paid them to tear out their old hybrid vines and replant with fine vinifera grapes. The same era brought the Vintners Quality Alliance, or VQA, founded in 1988 to guarantee origin and quality — the foundation of the modern industry⁵.

Canada today

Today Canada makes far more than icewine. Cool-climate Chardonnay, Riesling and Pinot Noir, traditional-method sparkling wines and increasingly serious reds flow from Niagara, the Okanagan and emerging regions in Nova Scotia and beyond. From a frozen afterthought, Canadian wine has become one of the cool-climate world’s quiet success stories⁶.

Frequently asked questions

Read more

• Germany, the home of ice wine
• Riesling, a great cold-climate grape
• The Old World benchmark

References

1. The Canadian Encyclopedia — Wine Industry. www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca ↩
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Okanagan Valley. www.britannica.com ↩
3. The Canadian Encyclopedia — Icewine. www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca ↩
4. Inniskillin — Our Story. www.inniskillin.com ↩
5. VQA Ontario — Vintners Quality Alliance. www.vqaontario.ca ↩
6. Wine Growers Canada — About Canadian Wine. www.winegrowerscanada.ca ↩

Recommended reading

Vintage: The Story of Wine
Hugh Johnson
Places Canada’s cool-climate rise within the sweep of world wine.

A Short History of Wine
Rod Phillips
Rod Phillips, a Canadian historian, is especially good on the New World.

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