Inniskillin: How Icewine Began in Canada

This is the first of three short videos in our Inniskillin Icewine Series, filmed this past winter. Episodes two is "Harvest" and Episode three is "Cooking with Icewine", be sure to check them out for the complete story.
In the early 70s, wine made in Canada was typically identified as "jug wine" with little attention paid to traditional winemaking standards. Many believed that growing vinifera grape varieties, a staple of the European wine world wasn't possible in Ontario, with its long and cold winters. Austrian immigrant and winemaker Karl Kaiser began experimenting and created wines that he shared with nursery owner Donald Ziraldo. Ziraldo couldn't believe what he was tasting and the two men combined their talents and changed the trajectory of the wine industry in Canada.
The partners created Inniskillin and were awarded the first winery license in the region since prohibition. Kaiser felt that Canada could grow a version of German Eiswein, which he encountered in his native Austria.
With great determination and through trial and error, Inniskillin produced its first icewine in 1984. Just seven years later, in 1991, their 1989 vintage gave the winery and Canada international recognition and drew astonishment by winning the top prize at VinExpo in France, the epicentre of wine at the time. Canada was not too cold for fine wine after all.
In our latest GOW Short Series on Inniskillin and icewine, writer/wine critic Anthony Gismondi interviews Del Rollo of Inniskillin's parent company Arterra, Bruce Nicholson, Inniskillin's winemaker and Gerald Klose, son of a local Niagara farming family who went on to become the director of viticulture at Inniskillin and the guru of icewine farming.
To learn more about Inniskillin: www.inniskilli...
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[@goodlifevancouver]

Loving this series. Thank you for telling the story so well.

[@albatross3206]

👍

[@canfordgroup4693]

Well done, Anthony!🙏 great episode from the history of the wine industry in Canada!