How Climate Change is Affecting Icewine Production

Icewine has three crucial ingredients: grapes, alchemy and a lot of luck.

The process starts in the dead of winter. To make the silky-sweet wine Canada is globally known for, grapes must be picked when the temperature dips below -8C. A degree higher won’t do. “You want to make sure grapes have the consistency of a frozen pea,” says Eric Pearson, winemaker at Reif Estate Winery in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont. 

But chilly temperatures like that often hit in the dead of night. Winemakers will wait, watching the thermostat, until it’s cold enough to head out, with cloudy breath and headlamps strapped on, to quickly pick the grapes before the temperature ascends. It’s a harvest that’s always racing against the clock—and the mercury. After the harvest, the grapes need to be pressed almost immediately so the juice is extracted at the same temperature from when they were picked. “It’s very cold, and very sticky,” Pearson laughs. 

There are more annoyances. Icewine requires 10 times more grapes per bottle than regular wine. Even if winemakers are out all night picking grapes, they’ll produce only a small amount of icewine.

But Pearson, and Reif Estates owner Klaus Reif, love the process. There’s a magic to moving through the winter nights to make a wild, wickedly sweet wine that can only be captured in dramatic conditions.

As global temperatures shift and change, icewine is becoming even more of a fleeting phenomenon. 

“In the last 100 years, Germany and Austria were the main producers of icewine—Canada didn’t join until the ’80s,” says Reif. “Now, icewine is rarely made in Germany or Austria—you just don’t get the cool temperatures. Ontario may be one of the only places in the world that icewine will be made in 10 years, due to climate change.”

But another side effect of the climate crisis: more unpredictable weather. “We’re still guaranteed to have a good icewine window, but one week it will be five degrees, the next it could dive to negative 12,” says Reif. 

Climate change won’t spell the end of icewine production as we know it; it just makes it even more special. Icewine is gloriously golden, like it’s spun from sunshine in the darkest depths of the Canadian winter. It pairs well with desserts, but also spice—while other wines get lost alongside high-heat dishes, the sweetness of icewine cleanses the palate after a bite of something spicy.

“It’s the most concentrated form of wine—the aromatics, flavours and sugars are all amplified from harvesting it at such a cool temperature,” says Pearson. “It’s liquified gold in a glass.”

Three Canadian Icewine Picks

Pillitteri Estates Family Reserve Cabernet Franc Icewine, $55

This Niagara pick tastes like a summer farmstand: apricots, strawberries and cherries.

Reif Estates Grand Reserve Riesling Icewine , $75

The 12th-generation winemaker owners of Reif Estates brought their knowledge over from Rheinpfalz in the 1960s. Their now-iconic icewine layers on notes of tropical fruit and butter tart with a crisp acidity. 

Martin’s Lane Riesling Icewine , $100

This Northern Okanagan winery doesn’t make icewine very often—it’s a fickle process, and the right weather only comes around every few years. When they do produce it, it’s richly honeyed, coated with notes of mountain freshness.