The Wine Knows

In upstate New York and Eastern Canada, a mild winter is threatening the typically consistent ice wine harvest. In fact, in recent years, it's been British Columbia that has struggled to get the proper weather conditions to freeze grapes on the vine before harvest.

The Windsor Star reports on Canada.com that few ice wine grapes have been harvested so far. Same goes across Lake Ontario in upstate New York, according to WROC TV in Rochester.

The irony here is that British Columbia harvested its ice wine grapes in late November. Over the past few years, B.C. has harvested ice wine as late as February, while Ontario consistently gets temperatures that make ice wine production relatively simple.

An underlying storyline is that Bruce Nicholson, head winemaker for Jackson-Triggs Vintners in Oliver, B.C., is heading to sister winery Inniskillin Ontario to take over winemaking. Nicholson, hands down, has been British Columbia's finest ice wine producer, based on our blind tastings and his numerous awards throughout the past several years.

Nicholson told Wine Press Northwest in November that 2006 was the easiest ice wine harvest he could remember. When he took the Ontario job, he probably figured he would get B.C.'s ice wine harvest done but would not have to deal with Ontario's, which is always fairly early.

Now, it looks like he probably will have to deal with two ice wine harvests from the 2006 vintage.

Of interest: In Canada, the vintage on a bottle of wine indicates the year the grapes are grown, while in the United States, it's the year the grapes are harvested. So even if grapes in B.C. weren't harvested until today, the resulting wine would carry 2006 as its vintage date.

Columbia Crest harvested Semillon for ice wine in January 1998, and it was vintage dated as 1998 (even though the grapes were grown in 1997). In late 1998, Columbia Crest harvested Semillon for ice wine again. So what did winemaker Doug Gore do? He called it the "1998 Reserve Semillon Ice Wine - Second Harvest."

Very clever, but it would never happen in Canada.