Canada

Canada makes more icewine than anywhere else, including Germany where the style began. The reason is reliability: Ontario and British Columbia can count on the sustained temperature of minus eight Celsius or colder that the law requires for picking, in a way that a warming Germany no longer can. The grapes must freeze on the vine and be pressed while frozen, so the water stays behind as ice and only concentrated juice runs.

The two main areas have almost nothing in common. Niagara in Ontario is continental and humid, moderated by the two Great Lakes and the Niagara Escarpment, and grows riesling, chardonnay, pinot noir and cabernet franc alongside the hybrids used for icewine. The Okanagan Valley in British Columbia is a dry interior valley, semi-desert at its southern end, ripening cabernet sauvignon, merlot and syrah with irrigation.

Until the 1988 free trade agreement forced a reckoning, much of the Canadian vineyard was labrusca and hybrid material grown for sweet fortified wine. A government-funded pull-out programme replaced a third of it, and the VQA appellation system was created to certify what replaced it. Nova Scotia and Quebec, both far colder, work with hybrids by necessity and make good traditional-method sparkling wine.