Grape Expectations: Eastern Ontario

Midway through our tour of Inniskillin, Canada’s best-known winery, our guide interrupts her presentation to give us a geography lesson: “We’re at the 43rd parallel,” she says, tracing her finger across a map of the world. “South of Burgundy! On par with Venice, where the world’s best wines are made!”

It’s not the only hard sell we get during our two-day tour of the verdant shores of Lake Ontario. Though several of the region’s more than 100 wineries have won international awards, local vintners clearly still harbor an inferiority complex. Wherever we go, the message is loud and clear: This is not some frozen tundra! We have the same limestone soil as Burgundy, and Alsatian-style crisp white wines! In other words: We’re a real wine region!

Each time we get the lecture, my boyfriend, Sean, and I simply nod and smile. We’re already predisposed to like Canadian wine country. Our great neighbor to the north, Sean once proclaimed, is “the bacon of nation-states.” (That’s high praise: A lapsed vegetarian, he now counts bacon as his favorite food.) At one point his cell-phone ring tone was a chirpy version of “O, Canada.” Me? I just love wine.

The glories of Ontario are apparent as soon as we cross the border. During the 45-minute drive from the Buffalo airport to Niagara-on-the-Lake, the gray U.S. highway morphs into a scenic parkway. The village’s main drag, Queen Street, boasts quaint, if not exactly chic, galleries, shops, and cafés. A quick stop at the Scottish Loft yields ye olde English charm with British food (spotted dick, anyone?), BBC videos, and toy Beefeaters.

Undistracted, we head straight for the tasting rooms. Our first stop is Cave Spring Cellars, 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) away in the village of Jordan. The Pennachetti family has been growing grapes in the area since 1974, and in order to lure tourists they’ve built a hotel, a restaurant, and a string of souvenir shops. The ambiance might be manufactured, but the wines are a genuine draw: aromatic white grapes like rieslings and chardonnays thrive in cooler temperatures. “Some people around here have red wine envy,” says co-owner Tom Pennachetti with a sigh. “Everyone wants to make that big red. [The region] just can’t. But what we can do is make fresh, fragrant whites that go well with food.”

We test his theory at the on-site eatery, which overlooks the spectacular Twenty Valley. Sean, of course, thinks the 2003 Reserve chardonnay brings out the smoky bacon flavor in his pastrami-cured salmon. Despite Pennachetti’s warning, I try a cabernet franc with the roast duck. It’s a fine match, though I won’t go out of my way to find it again.

Indeed, the area’s best vintners excel at whites. The Thirteenth Street Winery in Jordan Station, run by a trio of weekend vintners—their “real” jobs are engineer, geologist, and lawyer—makes the floral and deliciously peachy 2004 Chardonnay Musqué Déchêné. Nearby, Jean-Pierre Colas at Peninsula Ridge bottles lovely, lightly oaked chardonnays like those found in his native Chablis.

At Inniskillin, our host explains each step of the delicate process of making ice wines. Vidal, riesling, or cabernet franc grapes are left to freeze on the vine, which concentrates their sugars. They’re then harvested by hand in the wee hours of winter mornings, when temperatures are low enough to meet international standards. At the winery’s Icewine Experience, a tasting of each bottling paired with dried fruit or locally made tarts, Sean and I agree the potent honeyed flavors could overwhelm some desserts. Still, we find the drinks satisfying enough to replace other sweets entirely. On par with “the best wines in the world”? Maybe. If you ask us, it won’t be long before eager wine snobs regard eastern Ontario as a hallowed destination.

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