Inniskillin Vidal Icewine (375ML half-bottle) 2019
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This popular Inniskillin Icewine boasts a variety of tropical fruit including orange, mango, and lemons. Flavors of peach and apricot are balanced by a fresh, crisp and lively acidity.
Pairs beautifully with aged cheddar, peach tart, and baked cheesecake with a peach compote.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Vidal Icewine comes in with 250 grams of residual sugar, 9.79 of total acidity and 9.5% alcohol. This was bottled in July 2020, the only bottling for this wine this year. The richest of the Vidal ice wines this issue, although only by a hair, this is intensely flavored and rather unctuous. As with its 2018 sibling, this has typical peach and apricot nuances. It shows off a lot of sugar. Part of that extra richness over the 2018 may be the perception created by this being a year younger, to be sure. For today, I like the balance on the 2018 better and give that the nod. This might well catch up in time. The difference between the two is not particularly great, despite rather different vintages.
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Wine Enthusiast
With 245g/L residual sugar at bottling, the aromas erupt from the glass, with notes of marmalade, candied pineapple and sugared citrus rind. Sweet, nectarous, well-balanced tangerine and pineapple flavors follow. It’s a perfect end to any evening.
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What is Icewine?
VQA Icewine is a highly concentrated dessert wine made by harvesting grapes naturally frozen on the vine at -10 C in December-January. Inniskillin VQA Icewine is internationally awarded and recognized and is exported throughout the world.
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
With a cool climate suitable for more than just icewine production, Canada is also home to excellent dry, still and sparkling Canadian wines. Most viticulture is based in Ontario on the east coast and British Columbia on the west coast. Because of the high risk of winter freeze and spring frost, plantings are typically centered on large bodies of water to take advantage of their temperature moderating effects.
In Ontario, particularly on the Niagara Peninsula, aromatic white varieties like Riesling and Gewürztraminer are most successful. Many Canadian wineries produce both dry and semi-dry versions. Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Gamay, and Cabernet Franc perform nicely here as well. For icewine, French-American hybrid variety, Vidal, is popular. In British Columbia, many of the same grapes are grown, but there is also a significant emphasis on Bordeaux varieties—especially Merlot.