Niagara Wines

While Canada has been known for its ice wine for a while, I think most people outside Ontario, me included, would turn-up their nose at any other Ontario wine before even giving it a shot.  But, I always try what is local and try to find at least a few local favorites.  Many of the restaurants in Toronto carry Ontario wines so I've tried a few and found one that was pretty good (Flat Rock Pinot Noir).  So after months of talking about it, we finally made it to Niagara to taste some wines.  I've put together some general resources and information to share here, and will give the best and worst of our weekend itinerary in the next post.


If you're interested in trying some Ontario wineries, one good place to start is Wines of Ontario.  This site provides information about the various wine tasting areas in Ontario including Niagara.  I used it to map the wineries in the Niagara Escarpment region that we wanted to try and also found out about some interesting events taking place at the wineries.

It takes just over an hour to drive down to the Niagara area.  In the region, there are two main areas of wineries - the Niagara Escarpment (also known as Twenty Valley) and Niagara on the Lake (NOTL).  These websites give links to all of the area wineries as well as information on the area.  There seems to be an unending supply of wineries to try (at least 60 in total), and you definitely should plan at least a couple days or plan to see them in multiple trips.  Most wineries charge for the tastings (between 50 cents and $4 per tasting) but the general rule of thumb seems to be that they waive the charge if you buy at least a bottle, preferably a couple.  Many of the wines at the wineries are not available at the LCBO, though some are.  I like to try what you can't get other places so I can take home a unique bottle or two that I like.  You can book tours and special events separately at the wineries, and there are (seemingly) constant events going on at the different wineries for low or no cost.  You can get around to the wineries by car or there are several companies that provide transportation.

There are a few terms we learned about on the trip that I thought would be helpful to know in advance.  VQA - you'll find this on many of the wines from the area.  It is a designation that means that all of the grapes used in the wine came from Ontario.  Otherwise, they can import some or all of the grapes from anywhere and still call it Ontario wine if it was produced in Ontario.  Also, there is a rating scale for sweetness of a wine corresponding to the amount of residual sugar per liter.  0 = dry, 1= semi-dry, and 2=sweet.  The people at the wineries will often refer to that when talking about a wine.  While you're there, see where the ice wine falls on this sweetness scale!

Aside from visiting wineries, there are plenty of things to do in the area.  There are many good restaurants many of which focus on local ingredients.  Shopping and exploring the quaint towns seems like a requirement (we saw Jordon and NOTL, but I would bet there is a similar area in other towns like St. Catherine).  Bed and breakfasts or cute hotels make for a nice get-away. 

So the post doesn't get too long, I've broken it up into two parts - the next post talks about our specific weekend itinerary - which of course included a lot of wine drinking!