Niagara winery owner making icewine inroads in China

Charlie Pillitteri looks at the consumer appetite for icewine in China and sees it growing.

That means opportunity for his family's Niagara-on-the-Lake winery, Pillitteri Estates Winery, one of the largest producers of icewine in Canada.

"It's the biggest market in the world," Pillitteri said.

"There's (billions) of people there."

For several years, Pillitteri has been looking for avenues and business partners to sell the winery's Canadian-made icewine in China.

He's found them, most recently with a bit of help from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), which gave him a two-year $108,000 grant in 2006 to study icewine prospects in the emerging economic superpower.

This week, the Niagara winery's grant was singled out in a Canadian Press story examining whether CIDA should still send aid to China.

The agency's industrial co-operation program, which matches Canadian companies with job-creating partners overseas, has been an especially broad target for skeptics and auditors.

The Stephen Harper government is reviewing the use of funds that are desperately needed in the world's poorest countries.

But Pillitteri has said he's met the goals of the program, created more than 30 jobs in China and guided them on human rights issues, such as hiring women. Pillitteri said he has spent about three times the amount that was given by CIDA.

Through the program, he has partnered with Chinese winemakers Xingiang Winery in Xinjiang and The Great Wall Winery in Beijing.

Pillitteri will soon sell Canadian-made icewine under a Chinese label through Xingiang Winery in northeast China. He's also been teaching his Asian partners how to make authentic icewine by crushing frozen grapes.

Fake Canadian icewine has been a huge problem in China and other Asian countries. Pillitteri said teaching the Chinese how to make icewine will help keep the integrity of Canada's most prized luxury wine product.

"We're selling them real icewine but also teaching them how to make real icewine.

"If they're going to make real icewine, they're going to have to make it the way we make it," said Pillitteri, who sells about $1 million of icewine a year in China through six agents.

More importantly, Pillitteri said he's trying to establish Canada as a global business player and find more buyers for a luxury product that has a limited market in Canada.

"If it really says to Canadians we better start waking up and be global players, we better start being competitive. Right now, we're not. We live in our own little world, and China's moving. China is doing what it's going to do. If we don't protect icewine it's going to be lost. That's the way I see it."

But Kevin Ker, a vineyard consultant based in Fenwick who has done fieldwork in China, sees a danger in helping the Chinese make icewine.

The Canadian wine industry has always positioned icewine as its premier product on the international stage, Ker said. China could make huge volumes of lesser quality icewine at cheaper prices as it has with countless other goods, he said.

"Theoretically, are you creating another competitor for your own product?" Ker said.

The flipside, Ker said, is that by introducing the Chinese to pricey icewine, more people might buy it.

Norm Beal, chairman of the Wine Council of Ontario, said other countries such as Austria and Germany are already making icewine and welcomes the competition.

If the Chinese get a taste for icewine, it could open up opportunities for other Canadian wineries.

Pillitteri isn't the only Niagara winery with ties to China.

In September 2007, icewine producer King's Court Estate Winery in St. Catharines announced it had sold 75 per cent of its business to Chinese winemaker Tongua Grape Wine Co. for $7 million.

Under the partnership, King's Court produces icewine in Niagara and ships it overseas while also offering viticultural advice to the Chinese grape producers.

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