Touring ice wine county in Ontario

NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ontario — They're out there now, chilling on the vines, long after the other grapes' fall harvest. The Rieslings and Vidals of Ontario's vineyards are destined for bottles of the region's "liquid gold": ice wine.

I had heard of the dessert wine before, even tried it once or twice, but I learned more about it — and came to appreciate it — in September, when a money-saving idea turned into an unexpected road trip. My destination was Toronto, but I discovered it was cheaper to fly to Buffalo and then drive or take a bus to my goal city. Rounding up three friends to split a rental car made economic sense, and setting aside a whole day to make the two-hour drive turned out to be brilliant. We stopped by Niagara Falls, of course, and then hit the road for wine country.

Driving to Niagara Falls from Buffalo, we could see from a distance a white plume of mist rising like industrial smoke from the falls. On both the American and Canadian sides, we gawked at the thunderous cascades.

I liked the Canadian side better, with its head-on views of both major falls and its carnivalesque collection of casinos, hotels and such attractions as the Guinness World Records Museum, an old-fashioned fun house and junk food galore. Though it was well before noon, we got hot dogs from a friendly teenage vendor who darted after us with a forgotten soda. What service!

Suitably fortified, we drove north to Niagara-on-the-Lake's Inniskillin, the winery that put Canadian ice wine on the map.

Since the 1970s, when a few aspiring winemakers recognized the grape-friendliness of the land and opened the first Ontario vineyards, the region's wine production has taken off, with wineries now numbering more than 100. In the mid-1980s, winemakers started to realize that the region's hot summers and cold winters might be suited to something far more valuable than table wine, and in 1991, Inniskillin's founders, Karl Kaiser and Donald Ziraldo, entered their Vidal Icewine in a prestigious French wine competition and won.

A bottle of ice wine routinely sells for three or four times the price of regular table wine. No wonder other Ontario wineries soon got into the act.

The road to Inniskillin runs parallel to the Niagara River, which separates the United States from Canada and links Lake Erie to the south with Lake Ontario to the north. The fields look nothing like the ones in, say, Northern California or Tuscany: They stretch flat all the way to the horizon, the rows perpendicular to the river to let the breezes off the water circulate.

After visiting the vines, touring the cellar and learning about the complex chemical processes of winemaking, we gathered for the tasting. ("That's what you all came here for, right?" the guide asked jovially.) A few sips of the red and white table wines preceded the big reveal: Inniskillin's famed Vidal Icewine, which was fruity, thick and joltingly sweet.

Before we left, I asked our guide how I could volunteer for the harvest, which seemed as if it would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. She gave me an "are you crazy?" look, as if I'd just asked where I could buy tapeworms.

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