The biggest concentration of wineries is in the Niagara Peninsula, followed by Lake Erie North Shore and Price Edward County. Pelee Island is home to the one winery.

Over the years, winemaking in Ontario has advanced by leaps and bounds for a number of reasons; the first is the Free Trade Agreement, the second, young, enthusiastic and educated winemakers, third the market, and finally, the VQA (Vintners Quality Alliance).

While in 1960’s winemakers managed the miraculous feat of producing 2000 liters of wine from one ton of grapes (by adding copious amounts of water, sugar and colouring matter), today no winemaker worth his/her salt dreams of doing, and/or dares to do such a thing.

These days, wineries buy grapes by checking the natural grape sugar level (Brix), and pay accordingly. Most wineries, if not all, maintain vineyards and know exactly what quality can be expected given the vintage. Any winemaker worth his/her salt prefers handpicked fruit that can be sorted. Quality-oriented winemakers employ two sorting tables; lesser ones are happy with one and mass-market wineries do not sort the fruit at all.

Machine picking is still practiced in very large vineyards, but almost all winemakers agree that quality suffers when this method of harvest is employed.

The machine picks everything without distinction to ripeness, crushes some bunches, and occasionally damages a few vines in the process. Grapes are first crushed, pressed and then fermented using specially cultivated yeasts. A few wineries employ the natural yeast on grape skins for small batches for experimentation.

Fermentation temperatures are strictly controlled for optimal results. In weak vintages with pale red grapes the must may be bled to concentrate colour. After the fermentation some of the wines are barrel aged, others “rested” in stainless steel tanks capped with inert gas for settling. After this filtration, blending and bottling take place.

Better quality and single vineyards wines are barrel aged anywhere from a few months to two-and-a-half years in either French-, or American- or Canadian oak barrels.

French oak (Allier, Nevers, Troncais, Limousin) are fine grained and yield superior tasting wines. American oak barrels cost less, but impart a distinct vanilla flavour and being loose-grained, oxidize fast. Canadian oak barrels yield satisfactory results pending on the length of seasoning and size/shape of the barrel.

Most wines are filtered after assemblage and bottled.

Occasionally chaptalization and/or de-acidificaiton must be undertaken to create a balanced wine.

Icewine is the pride of Ontario wineries and considerable quantities are produced pending the harvest size. This specialty wine is always expensive. It requires a hot growing season, netting the vines, and waiting until the temperature drops to – 8 C for at least 24 hours. Grapes must be harvested frozen and pressed while measuring the Brix constantly, to stop at 38 Brix according to VQA regulations.

Further pressings may be employed to procure late harvest wines. Sparkling wines are produced by the champagne method or cuvee close or Charmat.

Champagne method is more time-consuming and labour intensive and employed only by a few wineries producing small batches. Cuvee close sparkling wines cost less to produce and are popular, but from a quality perspective they offer little enjoyment. Only a few wineries produce fortified wines, with a few exception that do and market it as "fortified icewine™.

Large format bottles (magnums and above) are rare but do exist especially for small batch, cellar-worth red wines.

Now he consults and writes to increase wine, beer and liquor awareness. He conducts seminars and would be pleased to consider your requests. To peruse the list of his published books and order please contact him at hirayrberberoglu_3@sympatico.ca

Hryar Berberoglu www.littlefatwino.com