Are those Vidal grapes in Inniskillin ice wine?
Q: One of my friends gave me some Inniskillin ice wine from Canada. It says “Vidal VQA Okanagan Valley.” Would that be Vidal grapes? I have looked everywhere for a description of those grapes and can’t find one. A: Canada’s Inniskillin winery, recently named “New World Winery of the Year” by Wine Enthusiast magazine, has built its world-class reputation for its ice wines. True ice wines are made when grapes are left to hang on the vines long past harvest, often subjected to repeated freezes and thaws, and finally picked, usually in the dead of night, when temperatures drop to the “magic” range of between 7 and 17 degrees Fahrenheit. Vidal is indeed the grape, a thick-skinned, winter-hardy French hybrid, and it makes a wonderful ice wine, sweet but not cloying, with well-defined flavors of citrus and pineapple. Not as elegant or complex as German eisweins, but definitely the best that the New World has to offer. Inniskillin’s ice wines are handsomely packaged in half-bottles (375mL). Yo
