Growers in southern Ontario have decided against making expensive icewine for the second year in a row because of slow demand.
For the second year in a row, some wineries in southwestern Ontario will not produce icewine because of slowing demand for the expensive product.

Icewine, which is made from grapes left to freeze on the vine, takes a lot of grapes to produce and is a "tricky" wine to make, said Colio Estate winemaker Tim Reilly. That makes it more costly to produce, and demand has slipped for more expensive wines, said Reilly.

"When there is a dip in the economy, you can see people going for the lower-end wines," said Reilly. "In Canada [icewine is] mostly gifted — something that is rather expensive — and especially with the economic times you can see that it is trending down a bit."

The LCBO says sales of icewine are down due to a tougher economy. (CBC News)
The Canadian climate is ideal for producing icewine — Colio won the gold medal at VinExpo in Bordeaux, France, for its 2007 icewine, said Reilly.

Even though he's selling an award-winning wine, some of the 2007 vintage is still sitting on the shelves, and Colio has yet to release the 2008 vintage. Reilly said he's not aware of any wineries in Essex County that are making icewine this year, for the same reasons.

Icewine sales 'cyclical'
The Liquor Control Board of Ontario has seen icewine sales slow over the last few years, but that's changing.

Colio Estate Winery in Ontario will wait until next summer to decide if it will produce a 2011 icewine vintage. (CBC News)
"We're seeing sales growth for Ontario icewines actually, after a couple years of sales decline," said the LCBO's Chris Layton.

Layton said sales are up 3.5 per cent over the last 12 months. Some of that growth is driven by more intensive in-store marketing, but the retailer said some of that sales growth may be a sign of economic recovery.

Colio Estate Winery repurposed this year's icewine grapes to make less expensive and more profitable wines like its Girls' Night Out chardonnay.

Reilly said icewine is a "cyclical" product and he looks forward to making it again, despite having to get up in the middle of the night in the freezing cold to harvest the grapes.

"I'm sure it's going to pick up again," he said.

Colio will evaluate whether it will make a 2011 vintage some time this summer.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/windsor/story/ ... z19cuhSlPa

I recall a story about Chinese companies buying Canadian wineries, so they could take crap wine and fill it full of sugary syrup and call it 'Canadian Icewine'.

In order to corner the market and produce a cheap, inferior product. That would pretty much kill the market in Asia for the real thing.

Fake icewines hit sales

When a friend complimented Niagara winemaker Allan Schmidt for successfully cracking the icewine market in mainland China, Schmidt dismissed it: He wasn't selling his wine in China, he said.

But the friend persisted. He said he was sure he'd seen Schmidt's Vineland Estates icewine for sale there.

"Again, I told him: `No, you must be mistaken,'" Schmidt recalls.

Then the friend gave him a link to a website.

Schmidt was stunned.

There, a Chinese company was selling a product called Vineland icewine, boasting of a joint venture with a Canadian partner and, to top it all off, using a panoramic view of Schmidt's own winery on its Web page.

"They'd taken it right off our website," Schmidt says in a telephone interview. "I was upset."

Four years on, and after spending $60,000 in legal fees trying to protect his trademark in China, he is still upset.

The Chinese promise him a hearing – but not until 2011.

"The whole experience has just left a really bad taste in my mouth," the winemaker says.

China is battling a flood of fakes, from medicines and vaccines to cellphone cards and even Olympic souvenirs.

But when ambitious Chinese counterfeiters fix their sights on foreign manufacturers, no one is safe – not Rolex, not Tag Heuer, and certainly not Canadian icewines.

"Chinese counterfeiters can be incredibly clever," says Vera Sung, a trademark lawyer with the Hong Kong law firm of Oldham Li and Nie. "And the more Canadian icewines grow in price and prestige, the more likely they are to attract counterfeiters."

The impact has hit hard. Sales of Canadian icewine in China have plummeted 60 per cent from highs earlier in the decade, according to the Ontario Wine Council.

The problem, says Sung, arises from an emerging Chinese middle class that sees icewine as a status symbol, but can't distinguish real from fake.

"The problem is, they don't understand what genuine icewine is."

The same might be said of those producing the knock-offs.

This week, Han Ruabing, of Tianjin Canadian Ltd., makers of "Select Late Harvest Gordo Canadian Icewine," defended the quality of her product explaining that they dilute wine concentrate, shipped "directly" from Canada, with only the best quality water.

"Only pure water," she said.

The problem is that real icewine is neither made from concentrate, nor added water – nor, for that matter, with "late harvest" grapes.

Real icewine is produced with grapes frozen on the vine, long after the "late harvest" period has passed.

Nevertheless, the Star found the knock-off "Canadian icewine" for sale through a distributor in the heart of Beijing, complete with a tiny red maple leaf adorning its label.

But it isn't just the icewine that is being targeted. There's even a robust market for knock-off "Canadian icewine bottles"– without wine. A company from China's Shandong province boasts on the Internet that it can produce 300,000 bottles per day.

And fake alcohol production in general in China is so rife that last week the Gansu Province Consumers' Association appealed to the public to smash their bottles following consumption. The aim? To choke off the cheap supply of empty bottles to counterfeiters. Counterfeiters buy them from suppliers who gather them from the garbage.

Meanwhile, a Beijing bar manager, who asked not to be identified, told the Star last week of shopping for Chivas Regal, a deluxe whiskey.

"The vendor held up two seemingly identical bottles and said, `This one is for 70 RMB (about $10). And this one is for 170 RMB (about $25).' They're very open about it," he said. "It's not like it's a secret."

But marketing fake alcohol is risky. In 2005, a Chinese entrepreneur was sentenced to death after industrial alcohol he sold as drinkable alcohol killed 14.

Cognizant of both health and commercial concerns, Beijing police last week conducted multiple raids on hotels and shops selling fake bottles of Moutai, a famous Chinese liquor.

But despite direct appeals to Chinese authorities from Ontario's Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA) and Ottawa, the counterfeiting of Canadian icewine continues.

"It remains a serious issue," says Sherri Haigh of the Wine Council of Ontario. More than 70 of its members produce icewine, regarded as the industry's "flagship" product.

Fake Canadian icewines in China come with improbable names like "Maple Dew," "Silver Maple," and "Toronto Icewine." Their labels are clearly marked "Product of Canada/Produit du Canada," and adorned with idyllic pictures of Niagara Falls and red, gold or silver maple leaves.

Some claim to be "Ice Wine Style," a term for which there is no known designation in the world of wine.

Others claim to be the real thing: "Canadian Icewine," using the trademarked, single-word term that only Canadian wines that meet the VQA's strict standards may use.

But as Laurie Macdonald, VQA's executive director, points out, having strict guidelines with the force of law in Canada is one thing. Trying to enforce them worldwide is quite another.

She's aware of the problem's extent: She has two dozen bottles of fake icewine in her Toronto office, almost all from China and Taiwan.

"It's a tough problem when it's outside the country," she says. "There is no magic bullet."

But help could be on the way. China's vice-director of wine quality supervision and inspection, Ma Peixua, told the Star last week that a new national standard for icewine will be implemented Jan. 1.

SOP for the Chinese. At least they weren't using regular wine and adding ethylene glycol to it....which wouldn't be beneath them.

Are you still cooking china men....damn bro i am half way through a bottle of something called great white 20 percent 1.5 l and it is only 12 bucks. I am back for good this time and i think I am in love with you Shep. ps your are still a ape