Wine & Spirits - Fall 2022 - 86

Top 100 Wineries
CANADA | ONTARIO
Inniskillin
Inniskillin turns Ontario grapes into liquid gold.
NICK GIZUK
The Canadians Take iCe wine seriously,
going so far as to have trademarked 'Icewine'
with a capital 'I.' Inniskillin has been
perfecting the style since its first release in
1984, made by Karl Kaiser, an Austrian winemaker
who had founded the winery with
Donald Ziraldo a decade earlier. Since then,
they've created some of the most intense
ice wines in the world. Rather than picking
directly after the first freeze, they wait until
the grapes have gone through several freezeand-thaw
cycles to develop more intensity
and complexity of flavor. Then, when
the temperature falls to at least 14˚F-two
degrees colder than the legal requirement-
they pick and press the berries immediately.
Frozen nearly solid, the grapes give up
only a tenth of what they would normally.
In 2019, the Icewine harvest was the earliest
recorded since 2000, with the first wines
picked on November 12. Inniskillin held off
until December 18 and didn't finish until
the early morning of February 9, 2020. Their
patience (and nerves of steel) paid off in a
series of wines that match sweetness with
complexity. -T.Q.T.
FOUNDED:
1974
WINEMAKER:
Nick Gizuk
VITICULTURIST:
Gerald Klose
OWNER:
Arterra Wines of
Canada
ACRES OWNED:
428
ANNUAL PRODUCTION:
132,000 cases
ESTATE GROWN:
20%
IMPORTER:
Maisons Marques
& Domaines,
Oakland, CA
86
2019 Niagara Peninsula Gold Vidal Icewine
($80/375ml, 97 points) Inniskillin reserves
its sweetest grapes for the Gold Vidal, which
spends a few months mellowing in French oak
barrels. The 2019 clocks in at 272 grams per
liter of residual sugar, giving the wine a lush,
creamy texture. A floral, herbal scent flits around
it edges, giving the wine a delicacy that belies its
sugar weight; there's the zinginess of the acidity,
which carries the sweet peach, pear and citrus
notes with lasting bell-tone clarity. The bottle
may be small, but a little goes a very long way.
2019 Niagara Peninsula Pearl Vidal Ice wine
($59/375ml, 90 points) Eighty percent of Inniskillin's
Icewine is made from vidal, a winterhardy
hybrid that ripens slowly and evenly. In
2019, the wine presents a cornucopia of fruit,
from pear to peach, pineapple and banana. It's
sweet and flavorful enough to stand in for dessert
all on its own, or to serve with biscotti.
2019 Niagara Peninsula Sparkling Icewine
Vidal ($80/375ml, 90 points) Sparkling Icewine
is a uniquely Canadian idea, invented in
the late 1990s. It's made in the usual way, then
put through a second fermentation in a closed
stainless-steel tank. The result is a fun, fascinating
study in contrasts, as sweet as it is light and
frothy, as flavorful as it is fleeting.
WINE & SPIR IT S
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CHILE | MAIPO
Concha y Toro
This is Concha y Toro's 28th Top 100 Winery award, one of the most
consistent performances in the world.
MaRCElO PaPa
MarCelo PaPa serves as TeChniCal direCtor
of Concha y Toro, Chile's largest wine
producer and, consistently, one of its most
creative. He works with viticulturist Max
Larraín, who oversees the firm's 26,341 acres
of vineyards along Chile's coast and into
the Andean foothills. The Guilisasti family,
which has headed up this public company
for decades, has taken a leadership role in
organic and biodynamic farming, spearheaded
by the late José Guilisasti. Today,
Concha y Toro is a B Corp, focused on sustainability,
including management of the
Andean water that feeds the vines-they
reduced their water footprint by 10 percent
in 2020. While Concha y Toro bottles a lot of
inexpensive wine from Chile's Central Valley,
the top talent on the winemaking team
focuses attention on ranges from Casillero
del Diablo on up; it was Papa, in fact, who
has raised the bar for the Marqués de Casa
Concha wines, while exploring new opportunities
-this year, his cinsault rosé from the
cool, southern district of Itata was a stand
out. -A.B., Tasting Notes by J.G.
FOUNDED:
1883
WINEMAKER/TECHNICAL
DIRECTOR:
Marcelo Papa
VITICULTURIST/AGRICULTURAL
MANAGER:
Max Larraín
OWNER:
Viña Concha y Toro
holding
ACRES OWNED:
26,341 planted
ANNUAL PRODUCTION:
37.6 million cases
ESTATE GROWN:
47% (for premium and
above)
IMPORTER:
Bonterra Organic
Estates, Hopland, CA
2019 Puente Alto Gravas del Maipo Cabernet
Sauvignon ($65, 94 points) Isabel Mitarakis
had worked with Enrique Tirado at the Don
Melchor estate, and also helped him with Gravas,
focused on younger blocks in Puente Alto.
She took charge of Gravas in 2019, which now
includes vines dating to 1985. For aging, she
restricts the new barrels to 30 percent, letting
the wine's floral blackcurrant and wild blueberry
notes shine through. Cool, spicy, and tobaccoscented,
this is an elegant Andean cabernet.
2019 Pirque Terrunyo Cabernet Sauvignon
($60, 92 points) Pirque Viejo is a high terrace
above the south bank of the Maipo River, identified
in the 1990s by Ignacio Recabarren as one
of Concha y Toro's top parcels when he launched
Terrunyo. Much of the vineyard was replanted
from 2003 through '08, the wine now made by
Marcio Ramírez, this 2019 youthful and summery
in its scents of fresh basil and ripe berries.
2020 Itata Valley Marques de Casa Concha
Cinsault Rosé ($24, 91 points) Marcelo Papa
makes this wine from 60-year-old dry-farmed
bush vines on the north bank of the Itata River,
12 miles from the Pacific. He holds the strawberry
cinsault essence of the fruit by aging most
of it in egg-shaped concrete tanks (15 percent
goes into 500-liter French oak barrels). It has the
cool scent of the Itata hills, wild and refreshing.
Wine & Spirits - Fall 2022

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