Ice Wine - Sparkling Ice Wine

Sparkling Ice Wine

There is also a sparkling version of ice wine. Sparkling ice wine was created accidentally in 1988, by Canadian wine writer, Konrad Ejbich, in his home cellar, using tank samples of the previous year's ice wine, from the Inniskillin winery in Ontario. In 1996, finally acknowledging he could not produce this product himself on a commercial basis, Ejbich decided to share the concept. He wrote about his experience with sparkling ice wine in his column in Wine Tidings magazine, challenging Canadian wineries to make sparkling ice wine on a commercial basis. The Magnotta winery in Ontario filled a 50-litre metal beer barrel with ice wine, carbonated it, and called their product the first commercial sparkling ice wine. However, Ontario's Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA) would not give the product its stamp of approval because no such category existed in its regulations. In 1998, Inniskillin Wines produced the first charmat method sparkling ice wine. The VQA approved Inniskillin's product because it was not made using carbonation.