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Weekly Wine & Spirits Columnist - Michael Vaughan

Getting the best out of Ontario fruit wines

(Publishing Date: Saturday, March 25, 2000 - Toronto Section)

When I recently mentioned my infatuation with a great Ontario fruit wine to a serious Burgundy collector I got the strangest of looks. It’s as if fruit wines were relegated to the closet, something you might pull out for your kids when they come of age.

Fruit wines have played an important role. Many beginners were weaned on them. When I started, it was Boone’s Farms Strawberry Hill or Annie Green Springs Country Peach.

These and their current equivalents are now listed as “refreshment flavoured wine beverage” in the LCBO Price Book. They make genuine fruit-wine producers cringe. The reason is simple – they’re usually made from the cheapest grapes with natural (and sometimes not-so-natural) flavours added. They have nothing to do with the genuine thing which is based on real fruit, the whole fruit and nothing but the fruit.

Good fruit wine is usually considerably more difficult and expensive to make than your average grape based wine. The reason - the cost per pound for most fruit is higher (the exception being apples) and yield lower. In the past, few people were prepared to pay the price for a decent fruit wine and as a result there were a lot of rather inferior products on the market. Rising prices, however, has finally enabled serious fruit wine makers to niche the market. This is a blessing to the unfortunate few who happen to be allergic to grape-based wines.

In the past few weeks I have tasted over 100 Canadian fruit wines, culminating in a comparative blind judging for the Toronto’s Wine & Cheese show - taking place today and Sunday at Toronto’s International Centre. This is the first time that you will have a chance to taste all these award-winners without having to drive great distances to the small wineries where they are usually only available.

Let me start of with my king (and queen) of Canadian fruit wine producers, Fred and Sandy Archibald. For four generations this family has been grown quality apples in their 40-acre orchard just outside Bowmanville. It was in June 1997 that they received their winery license. Quite frankly, I don’t know how they manage to consistently produce such high quality wines. At today’s show, they garnered 12 awards (for every wine they submitted), including 3 Golds - a sweet, sublime, apple-pie-in-a-glass Archibald Spiced Winter Apple Reserve ($14.95/375 ml), their newly released, sumptuous Canadian Maple ($16.95/375 ml) and finally a delicious, apple-driven, semi-dry Hard Cider ($6.95/750 ml). You can order them from their website archibalds-estatewinery.on.ca

For cranberry fans, look no further than Jim Warren’s excellent Gold medal winning rosé-coloured 1999 Stoney Ridge Cellars Cranberry ($12.95 in Vintages) which captures the essence of fresh cranberry in a well-balanced, not-overly-sweet style that would compliment any turkey – that’s poultry not person! For info check out their website at srcellars@vaxxine.com

Sunnybrook Farms was established in 1993 by Gerald and Vivien Goertz and is Canada's first fruit winery specializing in 100% Niagara grown tree fruit and berry wines. They get better every year and managed to take three medals this year, the best being a Gold for their gently sweet Sunnybrook Farms 1998 Spiced Apple at $10.55 on the LCBO General List. Check out their list at sunnybrookfarmwinery.com

One of the smaller new entries is Guelph’s Cox Creek Cellars owned by Jerry Trochta. He took his first Gold with the sweet, pungent, cassis-driven 1999 Red Velvet ($12.95/200 ml) which can be order via coxcreekcellars.on.ca

Closer to Toronto we have two outstanding producers. The first produces the richly flavoured, Gold award winning, very sweet (21% residual sugar) Southbrook Farms Cassis at $14.95 / 375 ml on the LCBO General List. Perhaps even more popular is their Silver-award winning Framboise also available at the same price. Their collection can be tasted and purchased at their retail outlet on 1061 Major Mackenzie Drive West (see southbrook.com).

A must-not-miss highlight is the stunning Gold award winning Magnotta Iced Apple at $15.85 / 375 ml, which scored the highest points in the competition! It’s sweet, rich, caramel, baked apple flavours will conquer the heart of anyone addicted to Ontario icewine. In fact, I personally prefer this sweetie to many much-more-highly-priced products! It’s available at the five Magnotta stores across Ontario (see mailbox@magnotta.com), including their Hwy 400 and #7 flagship location.

Few are aware that there are 53 licensed wineries producing fruit wines in nine provinces. Recently 19 have banded together to form the Fruit Wines of Canada Association which plans to establish much-needed quality controls. For instance, to qualify as a fruit wine, it can't have any grape product.

Other changes are needed. In a single year, for instance, a winery may make several batches of the same identically-labeled wine. As the flavours of one batch can vary wildly from another. I hope the Association will make wineries label each batch with a code and production date. It should be obvious that a light-bodied pear wine which has been lost in the cellar for several years isn’t likely to charm. And certainly a restaurant customer has the right to know when a wine was produced so as not to get stuck with an over-the-hill bottle.

Last but not least, there’s the LCBO. They haven’t been t overly kind to Ontario’s fruit wine producers who find their wares stuck under the “dessert wines” category. Surely the time has come for a genuine fruit wine section.