| Origin | |
|---|---|
| Main grapes | |
| Other grapes | |
| Vintage | |
| Bottle sizes |
Peller Estates Cabernet Franc Icewine is one of the rarest styles of dessert wine in the world: an Icewine made with red grapes from Canada’s Niagara Peninsula. It is here where the unique combination of warm summers and reliably cold winters makes authentic Icewine production possible every single year. Intensely concentrated, lusciously sweet, and with the distinctive character of Cabernet Franc woven through every sip, this is a genuinely extraordinary wine that offers an experience unlike any other dessert wine in our range. Buy Peller Estates Cabernet Franc Icewine at Fareham Wine Cellar and discover one of Canada’s most celebrated winemaking traditions.
Almost all Icewine is made from white grape varieties – Riesling and Vidal are the most common – because white grapes freeze more predictably and press more cleanly at extreme temperatures. Cabernet Franc Icewine is produced in significantly smaller quantities, requiring brief skin contact during pressing to extract both colour and the grape’s characteristic complexity. The result is a wine with a deeper hue and a more complex flavour profile than white Icewine – red berry fruit, violet, and spice layered over the honey and tropical richness that defines the Icewine style.
Icewine is produced from grapes that have been left on the vine to freeze naturally in sub-zero temperatures. As the grapes freeze and thaw repeatedly – typically eight to ten times between harvest and pressing – water crystallises inside the berry while sugars, acids, and flavour compounds become increasingly concentrated. When the grapes are finally pressed at temperatures of -10°C or below, only a tiny quantity of intensely sweet, flavour-packed juice is released – typically just one drop per grape. The resulting wine is extraordinarily rich, complex, and long-lived.
Authentic Icewine is fundamentally different from other dessert wines produced by drying grapes, botrytis, or artificial freezing. The Niagara Peninsula VQA – Canada’s appellation system, equivalent to the French AOC or Spanish DO – guarantees that Peller Estates Cabernet Franc Icewine is made exclusively from naturally frozen grapes, with no artificial intervention. The gold standard of Canadian wine authenticity.
Peller Estates has been producing wine on Ontario’s Niagara Peninsula for three generations and is widely regarded as one of Canada’s finest and most innovative Icewine producers. The Niagara Peninsula occupies a uniquely privileged position for Icewine production – warm enough in summer to ripen fine wine varieties to full maturity, cold enough in winter to freeze the grapes naturally and reliably every single year, yet never so extreme that the vines themselves are at risk. This climatic precision makes Niagara Peninsula the world’s most consistent and celebrated source of authentic Icewine.
As well as this exceptional Cabernet Franc Icewine, Peller Estates also produce Vidal Icewine, Riesling Icewine, and the celebrated Ice Cuvée Sparkling – a traditional method sparkling wine with Icewine used as the dosage, making it one of the most unusual and delicious sparkling wines in our range. A Sparkling Rosé is also made in the same way.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.