The New Way to Taste Niagara Goes Way Beyond Ice Wines

It makes sense that the wine most associated with Niagara, the Great White North’s leading wine region, is ice wine, a dessert drink made when the temperature dips well below freezing. But a look beyond ice wine reveals that Niagara's drinks scene can offer a different kind of cool. With everything from fresh Blaufränkisch to artisanal vermouths, here’s how to build the perfect day in Niagara.

RPM Bakehouse

It’s smart to start off a day of tasting with a dedicated carbo-load. Make a pit stop at RPM Bakehouse, the casual, all-day companion to the Michelin-starred Restaurant Pearl Morissette. The commissary-slash-café uses only ingredients native to Canada, so their purveyor list is a who’s who of Ontario growers, including Pearl Morissette’s own regenerative farm and winery.

Baked goods (made from locally grown and milled heritage grains) rotate, but expect things like asparagus Danishes, buckwheat financiers, and wild garlic biscuits. Grab a sandwich (maybe a jambon beurre) for the road, or a picnic plate of baguette and pâté.

Big Head Wines

In the ’90s, Polish-born Andrzej Lipinski started Big Head out of a small shed tucked behind another winery. He’s come a long way since then and now works out of a glorious large space, complete with 23 acres of vineyards and tasting spaces tucked in between concrete tanks and amphorae.

Opt for the guided unlabeled tasting through 12 wines. The goal isn’t to ace every one — it’s to explore the lemony Chenin Blancs and the rich, appassimento-style Malbecs without any preconceived biases. (Think you hate Chardonnay? He’s ready to change your mind.)

Peller Estates

Be warned: You’re going to have to slip on one of the winery’s parkas and a pair of gloves to sidle up to Peller Estates’ tasting bar. The ice wine tasting room is set in a 300-square-foot lounge made of ice, meant to mimic the temperature at which ice wine grapes are harvested (read: cold).

Fat Rabbit

Chef Zach Smith (formerly Toronto’s Bar Raval and Matty Matheson’s Meat and Three) likes to go whole hog. He spends much of his time slowly cooking whole pigs on an Argentinean asado grill.

Fat Rabbit’s menu embraces zero-waste, nose-to-tail dining. Charcuterie — including lonza, coppa, mortadella, and ’nduja — showcases deep-cut cuts of meat. Steaks (from picanha to T-bone) are aged in-house until they’re funky and flavorful.

There are vegetables, though the operative word remains indulgence, as in an endive gratin covered in béchamel and Quebec blue cheese. Lunch (served until 4 p.m.) follows the same commandments, so expect grilled cheese with duck confit and a curried smashburger with house-ground chuck.

Dillon’s

This small-batch distiller turns Niagara grapes and local rye into things like a black walnut amaro, absinthes, and limoncellos — excellent digestifs after a massive meal. Taste through those at Dillon's distillery alongside excellent vodkas, a tart rhubarb gin, and a single-grain rye whiskey. Or, try your hand at making your own gin in a two-hour workshop.

Related: These Gins Taste Just Like Canada

Domaine Le Clos Jordanne

Everything about Le Clos Jordanne has a big Burgundian accent. (Well, except star winemaker Thomas Bachelder’s actual accent — that’s Quebecois.) There’s a tight focus on Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. There’s cru-style vineyards, including the estate Clos vineyard, which, in a very Canadian manner, is enclosed by a Carolinian forest. Even Bachelder himself spent a decade in Burgundy before he decamped to Niagara.

At the winery’s just-opened new estate, book the Terroir to Table tour to nerd out on the Niagara-Burgundy connection through soil samples, vines, maps, and barrel tastings.

Rosewood Wines

Rosewood deals in two currencies: grapes and honey. The former shows up in light-hearted but highly precise wines, like a deeply mineral Blaufränkisch (served with a chill, please) and the fleshy, flinty, cheekily named Riesling AF.

Rosewood also bottles artisanal honeys (including wildflower, smoked, and hot) and a range of natural wine-ish meads, plus bottled Meadhattans (a Manhattan fermented on honey and Pinot Noir skins), mead-spiked seltzers, and a solera-style mead, made from honey harvested over an eight-year period. Stop in for a flight of wine or mead, or suit up for the Bee Experience led by Rosewood's expert beekeeper.

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