Grape varieties

Gewürztraminer: the fastest-shrinking grape in Ontario

Across 2018 to 2022, Gewürztraminer acreage in Ontario fell at about 4.2 per cent a year — the steepest decline of any variety in the province's top twenty. It is hardy, it is well paid, and it is being pulled out anyway. The explanation is not viticultural.

A variety in retreat

The Agri-Metrics varietal study for Grape Growers of Ontario ranks Gewürztraminer twelfth in the province by acreage over that period, with a rate of decline roughly three times that of Vidal, Riesling or Chardonnay, each of which was shedding a little over one per cent a year. In a vineyard whose total area barely moved, that is a variety actively being replaced.

It is not being replaced because it fails in the field. Gewürztraminer is among the hardier white vinifera grown here, comfortably more so than Sauvignon Blanc, and it suits cooler sites, where its aromatics develop better than they do in heat. Nor is it poorly paid: the 2026 price schedule puts it in a class of its own, 9c, at $2,151 a tonne — above Chardonnay, well above Riesling, and behind only Pinot Gris and Sauvignon Blanc among the whites.

What the sales figures show

The problem is at the other end. LCBO VQA table wine sales of Gewürztraminer in 2023 came to about $672,000, roughly 0.6 per cent of the category — below Vidal, and around one twentieth of what Riesling sold. A grape paid $2,151 a tonne that generates two thirds of a million dollars in retail sales is a grape whose economics only work at small scale, and the acreage figures suggest growers have been drawing that conclusion for some years.

The underlying difficulty is stylistic. Gewürztraminer is emphatic — lychee, rose, ginger, a broad oily texture and low natural acidity — and emphatic aromatic whites have been out of fashion in the Ontario market for most of two decades. The wine is also genuinely hard to make well: pick it late enough for the aromatics and the acid has gone; pick it early and the aromatics have not arrived.

The low-acid problem, in the regulation

Appendix A of Ontario Regulation 406/00 sets varietal Gewürztraminer at 18.0° Brix provincially and 19.0° for an appellation wine. The provincial figure is the same as Chardonnay's, but the appellation figure is a full degree lower than Chardonnay's 20.0° — a small concession to the fact that hanging this variety for extra sugar costs more acid than it does in most other grapes.

The regulation also records that "Traminer" is an accepted synonym, and lists the related but distinct Riesling x Traminer 25/4 as its own variety. Labels are entitled to use either spelling of the main name, with or without the umlaut.

What replaced it

The acreage that came out of Gewürztraminer did not leave the province; it changed variety. Over the same 2018 to 2022 window, Pinot Gris held flat and Chardonnay Musqué grew at 2.7 per cent a year, and both occupy the same commercial position Gewürztraminer once did — an aromatic white for a drinker who wants more perfume than Chardonnay offers. Pinot Gris does it in a style the current market prefers, with less overt aroma and more texture, and it sells more than twenty times as much. Chardonnay Musqué does it with muscat aromatics that arrive without the low acidity and the heavy finish that make Gewürztraminer difficult to place on a wine list.

Read that way the decline is not a verdict on the grape but on a style. Ontario has not stopped wanting aromatic whites; it has stopped wanting this particular one at this particular weight.

Where it survives

What remains is concentrated on the cooler Niagara bench sites, where the aromatics hold, and in small plantings on the Lake Erie North Shore. It tends to be grown by wineries that have a settled customer for it rather than sold on the open grape market, which is the usual pattern for a variety whose acreage is falling: the blocks that survive are the ones with a buyer attached. The regions page covers the sub-appellations, and the varieties page sets Gewürztraminer among the province's whites.

Acreage trends are from the 2023 Agri-Metrics study covering 2018–2022 and describe the direction of travel over that window, not the current year. Prices are set annually and are quoted here from the 2026 schedule.