Grape varieties

Merlot: the highest ripeness bar in Ontario

To put a viticultural area on a bottle of Ontario Merlot, the fruit must average 20.5° Brix. No other variety in the regulation is asked for more. For a grape this winter-sensitive, in this province, that is a demanding rule.

20.5°, and what it costs to get there

Appendix A of Ontario Regulation 406/00 sets varietal Merlot at a minimum average of 19.0° Brix for the provincial designation and 20.5° for a wine claiming a viticultural area, estate bottling or a named vineyard. The 20.5° figure is the highest in the appendix — half a degree above Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Chardonnay, and three and a half degrees above Riesling.

Reaching it means leaving the fruit on the vine deep into October on a site warm enough to keep ripening it, which is a narrower proposition here than the acreage figures suggest. In a cool or wet autumn a Merlot block that would comfortably make the 19.0° provincial bar may not make the appellation one, and the wine is declassified to "Ontario" rather than named for its sub-appellation. That is a real commercial consequence attached to a single vintage's weather.

The most winter-sensitive red planted at scale

Merlot is among the more tender varieties in the province — more so than Cabernet Franc, which is why Cabernet Franc is planted everywhere and Merlot is not. Its distribution follows the warmest ground almost exactly: the Niagara-on-the-Lake plain, the Niagara River and Four Mile Creek sub-appellations, and the Lake Erie North Shore. It is not a bench grape and it is a difficult proposition in Prince Edward County.

The combination is the variety's central tension in Ontario: it needs the longest, warmest season to clear the highest ripeness bar in the rules, and it is least able to survive the winters that follow. The climate page covers winter injury and the measures growers take; Brock's VineAlert publishes bud hardiness through each dormant season by variety and site.

Fifth by acreage, tenth by sales

The Agri-Metrics varietal study covering 2018 to 2022 ranks Merlot fifth in the province by acreage, with plantings essentially flat at about 0.3 per cent growth a year. LCBO VQA table wine sales in 2023 came to roughly $5.4 million, about five per cent of the category and tenth on the list — behind Baco Noir and Cabernet Sauvignon, and just behind the Cabernet Merlot blend at $5.6 million.

That last line matters. Merlot's varietal figure understates the crop because a substantial share goes into Cabernet Merlot and into the red blend category, which at $13.1 million is the third largest line in the whole table. Merlot is a blending partner as much as a varietal wine here, and it always was.

What it is paid

The 2026 price schedule puts Merlot in class 10d at $2,614 a tonne, sharing the class with Petit Verdot. That is above Cabernet Sauvignon at $2,599 and Cabernet Franc at $2,308, and below Pinot Noir and Syrah. Among the Bordeaux varieties it is the best paid, which is a fair reflection of the site quality it demands.

Petit Verdot, its class partner

Class 10d contains Merlot and Petit Verdot at the same $2,614 a tonne. The pairing is a Bordeaux grouping: Petit Verdot is the late-ripening, deeply coloured, firmly tannic minor variety of the left bank, used in small proportions to add structure and colour to a blend. In Ontario it is grown in very small quantity — it does not reach the published top twenty by acreage — and almost entirely for that purpose. Appendix A gives it no line of its own, so it falls under "Other vitis vinifera varieties" at 17.0° and 18.0° Brix, a far gentler requirement than the 20.5° asked of the grape it is priced beside.

Why Ontario keeps planting it

A grape that needs the best ground, carries the highest ripeness requirement and is among the first to suffer in a hard winter is not an obvious choice for a cool-climate province. It persists because the wine it makes is one the market understands without explanation, because it softens and fills out the Cabernet-based blends that are Ontario's largest red category, and because on the warmest sites in a good year it does genuinely ripen. It is a variety kept by its uses rather than by its ease. The varieties page sets out how those trade-offs play across the province.