Grape varieties

Muscat Ottonel: one of four grapes the rules never ask to ripen further

Ontario's regulation raises the minimum ripeness when a wine claims a specific place. For exactly four entries it does not. Riesling is one, Sémillon and Chardonnay Musqué are two more, and the fourth is the collective line for the Muscats.

17.0° and 17.0°

Appendix A of Ontario Regulation 406/00 sets two figures per variety: a minimum average Brix for a wine labelled "Ontario", and a higher one for a wine claiming a viticultural area, estate bottling or a named vineyard. Chardonnay climbs from 18.0° to 20.0°; Merlot from 19.0° to 20.5°.

The line reading "Muscats" sits at 17.0° and 17.0° — tied for the lowest figure in the appendix and, with Riesling, Sémillon and Chardonnay Musqué, one of only four entries that does not rise at all. The reasoning is the one the regulation applies wherever a variety's identity depends on picking early: Muscat's defining grapey, floral aromatics are clearest at moderate ripeness, and a higher bar would legislate against the style.

One line, many grapes

That single Appendix A line covers a whole family. Table 1 lists the Muscats separately as distinct varieties — Muscat Blanc, Muscat Ottonel, Muscat d'Alsace, Morio Muscat, Moscato Giallo, Muscat Osceolo among the hybrids — but Appendix A gives them one shared ripeness rule.

The regulation goes further in section 3. The terms "Muscat" and "Moscato" may be used as a synonym for all or any combination of the Muscat varieties of Vitis vinifera, and "Muscat" counts as a single varietal component when the minimum content of a dual- or triple-varietal wine is calculated. A bottle labelled simply Muscat is therefore making a deliberately open claim that the rules permit — the same flexibility the regulation grants to "Cabernet" across Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Which Muscat Ontario actually grows

Muscat Ottonel is the one with its own price line. The 2026 Grape Growers of Ontario schedule gives it class 9f to itself at $1,890 a tonne — above Riesling, above Viognier at $1,813, above Kerner at $1,674, and behind only the four biggest whites. The shared residual class 9h, which includes Italian Muscat and Morio Muscat, is $1,724.

Muscat Ottonel was bred in the Loire in 1852 and is the earliest-ripening and least alcoholic of the family, which is exactly why it travelled north: it is the Muscat that works in Alsace, Austria and Romania, and by the same logic the one that works here. It is lighter and more delicate than Muscat Blanc, with orange-blossom and grape aromatics rather than the heavier musk of the southern Muscats.

The oldest domesticated grape family

The Muscats are generally held to be the oldest identifiable family of cultivated wine grapes, with Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains traceable through Greek and Roman writing, and they are unusual in another way: Muscat actually tastes of grapes. Most wine grapes do not — the flavours of a Chardonnay or a Cabernet come from fermentation, ageing and the compounds that develop as they ripen. Muscat's aroma comes from terpenes present in the berry itself.

That is why the family is the standard reference point for "grapey" in tasting language, and why a Muscat wine is recognisable to people with no wine vocabulary at all. It is also why the regulation's low, non-rising ripeness figure matters so much for these varieties: the compounds carrying that aroma are most expressive before the fruit is fully ripe, so the rule protects the one characteristic the family is grown for.

Why it stays small

Muscat Ottonel does not reach the top twenty by acreage in the Agri-Metrics study covering 2018 to 2022, and does not register in the reported LCBO varietal sales table. The likeliest reason is the one that has held back Gewürztraminer, whose acreage was falling 4.2 per cent a year over the same period: the Ontario market for emphatic aromatic whites has been soft for two decades, and Muscat is the most emphatic of them all.

Where it does appear, it is often not as a dry white at all. Muscat's aromatics and low acidity suit off-dry and sweet styles, and the regulation provides the categories — Late Harvest at 22.0° Brix, Select Late Harvest at 25.0°, and icewine at 32.0° at the press and 35.0° in the blend. A grape whose dry version is a hard sell can have a second life where its sweetness is the point. The varieties page places it among the province's whites.