Grape varieties

Riesling: the grape Ontario is allowed to pick least ripe

Riesling sits at the lowest minimum ripeness the VQA regulation sets, and it is one of the few varieties whose bar does not rise when the wine claims a specific appellation. For a grape planted this widely, that is not an oversight. It is the province conceding what Riesling is for.

The 17.0° Brix line

Appendix A of Ontario Regulation 406/00 sets a minimum average Brix for each named variety, in two columns: one for wine labelled with the provincial designation, a higher one for wine claiming a viticultural area, estate bottling or a single vineyard. Chardonnay runs 18.0° and 20.0°. Cabernet Sauvignon runs 19.0° and 20.0°. Riesling runs 17.0° and 17.0°. That is the lowest figure the appendix sets, shared with Muscats, Sémillon and — at the provincial tier — Sauvignon Blanc. Only four entries in the table do not rise at all for the appellation tier: Riesling, Muscats, Sémillon and Chardonnay Musqué. Riesling is much the most planted of them, which is what makes the concession consequential rather than a technicality.

The reasoning is not generous; it is technical. Riesling's character in a cool climate depends on retaining acid, and acid falls as sugar climbs. A rule that forced Ontario Riesling to be picked at 20° Brix would be a rule against making the style the province is actually good at. The regulation is, in effect, published permission to pick early.

Hardy enough to be planted where it belongs

Riesling is among the hardier Vitis vinifera varieties, which is why it is grown on the Niagara benches and in Prince Edward County rather than confined to the warmest ground the way Sauvignon Blanc is. It ripens late but slowly, which suits a long cool autumn, and it holds acid through hang time in a way few white varieties manage. It also buds relatively late, which keeps it out of the way of spring frost — a real advantage in a province where the vine year often turns on what happens in May.

Hardiness in any variety is a moving figure rather than a constant. Brock's VineAlert programme samples bud hardiness through each winter and publishes values by variety and sub-appellation; Riesling is one of the varieties it tracks. The climate page sets out why those numbers move so much between January and March.

What it is worth

Grape Growers of Ontario's 2026 price schedule carries two Riesling lines: J. Riesling at $1,868 a tonne and a Riesling Plateau price of $1,468. Both sit well below Pinot Gris at $2,522 or Chardonnay at $2,099, which is a fair summary of the variety's commercial position — critically admired, priced like a workhorse.

The sales figures cut the other way. In 2023, Riesling accounted for roughly $14.6 million of LCBO VQA table wine sales, about 13 per cent, placing it second only to Pinot Gris and ahead of Chardonnay. On acreage it ranks third in the province, behind Vidal and Chardonnay, and it was contracting at roughly 1.3 per cent a year across 2018 to 2022. A variety that sells better than it is planted, and is planted less each year, is a variety whose growers are not being paid what its buyers think it is worth.

The icewine premium

Riesling is the premium icewine grape, as distinct from Vidal, which is the volume one. It gives a tighter, more structured icewine with the acid to carry the sugar, and it commands prices Vidal does not. The trade-off is agricultural: Riesling's clusters are more compact than Vidal's and its skins thinner, so hanging a Riesling crop to January is a materially riskier proposition. Growers who do it are accepting a higher chance of losing the crop entirely in exchange for a better wine if it survives.

Where it grows

Riesling plantings concentrate on the Beamsville Bench, the Twenty Mile Bench and the surrounding escarpment sub-appellations, where the limestone-influenced soils and the air drainage off the escarpment suit it, and in Prince Edward County, where the vines are buried each autumn to survive the winter at all. It is grown on the Lake Erie North Shore too, though the warmer season there tends to be given over to varieties that need it more.

Why the schedule says "J. Riesling"

The price schedule's line reads "J. Riesling", which puzzles people who look it up. The J is for Johannisberg, the Rheingau estate whose name was attached to Riesling in the New World for most of the twentieth century to distinguish the true grape from the various unrelated varieties then being sold as Riesling — Welschriesling, Grey Riesling, Emerald Riesling and others. The regulation itself does not use the prefix: Table 1 lists the variety simply as Riesling, and separately lists Welschriesling, with "Riesling Italico" as its synonym, as the different grape it is. The schedule's older usage survives as a piece of trade vocabulary rather than a legal distinction.

The second Riesling line, the Plateau price of $1,468, is not a different grape either. Plateau pricing applies to fruit contracted above a certain yield threshold, and the gap between the two figures is a fair measure of how much the board discounts a heavier crop.

Bench and sub-appellation names used here are the designations in the VQA regulation; the regions page maps them.