Cool Chardonnay for warm days

By Malcolm Jolley, for The Hub

Chardonnay is one of the more successful and popular wine grape varieties to be planted in Niagara. And every July, since 2011, it is the focus of the region’s annual International Cool Climate Chardonnay Celebration. I attended the 14th edition last week as a guest of Wine Country Ontario. It’s partly a conference, partly a media tour, and partly a series of ticketed events open to the public.

i4C (as everyone calls it) takes place over the course of four nights and four days along the wine making strip of the Niagara Peninsula. It attracts most of Niagara’s top producers, by sales or critical acclaim, as well as guests from other cool climate growing regions like Prince Edward County, the Okanagan Valley, France, Italy and South Africa.

While I tasted wine, I heard from producers at the conference’s events. This included panel discussions, meals, winery visits, and even the cocktail party atmosphere of an evening walk-around tasting–I received a thorough refresher course on what’s happening in the wine scene on the peninsula. Here are my main three takeaways.

Burgundization | Climate chaos | Generational shift

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