Ice Wine Day … oh, and some pretty impressive falls

Today is Ice Wine day. We are in ice wine territory. It gets terribly cold here in winter, and that’s what you need to make ice wine. We must make the most of local specialties. Today is Ice Wine day. I might add that today, with an average temperature of 27ºC, is well beyond the conditions required to harvest grapes for ice wine. That is a job for winter; today’s job is to enjoy the fruits of other people’s labour. And at the end of today, a rush of water falling over a high cliff, a wonderful place to complete an incredible trip.

There’s plenty of time today, so we take a leisurely ride to Peller Estates Winery before saddling up to hit the road to Niagara Falls. On the recommendation of Chrissy at Creekside Winery we’ve booked into the Greatest Winery Tour. We would normally steer clear of paid tours at large wineries, but this one had a drawcard: an ice wine tasting at -10ºC, the temperature they pick the grapes at to make the wine. A bit of a gimmick, but a bit of fun, said Chrissy. I booked the tour last night – a bit pricey at $35 each – and then Janet at Ashgrove Cottage, our B&B at Niagara-on-the-Lake gave us a two for one voucher. The winery staff were perfectly happy to refund the extra payment. Kudos to them.

The tour is actually quite good value. Our guide walks us around, stopping in the gardens, the vineyard, the cellar and the ice cave, and we get to sample a number of wines along the way. The ice cave is a bit gimmicky, and doesn’t feel as cold as advertised. They have us put on Peller Estates parkas before we enter, but I go in with bare feet in sandals, and don’t feel the cold on my toes. The only thing that gets cold is my hand holding the wine glass.

Like most tours, we are ejected into the gift shop, and, because today is designated Ice Wine day, we part with more hard-earned to taste the ice wine flight, which includes a Cabernet Franc. A red ice wine!

We don’t have far to go today – only around 25km, so there is no rush. We go back to our B&B and suit up in clean gear for the final day.

Today we ride along the Niagara Parkway, said to be one of the most beautiful roads in the world. For cyclists, there is a cycle path that winds alongside the Niagara River. Car drivers on the road wouldn’t see much of the river; we only get occasional glimpses, but what we do see is a torrent of water with an incredible blue-green colour people like us who are accustomed to the mud-brown of Melbourne’s Yarra River would not expect of a river.

We have a couple of target attractions along the way. This is Ice Wine day, and we visit two places that stand out.

But what is ice wine?

To make ice wine, grapes are left on the vine well into the winter, and are harvested at a minimum of -7ºC. Many of the wineries around the Niagara area take this further, harvesting at -10ºC. You see pictures around here of wine makers harvesting in the middle of the night, with head torches, rugged up to the max. The grapes are crushed while still frozen, and because the water inside the grape is frozen, but the sugars are not, this results in a very sweet liquid. This sweet liquid ferments over a long period of time, maybe months, and produces the sweet, liquid gold that ice wine aficionados love. You can only call it ice wine if the grapes are harvested at a minimum of -7ºC. Knock-off ice wines, made from grapes frozen after harvest, cannot be called by the term “ice wine” but may be found named creatively as “iced wine” or similar.

Our first visit along the Niagara Parkway is Inniskillin, just a short hop off the bike path, and bike friendly, as they have plenty of bike racks. It’s a fairly large winery, with a piazza restaurant and huge tasting room. We make a beeline for the ice wine tasting area. The word is that this place has a sparkling ice wine. That’s insane. It turns out they have not one, but two sparkling ice wines in their range: a sparkling vidal ice wine and a sparkling cabernet franc ice wine. I thought ice wine was ice wine. Now we are seeing different varietal ice wine – vidal, reisling, cabernet franc (that’s red!) – as well as white and red sparkling bloody ice wine. We fork out the fee to taste … everything … because what the heck, where are we ever going to get this stuff in Australia? And despite my normal wine preferences, I prefer the sparkling vidal (white) over the cabernet franc (red). It’s the last day of the trip; we load up with more bottles, get on our bikes, and wobble on along the way toward Niagara Falls.

The second stop on the way is at The Ice House whose marketing claim to fame is – wait for it – ice wine slushies. It just sounds so, oh I don’t know, wrong. And yet, when we roll up there and get our straws (sorry anti-plastic folk, this stuff just ain’t going to work without a straw, and believe me I’m no plastic straw fan) into a glass of ice wine slushie even though it feels a bit dirty, it is that oh-my-god-this-is-so-good kind of dirty.

There’s a price to pay for this ice wine frolicking. After The Ice House we have to get real, and get ourselves to Niagara Falls. There is a barrier though: the Niagara Escarpment. Not too far after our detour to The Ice House the party is over, as we hit the slopes for a climb. It’s not too arduous – nothing like other climbs we’ve done on this, and other trips. But it is a bit much – on the last day, really? And with a belly full of ice wine? So rude.

It’s less than 100m up in reality, and not too bad. We reach the top and find the monument that marks the place where the falls on the Niagara River were born. Niagara Falls – born? Yep. About 12,000 years ago, when the Wisconsin Glacier receded, the Falls of Niagara were born here, at this high point, with the water falling only 11m over the escarpment from a small lake Erie into Lake Iroquois. We are still more than 10km from today’s Niagara Falls. That is some movement in 12,000 years.

Once at the top of the escarpment, we have only 10km of doddle-riding to get to the end. We dawdle, stopping to look at the river from a number of viewpoints. It’s hard to think this trip is nearly over.

The path from the top of the escarpment to the actual falls is mostly quite protected, but with only a few kilometres to go, we find ourselves ejected onto a real road, with real cars and buses, and tourists all over. We are being catapulted back into reality.

There’s been times on this trip where I’ve wondered if we’ve take the wrong direction. Should we have ridden from Niagara Falls to Quebec City instead? We’ve had the wind in our faces most of the way; if we went the other way, we could have cruised on the crest of a tail wind most of the way. In theory, we’ve been riding uphill almost all the way. But although Quebec City is wonderful, there is something special about riding into an iconic natural wonder like Niagara Falls. Shut your eyes to the commercial crap that lines the roads and the mighty Niagara river, and you are looking at something really special.

We ride straight to the falls, past our B&B. The falls are the finishing line and that’s where we want to be. We want a finish line photo, but that proves to be a bit difficult, as there are hundreds of people, all presumably newly arrived, who all want their picture in front of the falls.

Don’t they know who we are? Do they not understand what we have done to get here?

A kind, and rather tall man, whose family-falls shot I have just taken, captures us in all our finishing glory. I later edit the photo and scribble all over it. We are cool. We have ridden over 1200km to get here.

Good on us.

Stats for today:

• Distance: 25.6km
• Climb: 163m
• Average speed: 15.1km/h
• Average temperature: 27C
• Moving time: 1:41:55
• See our ride on Strava

The beer picture

At the end of a day’s ride, our tradition is to enjoy a beer, and to photograph it for posterity. Today’s beer picture was taken at a bar/restaurant with a fairly poor view of the falls.

So I took a second one, at another restaurant with a better view, at night when the falls were lit. It’s the end of the trip. We can have two beers, right?

Along the way today: