Introducing Fracette, a new sparkling wine from Niagara made using icewine

Niagara winemakers have joined forces to create a new category of sparkling wine made using icewine as the catalyst for creating the fizz. The idea behind Fracette is to produce a fruity and frothy wine, with some of the distinctive flavours of the world-famous dessert wine but without the sweetness.

Fracette, which rhymes with cassette, was initiated by industry groups looking to give sparkling wine a regional identity by combining two of Niagara’s strong suits, bubbly and icewine. “When do you get to build a brand-new category of wine in the 21^st century?” wondered Paul Speck, president of Henry of Pelham Family Estate, one of the six wineries that helped launch Fracette this month.

“It creates a brand-new product that you can only get in Niagara, but we’re hoping to have it right across Canada. Hopefully others will join,” he added.

Provincial winemaking regulations were amended by the Ontario Wine Appellation Authority, formerly Vintners Quality Alliance, in November, 2025, to establish Fracette as a protected sparkling wine category using icewine as the sugar source for the secondary fermentation that creates the bubbles in the bottle or stainless-steel tank. The base wines must be made from vinifera grape varieties, such as riesling, chardonnay or pinot noir, and the finished wine cannot contain more than 15 grams a litre of residual sweetness, equivalent to the sugar content of champagne or prosecco made in an “extra dry” style.

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Speck said his winemaking team and other producers spent months conducting bench trials to determine the right amount of icewine required to create bubbles without leaving any trace of its sweetness behind. “We were after the texture and density of the icewine on the palate, but wanted to keep things really fresh,” he explains.

Sparkling wines typically feature lemon and apple flavours from grapes that are picked early to give winemakers a refreshing balance of sweetness and acidity. Icewine features richer flavours, such as apricot, pineapple and honey. Those bold flavours contribute more layers to Fracette wines.

There are other logistical considerations, which might hinder adoption of the Fracette by more wineries in Ontario and other Canadian winemaking regions. Production requires investing in specialized equipment, such as the high-pressure stainless-steel tanks that safely trap carbon dioxide while withstanding more than six-plus bars of pressure during the secondary fermentation process. There’s also the need for bottling equipment that prevents bubbles from escaping while the wine is transferred, filtered and bottled.

Fracette can also be made as a bottle-fermented sparkling wine, a more time-intensive production method that requires traditional method bubblies made in Ontario to age for at least nine months before release. (All six of the initial Fracette labels were tank fermented.)

Emma Garner, senior winemaker at Andrew Peller Limited and member of the Ontario Wine Appellation Authority’s standards development committee, explains that participating wineries worked for two years on research and development trials before making commercial volumes of the unique sparkler.

“I had never fermented two wines together like that,” she says. “It took some time to wrap my head around it, but I’m really happy with where it landed.”

When it came to establishing the winemaking rules behind the new category, Garner explains that the standards committee looked at ways to maintain an element of luxury and ensure a quality product while allowing individual wineries room to experiment with different grape varieties and approaches. Peller has introduced Fracettes from its Thirty Bench Estate, made from a base blend of riesling and chardonnay, and Peller Estates label, an aromatic rosé that blends chardonnay, gewurztraminer and gamay noir (for colour).

Peller Estates has an established traditional-method sparkling wine brand called Ice Cuvée, which adds a portion of Vidal Icewine to each bottle prior to final corking and release. The white and rosé versions of Ice Cuvée are noticeably sweet, each containing more than 20 g/litre residual sugar. The perceived sweetness of a wine is relative to the other components, most importantly acidity, in that wine as well as the taster’s sensitivity.

Fracette wines are made to balance sweetness and acidity so that the overall impression is refreshing. Garner says the expressions made at Peller are a work in progress. “We have one rendition and have learned what we might want to do differently.”

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The winemaking and marketing teams at Peller, Henry of Pelham and Arterra, which owns Inniskillin, Jackson-Triggs and other wineries and brands in Ontario, worked together behind the scenes to invent Fracette.

“It has been a unique experience because not only are we launching a new category, we’re coming together as an industry to do it,” says Sandra Smith, senior marketing contractor at Arterra Wines Canada. Arterra properties, Kew, Saintly and Inniskillin, are making Fracette along with the company’s Saintly brand.

When it came time to introducing the new wines to buyers at the LCBO, the Fracette wineries went as a group rather than individual wineries. “We showed up together, which I think was key in helping the LCBO understand how serious we were,” she explains. “We all see the potential in bringing to light what Ontario is doing so well.”

The six labels, which range in price from $18.95 (Peller Estates Private Reserve Fracette Brut Rosé) to $34.95 (Inniskillin Fracette Rosé Sparkling 2025), are available in Ontario at the LCBO, individual estates, the Wine Shops and the Wine Rack, and other participating retailers.