Crush on Niagara: The Definitive Wine Tour Guide

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

This guide is deceptive. It looks superficial and boring, but get past
the dull layout and uninspired photos and you’ll discover the sort of
detail that puts life and excitement into a tour guide.

The guide introduces 56 wineries in the Niagara region of Ontario. The
region is divided into two areas: Niagara-on-the-Lake and St.
Catharines/Twenty Valley. The book starts with a bit of information on
geography, grape types, and processes and wraps up with endnotes on area
hotels and restaurants. The heart of the guide, of course, is the
alphabetical introduction to the wineries. Each receives two pages,
including location and phone, owners’ names, when founded, types of
wine produced, acreage, visiting dates and times, annual production,
where the wines may be purchase, and any extras such as a retail store
or wine bar on site.

The wineries included range from the tiny (fewer than 1000 cases per
year) to the gigantic (100,000+ cases per year). There’s an organic
winery, the one with Ontario’s most expensive wine ($5000 a bottle), a
winery that holds falconry demonstrations and music festivals, one that
hosts weddings, wineries that offer testing, those that use wind
machines to protect the vines from winter damage, even a teaching
winery.

For each winery listed, an unidentified sommelier picks the top
products and occasionally comments on food to pair with it. There’s a
map that will be useful for planning a route for weekend tours or
full-scale vacations devoted to wines.