Icewine fetches a cool $30,000

It's a whopping sale that's created a buzz in the icewine world. Beamsville winemaker Joseph DeMaria says a Saudi Arabian businessman paid $30,000 for a bottle of his award-winning 2000 Chardonnay icewine.

I don't think I'll be ordering a case of this anytime soon. If climate change produces more non-winters like this one, icewine could become an endangered species and cost a king's ramsom. Right now though the $30,000 price tag says more about DeMaria's marketing skills than the worth of the wine.

His success is the result of a fortuitous accident. DeMaria was a full-time hairdresser and part-time inexperienced winemaker when he made his first icewine from a 5000L surplus of Vidal icewine juice. Midway through the process Joseph made a major error in what he understood to be the process of making icewine. Without letting this error set him back Joseph continued working with the icewine and through his blind correction of the error fell upon a wine making technique. (I suspect he's retired his hairdressing scissors.)