A sip of chilled ice wine always sends a shiver down my spine. That’s not just the cool sugary embrace of the golden liquid, or the tingle of crisp acidity. It’s the very thought of winter-time grape pickers heading out at night in Canada or Germany to pull the hard bullets of frozen grapes from stiff frosty vines... Ice wine has an extraordinary intensity. When a winery presses the super-ripe frozen fruit, only a concentrated syrup oozes out to be fermented, because much of the water is retained as ice. That gloopy elixir contains very high levels of sugar, acid and other natural flavours. For a few, the resulting wine is simply much too sweet. But to its fans, ice wine gives a quite extraordinary joy. It’s expensive stuff, the richly textured, honeyed wine that tastes of citrus peel, ripe quinces, baked apples and pears and tart grapefruit. Note the prices below are for half-bottles (actually, just the right size for four, as a 75-100ml glass per person is enough). The high cost is because it is extremely difficult to make in any significant quantity, only produced when there is a hard freeze of below -8 degrees, and even then delivering just a very small amount of wine per vine.

But now ice wine is more widely available in the UK. Lidl’s is brand new on the shelves and at £14.99 will make an ice wine more accessible than ever before. It comes from Canada, as do most examples on sale in the UK. Germany is the other major producer of ‘Eiswein’, though the style is also made in Austria, Alsace, Hungary, the USA, even China, and other regions where a hard frost is common. Ice wine is not made from ‘nobly rotten’ grapes affected by botrytis cinerea like the great dessert wines of Bordeaux, the Loire, Austria and Hungary. The grapes for this style of pudding wine should be clean of rot, and the result more pure and brightly fruity than the more complex, rounded and long-lived botrytis-affected wines. They are created from many different grapes, but especially those which resist rotting as they hang on the vine through the autumn and into winter time. Riesling and the hybrid vidal are the usual candidates though cabernet franc is sometimes seen for a pale red version.

Although rich in sweetness and acidity, ice wines are lighter in alcohol than many wines, usually weighing in around 8-11% abv.top wine brand 2013 I prefer to drink them on their own, a small glassful proving the perfect, refreshing, palate-wakening way to end a rich feast. best virginia winery toursOther like them with food, taking their sip with salty blue cheeses or pairing them with hot fruit puddings like tarte tatin.buy new zealand wine online uk Either way, Christmas should provide a good moment to chill out with an ice wine. red wine brands mHere are five to try.glass of wine size uk

Ice wines for Christmasbest city to buy wine in italy Pillitteri Estates Winery Vidal Icewine 2013, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada (Lidl, £14.99/half-bottle) Lidl’s new ice wine is excellent value and delivers salty grapefruit, tart pineapple, and a hint of lychee. Sweet and sour notes, nicely balanced. Trius Vidal Icewine 2014, Nova Scotia, Canada (Aldi, £24.99/half) Deep golden, with baked apple, pear and greengages all drizzled in honey. Very sweet indeed but beautifully balanced with just enough freshness. Darting Estate Fronhof Riesling Eiswein, Pfalz, Germany (Marks & Spencer, £20/half) Lively, crisp flavours of whistle-clean grapefruit and tangerine peel - a proper wake-up call for the taste buds. A delicate 8% alcohol. Peller Estates Riesling Icewine, Niagara Peninsula, Canada (Majestic, £35/half) Peller has won many accolades and this exquisite cocktail of ripe apple and oranges has super-sweet honeycomb finish.

NB: Great Western Wine of Bath (01225 322810) has a full range of Peller ice wines. Changyu Golden Icewine Valley Vidal 2009, China (Berry Bros & Rudd, £19/half) Here’s something very different to uncork at Christmas; a Chinese ice wine. It has some sweet cereally, biscuity and golden syrup notes as well as plenty of juicy citrus.Those of us of a certain vintage may well remember a popular TV campaign by Red Rose tea from back in the late '80s and early '90s. It featured some exaggeratedly British characters fawning over a cup of the tea until they're told it's available only in Canada.   Well, something similar is going on right now in the U.K. with Canadian wine. Only, unlike the tea, the Chardonnays and pinot noirs are actually available over there, and when Brits find out the wine they're drinking is Canadian, they're snapping it up. "I enjoy bringing it home and pouring it out in a glass and giving it to someone blind and saying, 'What do you think of this?' and they go, 'Oh, I like that,'" says David Gleave, managing director of Liberty Wines Ltd,, a London-based wine importer.

"And then you tell them it's Canadian and you watch their face look quite surprised." Canadian wine is still a very small player in Britain, accounting for only $1,582,316 Cdn in sales in 2015. And of that, more than $1.2 million was icewine. But in the last three years, table wine sales have surged, jumping from a paltry $34,889 in 2013 to more than $168,500 last year. Ontario winemaker Norman Hardie says the U.K. market likes Old World-style wines with New World energy. The "table wine" term used here is the North American sense, denoting a wine style; an ordinary wine, not a dessert or a sparkling wine, and not the lesser quality wine Europeans call table wine. In fact, much of the Canadian wine making inroads in the U.K. is higher-end vintages. Gleave's Liberty Wines imports two Niagara Chardonnays by winemaker Thomas Bachelder. Both retail in the U.K. for more than £30 ($57) a bottle. "Which is pretty expensive. You're dealing right in the very top, less than one per cent of the market at that price. 

It's going to be top quality wine shops and good quality restaurants. Restaurants that can sell wines that are £100 a bottle and above," he says. The U.K. is the sixth largest wine market in the world and experts say one of the most important. "It's a critical marketplace. It's one of the best marketplaces for your super premium products," says Dan Paszkowski, president and CEO of the Canadian Vintners Association. "They're big consumers of wine in the U.K. Also, some of the top sommeliers and wine writers, etc. are all based in the U.K. It's an important market, not only for sales, but to build recognition for your product," he says. It may be no coincidence that the start of this rise in sales for Canadian wine in the Britain roughly coincided with a positive article by well-known wine critic Jancis Robinson. Robinson has been the Financial Times wine correspondent since 1989. She is also an adviser to the royal wine cellar, appointed by Queen Elizabeth.

Robinson wrote that wines from B.C. and Ontario "have clearly improved considerably recently." Marks & Spencer, one of the U.K.'s best-known retailers, lists a pinot noir by Okanagan winemaker Meyer Family Vineyards, describing it as "complex … with tart black cherry, plum and vanilla aromas and a richly elegant freshness with violets and red fruit depth." Canadian wine hasn't always enjoyed a stellar reputation abroad. "For many years Canadian wine was made with either hybrid varieties — so it was made with wine imported from California and blended in with Canadian wine." says Gleave. British critics have good things to say about Canadian vintages, and buyers have responded. But about 10 years ago, he says, a growing number of artisanal Canadian wine makers started focusing on individual varietals, and quality over quantity. "The right grape varieties, planted in the right places, tended in the right way, and then made by someone who's got an eye to quality." he says.

"And there are now some people, a growing number of people, in Canada who are making very good wines that can compete on an international level." Prince Edward County winemaker Norman Hardie sent his first batch of wine from Ontario to the U.K. in 2014. That shipment consisted of 50 cases. This year, he's sending 200 cases, a number he says would be double or triple if he had the stock. U.K. importer David Gleave says the rise of artisanal wineries in Canada is opening new markets. Hardie's wines are listed by The Wine Society in Britain, said to be the oldest wine co-op in the world, with more than 100,000 members. Hardie's first 100-case allocation to the society sold out the day it was released. "The fact that a number of importers are taking Canadian wines — from Nova Scotia, to here in Ontario, to British Columbia — it says that we're doing something very, very special in Canada." "And as Canadians, sometimes we need to hear that from the outside."

Hardie's Chardonnay is made from grapes grown on vines planted in clay and limestone soil, in a climate tempered by nearby Lake Ontario. The wine is aged in French oak barrels in a cellar cut into a limestone shelf below the vineyard. Hardie spent a year in Burgundy, France, learning his craft.  A taste of his 2013 Chardonnay evokes comparisons to a vintage from that renowned French wine region. That, Hardie says, is what appeals to the U.K. "If we can make Old World style wines in the New World," he says, "that taste of here but have those Old World characteristics, this is what the U.K. loves." "It's that vibrancy and acidity. New World wines are bigger and rounder and softer and while delicious, they just don't have that energy that we have here." "And this is what we can do here, given our temperatures and our soils." Only in Canada, you say? Not anymore, it seems. Follow Aaron Saltzman on Twitter @cbcsaltzman If you have a consumer story or issue, contact aaron.saltzman@cbc.ca