As Joseph DeMaria waited in a hotel on West 72nd Street in New York in November, a broker was meeting with a representative of an anonymous Saudi Arabian businessman in a nearby restaurant. As the drop was being made, $30,000 was being wired to a bank in New York, destined for DeMaria's account in Canada.
A nefarious deal involving stolen goods? Drugs? Guns? Endangered species? Nope. Something less dangerous, but perhaps more rare: a bottle of 2000 Chardonnay icewine, from the first batch of such wine to have been made in Canada and now the country's most expensive icewine export.
DeMaria, fast cementing an international reputation as Canada's icewine specialist, says the Chardonnay commands such a stratospheric price because of the prizes it won at the prestigious Citadelles du Vin competition in France in 2002, 2004, 2005, and 2006.
It's also a truly rare product. The Niagara icewine industry started with Vidal and Riesling, tougher-skinned grapes that can withstand freezing temperatures-the fruit must be picked at -8. It then expanded to include Gewurztraminer and Cabernet Franc. Recently, some wineries have experimented with new varietals, but in 2000 DeMaria was the first to take a chance on Chardonnay. "Most wineries do not want to invest the financial obligation to an extremely high-risk varietal without some guarantee of return," he says.
In 2000, He was lucky. The weather co-operated, providing the right amount of heat and cold in the right intervals to create the perfect icewine grape-a process known in icewine parlance as mummification. The thermometer hit -8 at the right time in early December and the grapes were hand-picked in the moonlight by a crew of contract workers.
The wine was made in the back of the Royal DeMaria winery in Vineland, Ont., which also serves as home to Joseph, his partner Charlene Stephenson (director of sales and marketing), and their four children. In addition to his seasonal picking crews, he employs three others to help with sales and trade shows.
DeMaria credits his winemaking prowess to intuition, street smarts and a fortuitous "mistake" he made with his first batch of wine. He won't say what that mistake was, only that it led to him developing a recipe to make icewine high on flavour yet low on cloying sweetness.
And then there's Ms. Stephenson's olfactory gift. "Her bionic nose is just incredible," DeMaria says, adding that she helps both in the wine-making process and the in all-critical labeling. "She'll give me an idea of what's there and I can go with it. "She says, 'Joe, I smell raisins and dates.' And when we open the bottle in two or three years, it's raisins and dates."
While Ms. Stephenson has the nose for wine, DeMaria has the eye for marketing opportunities … and the stomach for risk. The Toronto hair stylist, now 45, invested in a his 25-acre vineyard in Vineland in 1996 and braved a unique set of challenges: presses arriving late from Europe, hungry birds feasting on his precious grapes, thieves breaking in and stealing his entire stash of 1999 Riesling...
Then in 2002 the Queen called.
It was actually someone from The Office of Protocol in Toronto wanting icewine for Her Majesty's jubilee visit to Canada. DeMaria laughs now about how he hung up on the caller, thinking it was a prank. But the word was out that he had just won an unprecedented five gold trophies at The Citadelles du Vin.
Was there anything else to single him out? "I do believe the diversity of the varietals I create makes a big difference," he says. "That, and the fact that I am the only winery specializing exclusively in icewine."
The next year brought an unannounced visit by Richard Branson and entourage that had the neighbours-and more press-talking.
His wines continued to get noticed in international competitions and in 2004, DeMaria created more buzz when his 2002 Meritage-the first in the world-sold at an auction that year to a New York buyer for $5,000, a record at that time for Canadian icewine. That Meritage is now priced at $10,000 a bottle. But for the rest of us, his wine is available at the LCBO, starting at $56.75 for a Vidal.
The winery is now profitable, DeMaria says. But he still cuts hair occasionally at his salon - to keep in touch with his Toronto connections.
This year, he anticipates the mild weather will cut his harvest by about 20 per cent. Even so, he's managed so far to get a good batch of grapes from one cold spell in December and from acreage he's developing on Georgian Bay. With 90 tonnes of fruit still on his vines as of Monday, he's glad to see the mercury finally drop.
Whatever happens with the weather this year, he's still got some prize-winning 2000 Chardonnay stashed away. This wine, now the most expensive icewine in the world, is poised to rise in price with the sale of each bottle. "These high-end, thin-skinned grapes involve a lot of risk, so why not charge a premium?" he says.
Some in the industry fear is that DeMaria's exorbitant aims will drive prices higher and higher and end up making icewine unaffordable.
"Good on him, if he can get away with it," said Mark Bradshaw, wine master at Pillitteri Estates, a Niagara competitor. But, he adds that there are two ends of the spectrum in the industry regarding DeMaria's prices. "Some say it's great, but others say it could throw the whole industry into whack."
For her part, Sheri Haigh, director of public affairs at the Wine Counsel of Ontario, believes the $30,000 Chardonnay is an isolated case and not reflective of the industry as a whole. However, DeMaria sees that Saudi purchase as just the start. The original yield for the Chardonnay was 35 cases and the price shot up when DeMaria got down to the final few.
There are now only 31 bottles remaining.
"I anticipate the price point being $500,000 by the time we have one bottle left," he says.