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Making a 'Vice' Out of Ice wine How Ontario's Vineland Estates Winery invented a Vidal-vodka martini By Hudson Cattell Wine East HIGHLIGHTS: • Looking to boost ice wine sales, Vineland estates Winery launched a premixed ice wine-vodka martini. • The concept initially baffled regulatory officials across Canada and in the United states. • During its first year offering the product, Vineland estates sold 10 bottles of Vice for every bottle of ice wine. wo years ago Allan Schmidt, presi- dent of Vineland Estates Winery in Vineland, Ontario, had a problem. He had looked at the sales num- bers for ice wine and realized they were no longer increasing by as much as 20% per year but rather beginning to decrease 5% per year. It didn't take a crystal ball to figure out why: More and more wineries were producing quality ice wines, the great recession was taking hold and, since ice wine was a luxury item, people could do without it. Schmidt's challenge was to find new ways T Carolina_Jan11.qxp 11/24/10 2:50 PM Page 1 Vineland Estates Winery launched Vice to boost its ice wine sales. Earth&Turf_Rev_Sept09.qxp 7/30/09 8:24 AM Page 1 Currently In Stock – Bottles, Corks & Capsules 336-677-6831 Carolina Wine Supply Yadkinville, NC The Southeast's Most Complete Winery Supply Company Join Us at Wineries Unlimited March 30-31, 2011 in Richmond, VA at Booth 741 with Della Toffola www.CarolinaWineSupply.com Wines & Vines JAnUARY 2011 109 of increasing ice wine sales. He remembered that 10 years earlier he had visited the Fair- mount Chateau Lake Louise Resort in Banff National Park and found that their ice wine sales were quadrupling, and their recipe for success was mixing his ice wine with vodka. Schmidt loved the product but discovered that restaurants and bars weren't interested in opening an expensive bottle of ice wine to make a drink for one customer and then be left with a half-bottle or more that would oxidize before it could be consumed. The solution, Schmidt realized, was for 50,000-case Vineland Estates to bottle WineEast