Warm reception for icewine fest

For Kathy Peterson and Ken Nedman, it was a wintery escape from reality.

The Niagara Icewine Festival offered the couple a little luxury in a glass to leave the cool economy behind.

"It's time to put your blues behind," said Nedman, who made the trip to Jordan from Rochester, N. Y., on Sunday.

"Life is too short."

It seems many were following the same mantra this weekend, braving cold temperatures on Saturday, snowy roads on Sunday and pulling out their wallets for a bit of the Niagara wine industry's liquid gold.

On Saturday, an estimated 5,000 people filled the closed-off Main Street of Jordan, the epicentre of the 10-day festival's opening weekend.

Crowds were so thick that Beamsville's Good Earth Cooking School sold all of the 60 litres of curry chickpea stew it was serving on Saturday.

"Yesterday, with it being so cold, it was a full house and Sunday it's always a slower start and we're starting to fill up," executive chef Patrick Engel said Sunday afternoon.

"Compared to years past, the economy doesn't seem to have affected us at all."

Dancing to the music filtering through Main Street as she poured hot chocolate spiked with spirits for the masses, Keri Dyson said the crowds seem even bigger this year.

A server at Inn on the Twenty, Dyson's worked the wintery venue for three years and said retail shops along Main Street were busier than ever this year.

It's nice to see people coming out to the festival and taking a break from the bleak economy, she said.

"People are still able to come out and enjoy themselves, enjoy the icewine festival," Dyson said.

It's not just Jordan that was booming. The Xerox Icewine Gala in Niagara

Falls on Friday night, the festival's kickoff event, attracted record crowds. Saturday night's Winterfest event in St. Catharines drew more than 500 people, said Ken Weir, president of the Niagara Icewine Festival.

Niagara wineries, many of which are participating in the festival's Discovery Pass, also experienced an unseasonal upswing in business, Weir said.

"I know a lot of the wineries saw business like they would see in a July weekend, which is the benefits of being part of our festival," Weir said.

Steady crowds were sidling up to the 7.2-metre handcrafted ice bar in Jordan on Sunday afternoon.

While pouring icewine for Niagara-on- the-Lake's Jackson-Triggs Estate Winery and Inniskillin Wines, Michael Floyd said there's just something about icewine.

Even if the market for other wines slips with the slagging economy, appetite for the heftily-priced unique sweet wine made of frozen grapes shouldn't wane, he said.

"It's something that's very unique to the region and to the country," said Floyd, who is a guest service associate at Jackson-Triggs.

"It's something a lot of people would say, 'Well, if you want to take part in Canada if you're a tourist, then basically icewine is the way to go.' "

Locals are also drawn to the sweet elixir.

Pat Atherton of Vineland looks a bit bashful when she said she polished off three modest samples of icewine: a Riesling, Cabernet Franc and Shiraz.

Atherton said it's nice to have a festival