Results from the 2025 Nationals – Library Wines

Announcing the Results from the 2025 National Wine Awards of Canada

The 2025 Nationals took place in Penticton from June 21st to 25th. Today, we are pleased to announce the winners in the Library Wines category. Category results will be rolling out throughout the rest of July, concluding with the Winery of the Year announcement on August 1st. We hope that you will stay tuned to follow the results!

Library Wines

Category Overview by Rhys Pender, MW

Go straight to the winners.

Ageing Canadian Wines – A Library Wine Report

Pick up any wine 101 textbook, flip to the section on ageing wines and it will tell you that there are two key things that you need for a wine to age. The first is something to age – which means concentration of flavour that can go the distance as the magic of transformation takes place in bottle. Second, something to preserve that flavour over the long run – usually acidity or tannin but can also include sugar and alcohol. Flip to any chapter on Canadian wine and among the first things you will learn about Canada’s wines is that they have high levels of natural acidity, lots of flavour from all the sunlight you get in these northern latitudes and, in the case of the interior of British Columbia, high levels of tannins in the red grapes from the dry, sunny, heat. Yet given such natural alignment, Canadian wine still doesn’t have a strongly developed reputation for the ageability of its wines. Why is this so and what can we do about it?

The first thing we can do is tell people about it. The National Wine Awards of Canada (NWACs), for the first time in 2025, introduced a library wine category as part of the judging process. The library wine segment of the competition, wines 5 years or older, is not designed to compare these aged wines against each other, but rather to look at each wine independently and assess it for where it is in its lifecycle, and how well it is ageing and tasting. Not surprisingly, the results are impressive. (Note – 75% of the library wines entered were from BC, 25% from Ontario).

The first thing to consider is “do Canadian wines age well?” The answer to that is yes. Back in 2008, I found myself with quite a number of older bottles of BC wine in my cellar and decided to put on an industry tasting to explore how they would age. We had about a dozen wines, all 10 years of age or older. To be honest, I didn’t expect a lot. It didn’t seem that long before, around the year 2000, when I was cutting my teeth in Okanagan tasting rooms, customers would turn up at a winery and refuse to even taste the Okanagan’s red wines, having it firmly fixed in their minds that our burgeoning wine region wasn’t capable of ripening red grapes. How that mentality has changed, red grapes now dominate BC plantings and that mindset is a long-forgotten thing of the past. How did the 10-year tasting go? It was amazing, most of the wines blowing the minds of the winemakers and tasters present with how fresh and how much life they still had. I’ve been organizing and conducting tastings of older BC wine ever since, with a smattering of Ontario wines in there as well, and the well-made Canadian wines often outperform many international wine regions that do have a reputation for ageing.

Of course, not all Canadian wines will age well. Some lack that first required trait, concentration, like anywhere in the world, and the wines must be farmed without greedy yields and winemakers mustn’t over extract or over oak the wines. It turns out harmony ages well.

As for varieties, a wide range of grapes has proven to age well in Canada. Not surprising it is often the wines that constantly rise to the top of the awards that can also go the distance in the cellar. Riesling is a star, Chardonnay performs well and outlasts most international examples, and Pinot Noir, Syrah and the Bordeaux varieties all consistently age well. Traditional Method sparkling wines too.

At this years NWACs, nine of the top 21 highest scoring library wines (all gold with one platinum) are Riesling. For Riesling lovers, this won’t be a surprise at all given their great ageability. More surprising is that seven of them are from one producer. Known for various top-quality single-vineyard and stylistic expressions of the grape, BC producer Synchromesh (also making Storm Haven) may also not be a huge surprise. Alan Dickinson has hung his hat on the grape (@powered_by_riesling) and has been making powerful, ageable examples since 2010. The other two Rieslings were from Culmina in BC and Tawse in Ontario.

The rest of the top 21 shows the diversity of Canadian wine and the wide range of grape varieties that all can show what is needed to go the distance. There is a 2017 Chardonnay from Painted Rock on the Skaha Bench in BC, a 2020 Roussanne from Lake Breeze and a 2020 White Meritage from Bench 1775, both on the Naramata Bench in the Okanagan. So, 12 of the top 21 are white wines, something collectors often overlook for more fuller bodied, tannic red wines.

The red varieties in the top 21 are dominated by the Bordeaux varieties, with seven placements, even though one of these is a Cabernet Franc icewine from Ontario’s Magnotta (2019). Magnotta also features with their 2019 Meritage Gran Riserva. Syrah makes a couple of appearances, with a 2017 from Painted Rock and, featuring as part of the blend with Bordeaux varieties in Mission Hill’s 2020 Quatrain (Okanagan). Mission Hill’s 2020 Compendium also featured in the top 21. The top scoring wine of the segment though was a 2020 Malbec from Moon Curser in the south Okanagan.

Vintage, again as is true anywhere in the world, also plays a big part and it is often the moderate years that seem to age the best. In the big, hot, very ripe years the wines can have a tendency to fall apart a little earlier. The coolest years can be an encouraging surprise though. Vintages like 2010 and 2011 in BC were the chilliest on record and while the wines seemed a little lean on release, given time they have softened and rounded out into complex, still fresh specimens after 10-15 years. One caveat is to look out for the smoky years in BC. While the understanding of smoke impact in wines is still developing, one finding seems to be that any smoke in a wine will likely become stronger over time. Many wines that have good initial flavour concentration don’t show any signs of smoke for 3, 4, 5 years or longer. Eventually though, as the primary fruit fades and tertiary notes become more apparent, smoky notes might come to the forefront. So best to just drink the wines from the interior of BC from 2018, 2021 or 2023 quite young while they are at their best, just in case.

Why doesn’t Canadian wine have a reputation yet for ageing if the wines are so well suited? A lot of it is about time. Building a reputation in the wine world takes time, often many decades. A new region, experimenting with many grapes and wine styles will often take 20+ years to find out what it is best at. You have to remember, you only get one shot at making a wine each year, so it takes time to figure things out.

New businesses, unlike the 10+ generations behind some European producers, also need cash flow, badly. Selling wine fast, encouraging consumers to drink it now and getting them to buy the next vintage straight away is crucial to say afloat, even if it goes against promoting ageability. But, over time, bottles get left in a cellar, forward thinking producers keep some cases back for a library, tastings get held and we start to see what can happen, the potential. I can honestly say that I haven’t had a Canadian Riesling, Chardonnay, Syrah or Bordeaux variety blend that wasn’t better after 3-5 years in the bottle. Many other varieties too.

Confidence, as a region, starts to build. Instead of self-doubting back label text saying things like “drink within 5 years”, wines can start to boast of lasting a decade or more. Vertical tastings and library wines with wine club shipments start to get the message out and before long consumers will see the benefits of giving wines a few years in the cellar. Maybe the bigger issue is whether enough consumers have a space for a cellar, but that is another topic.

Canadian wine is at that moment now. We’ve been doing this for decades. Each region has figured out what it does best, the top producers know how to make wine with harmony that reflect the place and the vintage, and we’ve got enough good back vintages to prove the point.

For wine lovers, it may be time to start looking at Canadian wine from a different perspective. Grab a few bottles of your favourite wines each year, stick them away and enjoy the complexities that develop. You will be pleasantly surprised.

Rhys

And the winners are…

Moon Curser 2020 Malbec, Okanagan Valley, British Columbia

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