Icewine

About Icewine

Making icewine is a very risky process: the grapes must be harvested at the right temperature (-8°C/18°F in Canada) so that the water can freeze whilst they are still on the vine. This means that if the frost comes too late, the grapes can rot and therefore the harvest will be completely lost. Leaving grapes on the vine for so long also risks birds and other pests, reducing the yield. All these factors do add up in cost for the consumer but the result is certainly worth it.

Unlike other dessert wines, this process doesn’t need the grape to be affected by noble rot (Botrytis cinerea), a fungus which evaporates water from the grapes which in turn concentrates sugars and flavour, creating a sweeter wine. Ice Wine grapes are picked and pressed whilst the water is still frozen and so the ice is left in the grape press which means that the sugars is super concentrated. This is the technique used in Germany, Austria and Canada.

It is also worth pointing out how difficult the harvest is to organize as you need a lot of labour force as soon as it is cold enough and it all has to be done very quickly to avoid the sunlight warming the grapes. As you can imagine, all these risks and difficulties mean that Ice Wine is more expensive and produced in smaller quantities than other dessert wines. White grapes like Riesling, Vidal and even red grapes like Cabernet Franc are all used to create this wine style.