Icewine, a Canadian Speciality

An excerpt from the Appendix of my vinophile mystery novel, Pinot Mort.

Inniskillin Icewine

Icewine (or ice wine; German: Eiswein) is a type of dessert wine produced from grapes that have been frozen while still on the vine. The sugars and other dissolved solids do not freeze, but the water does, allowing for a more concentrated grape juice to develop. The grapes' must is then pressed from the frozen grapes, resulting in a smaller amount of more concentrated, very sweet juice. With icewines, the freezing happens before the fermentation, not afterwards. Only healthy grapes will keep in good shape until the opportunity arises for an icewine harvest, which can occur after the New Year on a northern hemisphere calendar. This gives icewine its characteristic refreshing sweetness balanced by high acidity. This results in a very complex and sweet wine. Much icewine is made from the grapes Riesling, Vidal, Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon, but there is also icewine made from Shiraz, Merlot, Sangiovese and others.

Icewine production is risky (the frost may not come at all before the grapes rot or are otherwise lost) and requires the availability of a large enough labour force to pick the whole crop within a few hours, at a moment's notice, on the first morning that is cold enough. The grapes for icewine must only be harvested when they are frozen naturally, and the temperature must be -8 C (20°F) or below when they are picked. This results in relatively small amounts of ice wine being made worldwide, making icewines generally expensive.

Icewine production is limited to that minority of the world's wine-growing regions where the necessary cold temperatures can be reached with some regularity. Canada is the world's largest producer of icewine, producing a greater volume of icewine than all other countries combined.

Excerpt from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_wine