Ice Wine Hits the Spot for Dessert
Have you ever heard of Ice Wine? Neither have I. When asked the same question I protested vehemently, "who would drink wine on the rocks". Oh, ignorant me. Ice wine has been in existence for approximately 200 years and supposedly was invented by a German winemaker who was surprised by an early frost. He decided to press the frozen grapes anyway, but separated them from the rest of his vintage so as to avoid ruining everything. To his surprise, the resulting wine was pure and sweet. Ever since, ice wine has been produced to some degree in all wine producing countries of the Northern hemisphere, including Austria, Germany, Hungary, Switzerland and others. The difference between ice wine and other dessert wines is that ice wines show a much clearer fruit and varietal character.
It is essential to harvest on the first freezing night of the year, because grapes left on the vine to go through a freeze-thaw-refreeze cycle can pick up unwanted flavors. Winemakers are often nervous wrecks by harvest time, as they will have spent night after night waking up repeatedly to check the temperature. There's a great Saturday Night Live skit lurking in this paragraph. Just thinking about that German guy in his sleeping cap and jammies waiting for his grapes to chill is rather amusing.