Sunday, September 14, 2014
My Ice Wine Education
Until last week, I went through life fully
expressing my distaste for "sweet wine". I was adamant that I did not like dessert
wines of any varietal and that they were syrupy and coated my mouth with sugar
and were just too sweet for my tastes. But, as I have discovered in just about
every area of my life, the minute I take a hard stance and declare that,"
I don't like something", I am
quickly proven wrong . Or, at the least, forced to question my belief system. This
sweet wine belief system was challenged last week while I was in Canada.
I went to Niagara Falls, the Canadian side. As a
side note, let me just say, if you get an opportunity to go- you must!! It is
truly one of the most powerful and yet peaceful natural wonders of the world. The
pictures do not do it justice. Seriously, I could have stood and watched the Falls,
for hours, completely content with myself and the world. They are majestic, the
water is a turquoise color, that is out of this world, and to watch the mist
rise from the Falls is mesmerizing!
However, what I didn't know about this area, being
a California wine snob, was that it has a HUGE wine industry! I have to admit I
went into this adventure a little cocky, and, I truly thought I would not be
impressed with the wine, and yet again I was wrong. I fell in love with Wayne
Gretzky's Reserve Chardonnay (on a side note) and I got to explore ice wine,
which is what completely changed my perception of dessert wine.
We were in a little town called Niagara on the Lake
and we went to a winery called Trius. Trius looks like a Napa winery with
sprawling grounds, well manicured gardens and immaculate properties. They have
been making wine for over 30 years, and they have a VQA rating, which in
Ontario is a quality rating only given to wineries that basically make the
region proud and meet the standards of wine making for that area. The VQA is
also Ontario's Wine Authority, it has regulatory powers and it enforces
winemaking and labeling standards. It reminds me of the DOC stamp found
on Italian wines. They have an Australian winemaker, Craig McDonald, who was
named the Ontario Winemaker of the Year in 2008.
So, as we are tasting their flight of red wines,
which were also good, we start looking around the tasting room, and you can
tell their holy grail is ice wine. We had talked earlier in the day about our
mutual distaste for dessert wine. As we were finishing our first tasting, I turned to my companion and asked him if he
wanted to share an ice wine tasting. He looked at me in the way that only men
can when they are humoring someone of the female gender and
said,"sure." And the rest is history...our ice wine education
started.
So this is what I learned about ice wine:
•
75% of ice wine is produced in Canada.
•
The grapes are frozen on the vine and then
harvested.
•
They are pressed only once and each grape only
produces a drop of wine.
•
The sugars do not freeze, but the water does which
results in a sweeter more concentrated juice.
•
Ice wine production is a risky business as it is
completely in Mother Nature's hands.
•
Because of the small yield, ice wine is generally
at a higher price point.
•
Legend has it that ice wine has been around since
the Roman times, but it did not become popular until around 1794 when the
Germans ,(the other large ice wine producer outside of Canada), started to make
it.
•
The grapes must become ripe on the vine and then
must have a "hard freeze", which is under 17 degree. If the freeze
does not come quickly enough the grapes may rot and the crop will be lost. If
the freeze is too severe the juice is lost.
•
Ice wine grapes are normally harvested at night or
very early in the morning and must be harvested within a few hours of the
freeze.
•
The fruit must be pressed while still frozen.
•
In Australia, Germany, US and Canada, the grapes
must be frozen naturally to be called ice wine.
•
Since there is a high sugar level the fermentation
process is slower and longer, months for ice wine compared to days or weeks for
other varietals
We tried three different types of ice wine -Vidal,
Riesling and Cab Franc. They are sweet but they are delicate. We were taught to
taste not with the front of your tongue, but, with the back of your palette .That
truly changed the flavor and the experience for me. They have a much lighter
viscosity than other dessert wines I have tasted, there is truly nothing syrupy
about the texture. They are light, but they also have a depth of flavors, and
unlike port, they are pure wine so there
isn't that alcohol aftertaste.. It was like nothing I had ever tasted
before.
So I must say, I was wrong, and I am now an ice wine believer. Cheers!
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