Ice wine (or icewine, as one word, or in 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 a more concentrated grape must to be pressed from the frozen grapes, resulting in a small amount of concentrated, often very sweet wine. With ice wines, the freezing happens before the fermentation, not afterwards. Unlike the grapes from which other dessert wines, such as Sauternes, Tokaji, or Trockenbeerenauslese, are made, ice wine grapes should not be affected by Botrytis cinerea or noble rot. Only healthy grapes keep in good shape until the opportunity arises for an ice wine harvest, which can occur the following calendar year. This gives ice wine its characteristic refreshing sweetness balanced by high acidity. When the grapes are free of Botrytis, they are said to come in "clean".Due to the labour-intense and risky production process resulting in relatively small amounts of wine, ice wines are generally quite expensive.Icewine producersVineyard in Ontario, Canada A bottle of Swedish icewineThe most famous (and expensive) ice wines are German Eiswein[1] and Canadian Icewine (where the name is written as one word), but ice wine is also made in the Australia, Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Israel Italy, Luxembourg New Zealand, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and United States, at least in smaller quantity. Eiswein is part of the Prädikatswein quality category in the German wine classification, and Icewine in Canada must follow VQA protocol to be labelled as such. The French language term Vin de glace is part of the wine classification in Luxembourg, but not in France, but is sometimes found on the rare bottles of ice wine produced in Alsace.In contrast to most other wine-producing regions, Canada, particularly the Niagara Peninsula, consistently undergoes freezing in winter and has become the world's largest ice wine producer. Ice wine production in Canada is regulated by the Vintners Quality Alliance in the provinces of British Columbia and Ontario. If sugar in the grapes measures less than 35 brix, then they cannot be made into icewine. These are often downgraded to a lower designation, such as Special Select Late Harvest or Select Late Harvest. Although Niagara-on-the-Lake's Inniskillin is traditionally considered the largest producer in term of volume, many smaller New World wineries in the Niagara Region have made their presence known with high quality products that have won awards around the world. Henry of Pelham Family Estate Winery's 2004 Riesling Icewine was recently acknowledged by Jancis Robinson of the Financial Times (London) and the The Oxford Companion to Wine as one of Canada's 10 best wines. To add to the prestige factor, in November 2006, what has been claimed to be the most expensive bottle of ice wine to date was sold for 30,000 Canadian dollars[2] by Royal DeMaria, a small winery in Beamsville that specializes in making icewine.[edit] ProductionNatural ice wines require a hard freeze (by law in Canada a minimum of −8 °C (17 °F)[3] and in Germany a minimum of −7 °C (19 °F)) to occur sometime after the grapes are ripe, which means that the grapes may hang on the vine for several months following the normal harvest. If a freeze does not come quickly enough, the grapes may rot and the crop will be lost. If the freeze is too severe, no juice can be extracted. Vineland Winery in Ontario once broke their pneumatic press in the 1990s while pressing the frozen grapes because they were too hard (the temperature was close to −20 °C).[citation needed] The longer the harvest is delayed, the more fruit will be lost to wild animals and dropped fruit. Since the fruit must be pressed while it is still frozen, pickers often must work at night or very early in the morning, harvesting the grapes within a few hours, while cellar workers must work in unheated spaces.In Austria, Germany, and Canada, the grapes must freeze naturally to be called ice wine. Some winemakers use cryoextraction (that is, mechanical freezing) to simulate the effect of a frost and typically do not leave the grapes to hang for extended periods as is done with natural ice wines. These non-traditional ice wines are sometimes referred to as "icebox wines".[citation needed] An example is Bonny Doon's Vin de Glacière.The high sugar level in the must leads to a slower-than-normal fermentation. It may take months to complete the fermentation (compared to days or weeks for regular wines) and special strains of yeasts should be used. Because of the lower yield of grape musts and the difficulty of processing, ice wines are significantly more expensive than table wines. They are often sold in half-bottle volume (375 ml) or the even smaller 200ml bottle. New World wineries in particular sometimes bottle 200 ml and 50 ml gift packages.Ice Wine
