Ice Wine

[Monica Bhide]

I am a TOTAL novice in this area. Someone presented us with " Durkheimer Hochbenn Muskatellar Eiswein ", he mentioned that it is a ICE WINE... i pretended i knew what it was.. can I ask you for some help... so the next time, i will know what I am talking about

[Beachfan]

I believe it is wine made from grapes that have been left on the vine into winter and are picked frozen. I haven't had any, I'll defer to those that have.

[La Niña]

That's right.

[Monica Bhide]

Thank you and thanks for not laughing me off the board.

So does it affect the taste? We have not opened the bottle yet. What should I serve with it?

[britcook]

It is wine that has been affected by noble rot (botrytis cinerea) and then frozen on the vine at which point it is picked.The conditions have to be right for both to happen and if you get it wrong you lose the whole crop, which is why it is expensive. The result of both conditions gives you an intense sweet wine with a lot of body and terrific length.

[La Niña]

some more information:

http://www.ontariograpes.com/icewine.html

Edited December 17, 2002 by La Niña (log)

[ajay]

Hey Britcooks,

Are you sure ice wine is affecting by the 'noble rot' (botrytis)? It was my understanding that grapes were just left to freeze which removes the water leaving an intense but balanced wine that is quite delicious with enough acid to cut through the pronounced sugar, but I admit being a relative new commer to the world of wine.

[Marlene]

It is indeed a grape that has been picked frozen. It makes for a very intense wine and is usually quite sweet. It should be served well chilled and is an excellent dessert wine.

[mickblueeyes]

Not all Eiswein is botrytis affected. Some may be, but it is more common in late harvest. I am not sure, but since botrytis is a fungus (and therefore plantlike, it has 70%+ water content in its cells) I don't think it could survive freezing temperatures. I might be wrong, but I don't think botrytis affected Eiswein is common.

[Monica Bhide]

It is indeed a grape that has been picked frozen.  It makes for a very intense wine and is usually quite sweet.  It should be served well chilled and is an excellent dessert wine.

any particular desserts that you would recommend. I just want to make sure I serve it appropriately, appears to be an expensive wine

[Marlene]

It is indeed a grape that has been picked frozen.  It makes for a very intense wine and is usually quite sweet.  It should be served well chilled and is an excellent dessert wine.

any particular desserts that you would recommend. I just want to make sure I serve it appropriately, appears to be an expensive wine

Ice wine can indeed be expensive! I am not an expert in pairing foods, so I'm pretty sure others here can answer this better than I.

[Beachfan]

Since no German wine fan has weighed in, I'll mention that Inniskillin, a Canadian vinter who is reputed to make the best North American ice wine (a botrysized one) is at my local Costco. Around $60, not sure which one it is (it seems like they make more than one).

[Tonyfinch]

Yes they do make more than one. I tasted two at the Decanter Wine Encounter in London last month. One was young and fresh and the other more mature, although I can't remember what they're called.

They are amazing wines, much more intense than any German Eisweins I've tasted. Very concentrated, marmalady, deep finish with all sorts going on.This is the wine to stand up to your sweetest puds but you could also sip it away on its own. Nectar for around £45 (for, I think, a 50cl bottle).

[britcook]

Is it botrytised or not? I think I've been giving out bad information, I think I was quoting from a specific supplier about their own particular wine (to talk up the price no doubt), although the exact source is lost in the mists of history. Certainly nowadays it can be botrytised or not, I might do a bit more research.

[Steve Klc]

The January 2003 Food & Wine magazine has a brief piece on icewines--and the 2000 Inniskillin Vidal comes out as their top pick. We've talked about icewines before on the site and about Inniskillin. Here's a link to an otherwise informative article on icewines (and some botrytis talk) by Corby Kummer where he disses Inniskillin, and also reveals he hasn't much of a palate for appreciating dessert wines, even less of an idea of how to use them in or pair them up effectively with desserts:

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/12/.../kummerfood.htm

From there you can follow links to Inniskillin itself. (Though one thing Kummer gets right is that the more expensive Oak-aged Vidal is a strange bird. I have a hard time appreciating it by itself and I haven't paired it successfully with a dessert yet.)

Monica, without having tasted the wine you have, your best bet may be to serve it as dessert. Vanilla, almonds, shortbread, saffron, cream might be the safe flavor notes to start with if you thought about creating a dessert for it--the problem is, if you haven't tasted the wine, you're going to have a hard time figuring out how to play off the sweetness and the acidity of it. I like the regular Inniskillin Vidal so much I built a dessert to showcase it--from bottom to top--some arborio cooked in coconut milk and coconut water, then a not-too-sweet coconut panna cotta, infused with vanilla, topped with a thin layer of the Vidal icewine gelee, with a tiny dice of Asian pear and little flecks of vanilla bean suspended in it. Clean, crisp, acidic, tropical. And try not drinking it so well-chilled all the time--you may find there are things about the wine you appreciate more as it warms up.

[britcook]

I've not tried the Inniskillin Vidal so can't agree or disagree with Kummer's opinion, but it does seem to me that any wine starting with Vidal or, let's expose it for what it is, the producer of nasty thin wines, the Ugni Blanc grape, does not have the best beginnings in the world. Yes you can improve it by various techniques to make it reasonable but it's always going to struggle to match varieties like Riesling which have many more advantages. Vidal is likely always to produce wines with less body and depth of flavour than the same wines made with the Riesling.

[Steve Klc]

That seems to be the party line, britcook. We're only talking icewine here, right? Taste a refreshingly acidic Vidal icewine from NOTL in a good year, especially aged for a few years, and you might sing a different tune--or at least stay open to the possibility. In fact, when Randall Grahm--maker of Bonny Doon's icebox dessert wine mentioned in the Kummer article and I believe the #1 best selling dessert wine in the US-- was here in the DC area not too long ago, he had the Vidal-based dessert wines from Linden Vineyards, about an hour's drive west from the city, and he remarked that after tasting Jim Law's Vidal, he now had "titratable acidity envy." He couldn't find out enough about Linden's stuff fast enough. I think what he meant by that is as a winemaker or grower--you can manipulate the body and depth of flavor somewhat--or at least make choices along the way from harvest to release which affect this--but you can't do much about the acidity--and it has to be there or you aren't going to get an interesting wine. I also think part of the vidal/riesling comparison is that the winemakers themselves have to figure out where to grow each grape and how to grow each grape within their given micro-climate and we have to figure out what to match them with, if anything at all. I expect we'll see much more on this, especially over here in the US. I've also had really terrific Vidal icewines from Chateau des Charmes, Henry of Pelham, Cave Spring, even Magnotta in the past few years, but I had to go there to try them, most aren't exported. Though now with Ontario VQA wines accepted into the EU, you probably can get these quite easily.

[GordonCooks]

Is it botrytised or not? I think I've been giving out bad information, I think I was quoting from a specific supplier about their own particular wine (to talk up the price no doubt), although the exact source is lost in the mists of history. Certainly nowadays it can be botrytised or not, I might do a bit more research.

I know in the case of Canadian Ice Wines, the VQA states no artificial freezing and the grapes must be picked and pressed while frozen.

It's a very low yield and often you use a whole vine for one bottle. I'm don't think the noble rot may apply due to climate.

[Jason Perlow]

Is it botrytised or not? I think I've been giving out bad information, I think I was quoting from a specific supplier about their own particular wine (to talk up the price no doubt), although the exact source is lost in the mists of history. Certainly nowadays it can be botrytised or not, I might do a bit more research.

TBA's and Beerenauselese are heavily affected by noble rot. The best guy to ask about this regarding Eiswein would be Willie Gluckstern though.

[jaybee]

My understanding is that German Ice Wine is made from grapes in the rare final stage of rot before they are totally useless. They are one stage later than trockenbeerenauslese, so they are shrunken by noble rot, and then left on the vine during a freeze. The idea is to have the maximum concentration of sugar left in the grape before picking. One drop of juice is extracted from one grape, so it takes, as someone said, a lot of grapes to make one bottle. Ice wine is not possible every growing season, since the weather may not provide the right mix of sun and very cold days late in the harvest period. The German ice wines can cost upwards of $100 a bottle and should be used as one would drink a great sauternes. Many growers save their ice wine for personal consumption, since there is usually so little of it.

Monica, you got a nice present!

[Tonyfinch]

I went to a German Eiswein tasting earlier this year and overall I was disappointed. There were some lovely wines but a number of the older ones had lost their balance and were losing sweet fruit. Balance between sweetness and acidity is everything in a sweet wine and to my mind these wines were not in the same league as some of the top sauternes I've tasted or some of the top Austrian sweet wines. Possibly some of them had been kept too long.

[Monica Bhide]

Monica, without having tasted the wine you have, your best bet may be to serve it as dessert.  Vanilla, almonds, shortbread, saffron, cream might be the safe flavor notes to start with if you thought about creating a dessert for it--the problem is, if you haven't tasted the wine, you're going to have a hard time figuring out how to play off the sweetness and the acidity of it.  I like the regular Inniskillin Vidal so much I built a dessert to showcase it--from bottom to top--some arborio cooked in coconut milk and coconut water, then a not-too-sweet coconut panna cotta, infused with vanilla, topped with a thin layer of the Vidal icewine gelee, with a tiny dice of Asian pear and little flecks of vanilla bean suspended in it.  Clean, crisp, acidic, tropical. And try not drinking it so well-chilled all the time--you may find there are things about the wine you appreciate more as it warms up.

Thanks SteveKLC, I will try to make something simple -- arborio in coconut milk sounds divine. Will surely keep allof you posted on what happens.

I had a wonderful experience this weekend. i was invited to the Washington Post Xmas party and the wine's were all handpicked by the wine critics. They personally labeled each wine as to why they liked it, what it went with and what the taste was all about. It was truly an eye opening experience. I realy enjoyed myself. Understanding wines is a fine art, I must say and I was privileged to spend time with folks who really knew their trade

[Jason Perlow]

Here is the definitive answer from Willie Gluckstern (Click for The Wine Avenger web site):

Dear Jason,

    Its often hard to avoid "Edelfäule" in the creation of Eiswein, simply due to the length of time the grapes need to hang until the first hard frost.

     But "Edelfäule" or "noble rot" is certainly not necessary in order to produce Eiswein. In fact, Eiswein produced by a particularly early freeze in a vintage that was not favorable to the formation of Botrytis cinera and thus made from only healthy grapes that have achieved Auslese level ripeness, is generally preferred by serious growers. The Eiswein produced from such grapes is purer, more refreshing and ultimately more exciting to drink than botrytis affected Eisweins, which tend to more closely resemble other bortrytis affected wines, like BA and TBA.

    Over the years, I have enjoyed Eisweins from healthy, non-botrytis affected grapes from Riesling as well as from other varieties, like Scheurebe, Gewürztraminer, Rivaner (Müller-Thurgau) and even Silvaner that were all remarkable wines. I never missed the Botryis.

                                      Willie Glückstern