Pairing Food With Ice WineĪs ice wine is a dessert wine with explosive fruit flavors and on the high-sweetness end of the spectrum, you’ll want to pair it with somewhat subtle desserts containing enough fat to balance the taste profile. You will see these products usually labeled as “iced wine” or simply “dessert wine.” So, if you’re looking for true ice wine, be a wary shopper and read the labels or look up the production information. Fortunately, in Canada, Germany, Austria, and the US, dessert wines are not allowed to be labeled as ice wine if grapes are commercially frozen. True ice wine requires a cold climate where grapes are harvested frozen on the vine. Vineyards in Michigan by Andrew McFarlane True Ice Wine Grapes must be picked frozen from the vine to be called a true ice wine. Cabernet Franc stuns with its brilliant orange-ruby hue, but it’s hard to find outside of Ontario, Canada. The grapes that grow well in cold climates make the best ice wines and these include: Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Gewürztraminer, Riesling, Grüner Veltliner, Chenin Blanc, and Vidal Blanc. 220 g/L is two times the sweetness of a Coke!Ĭool climate wine varieties used to make ice wine include Cabernet Franc, Gewürztraminer, Riesling, Grüner Veltliner, and Vidal Blanc (a French Hybrid variety). When it’s all done, wines have around 10% ABV and a range of sweetness from around 160–220 g/L of residual sugar. (This is a long, slow, finicky fermentation!) The juice is so sweet (anywhere from ~32–46 Brix), that it can take anywhere from 3–6 months to make ice wine. Ouch! Many heritage presses break under the pressure of squeezing frozen grapes!Īt any rate, only about 10–20% of the liquid in these frozen grapes is used for ice wine. Imagine thousands of hard, icy marbles dropping into grape crusher and grape press. Frozen grapes are picked frozen on the vine and come into the winery. The secret to ice wine is processing frozen grapes at around 20 ✯ (-7º C). By the mid-1800s, the Rheingau region was making what the Germans called eiswein. Thus, the technique became popularized in Germany. The resulting wines from that vintage had an amazingly high sugar content, along with great flavor. It’s been supposed that in Franken, Germany, during a particularly cold winter in 1794, winemakers were forced to create a product from the grapes available for harvest. Still, it’s hard to despise the wonderful gift that grapes and a cold climate creates. After all, it has almost double the sweetness of Coca-Cola. It’s one of those wines some of us pretend to hate. Just imagine yourself outside in sub-zero temperatures, in the dark, on a slippery hill, in the middle of a frozen winter, trying to harvest grapes. True ice wine is one of the hardest, most misery-stricken wines to produce.

It’s hard to know how anyone would ever purposefully make this wine. Welcome to the wonderful world of ice wine, one of the sweetest mistakes nature ever made.

Riesling ice wine