Ice wines in Canada

from

Icewine is made by allowing the grapes to hang on the vine until they freeze naturally. Since the juice is rich in sugar, the temperature has to drop well below freezing and stay there long enough for the bunches to be harvested and pressed while still in their frozen state. A thaw will cause the ice to melt and the water will dilute the sugars and acids, rendering the juice at harvest below the minimum sugar level of 32 Brix.

hmmm! Not sure how that happened. I meant to send this

What rubbish! We don't have to!! Graham

You echo my own thoughts, Graham. My first reaction was "the last thing they have to worry about in Canada is the grapes _not_ freezing!"

Mark Lipton

I think that they were able to pick a bit earlier this year, in December rather than January. Unfortunately, I live where it's too cold for grapes{:-( In fact it's too cold for most fruit. Graham

I live in Newfoundland, Canada. I visited a farm where the owners are trying a variety of grapes.

I mentioned icewine. They said something about needing at least 8 days of a certain temperature.

Newfoundland rarely (if ever) gets that cold for that long. Surprise!

that's not the question I asked. Are you allowed to? I read the page youngmyrtle gave me (thanks YM) and that was unequivocal in so far as wines from British Columbia

fermentation and during cold stabilization prior to bottling

But when I looked for the same unequivocal phrase in the rules for wines from Ontario, I found something which could be a clever way of misleading with a definite undistributed middle

When Harvesting the grapes must be in their natural frozen state ideal temp -10 to -13 C

~ The grapes must be pressed when frozen

So they must be harvested frozen and pressed frozen, butthere's no similar rule to British Columbia's forbidding artificial refrigeration.

So by reading between the lines they could be kept in a freezer or even cooled further in a freezer between harvesting and pressing.

I know that at one time, Canadian ice wines were sometimes "helped" using artificial methods, so I'd be grateful if you could tell me unequivocally, if such a procedure isnow specifically forbidden or not.

I never heard of it during my trips to the Okanagan and the wineries always made a big thing of picking in the middle of the night when the grapes were frozen. Bill S. would be the best person to answer this. Graham

Hi again Graham,

When I first wrote, I h>> I know that at one time, Canadian ice wines were sometimes "helped"

Yes indeed they would do so. But since I write my latest reply, I've been doing some more reading. Canadian Icewine makers don't _have_ to adhere to the VQA rules and in fact Wiki says ice wine production is only regulated by the "Vintners Quality Alliance in the provinces of British Columbia and Ontario". I've not managed to find in my brief forays on the web, whether there are ANY regulations that are binding on ALL ice wine making in Canada, and so far, I can't.

I've already quoted the VQA rules for Ontario, and even they don't specifically forbid using a freezer between harvest and pressing. I'm not saying they do it, but seeking to find out what the regulations are.

When I read - also in Wiki, which could be suspect, of course,

"Canadian rules were further tightened in British Columbia in 2000 after a producer dealt with the mild winter of 1999 by moving grapes up to the mountains to seek freezing temperatures."

I suppose it's possible that I was thinking of this in the context of "recent regulations".

It's also possible that the person who asked me, had read of the huge levels of counterfeiting that was going on, or of Bonny Doon's "vin de glaciere. "

Probably, though I've never got the impression that he's got heavily involved in the legal framework of winemaking in Canada. even though he's a lawyer living in BC.

It makes sense that if you have a limited time to pick a largish crop and having limited pressing ability, temporary storage in a freezer makes sense - and I can't see any harm in that. Graham

Just for comparison, let us consider how German eiswein is made. With the then new 1971 wine laws, an eiswein, if the grapes were properly frozen on the vine, could be of anything from kabinett to TBA level, based on the sugar content of the juice pressed from the frozen grapes. But the juice, if pressed from the same grapes unfrozen might be of a considerably lower sugar content. Thus grapes that would normally make a kabinett wine might make an auslese eiswein since sugar is greatly concentrated in the juice pressed from the frozen grapes. There actually were a few kabinett eisweins made, which would be well below kabinett sugar content if pressed from unfrozen grapes, and just met the kabinett level of sweetness when pressed as eiswein. I have tasted such wine, and it is not a very pretty thing that might best be described as essence of greeness. Because such nasty eiswines were giving German eiswein a bad name, a few years later the law was changed so that only frozen grapes that give a BA or TBA level of sugar content in the pressed juice could be called eiswein and BA or TBA could not be added to the name - only eiswein.

With this background, eisweins are seldom made from the best grapes in the best years such as 1976 when many TBAs well over the legal lower sugar content limit can be produced. A high end TBA capable grape contains so much sugar that the nearly dry grapes would require extremely low temperatures to freeze well. However using refrigeration to freeze the TBA grapes to an extremely low temperature, it might be possible to make a super rich eiswein that would be as rich as Tokay Essence from Hungary. Eisweins are interesting, but I will usually like a true TBA from a good vineyard and wine maker better than their eiswein.

The danger in allowing eiswein to be made and sold, is that some will make eiswein from grapes that are not nearly ripe enough and that contain too much sharp acidity unless there are very strict rules, such as now in Germany. I see no reason why use of refrigeration or natural freezing should make any difference, other than some will be tempted to harvest the grapes too soon if they can use refrigeration to freeze the grapes.

Hi Graham,

I can do lttle to improve on cwdjr's answer. when it comes to talking about the possible harm.

I'd only add that IF there were no possible harm, then I don't see why BC should specifically forbid it.

My original question wasn't designed in any way to cause a dispute, but to clarify a question that was raised elsewhere.

Icewine might be quite a big thing in Canadian wineloving circles, but on a world scale, very sweet wines from any country are very much of minority interest, and ice wine even less so. So in that context, it's reasonable for people not to have much idea of what can and can't be done, and even where. It's perfectly possible that Sue (the person who asked me) was thinking of the vin de glaciere from Bonny Doon when she said she'd heard of ice wines being made from grapes frozen in the freezer.

As I said before, my original question had little to do with the rights or wrongs of this or that technique.

Is it worth repeating it? I'd dearly love to have an answer, which so far I've not been able to find on the web.

them?" and I have some vague recollection

anyone help me.... Am I going round the bend here?

Sorry if it sounds like I'm insultig the integrity of Canadian winemakers. I'm not. I'm trying to find out what - if any - regulations exist for ALL makers of Ice wine in Canada - in the same was as they do, say, in Germany. Or for Tokaji Aszu in Hungary, or for Sauternes in France.

Quite obviously: apparently not. (Which does *not* imply that anybody would use freezers in Canada.)

Btw, Austria has the same regulations as has Germany: no artificial freezing permitted.

Thus said, I'd also say that probably there was a mix-up with Bonny Doon's deep freezer wine.

M.

pressing them?" and I have some vague recollection

anyone help me.... Am I going round the bend here?

At this time, only BC and Ontario wineries belong to the Vintner's Quality Alliance (VQA). Those two provinces constitute the bulk of Canadian made wines, with some production in Quebec and some in scattered spots in the Maritimes of non-Vitis Vinifera wines. The Ontario Liquor Control Board (LCBO) is probably the single largest buyer in the world, and uses its network of government controlled stores to promote VQA wines where possible. VQA wines still are a minority of wines consumed in Canada, even in Ontario. Even if a winery produces VQA wines, not all of the wines they produce are qualified to be labelled VQA. Due to the LCBO's requirements for sheer volume before a product is listed, many of the better wines from the boutique wineries are only sold locally, or only at the winery.

As far as I know, only VQA members are required to follow the rules on Icewines at:

The icewine harvest in my neck of the woods was early this year due to several prolonged cold spells in the normally warmer "banana belt" of Canada, Lake Erie North Shore appellation (latitude 42 degrees North- northern California). The Nigagara region (closer to Toronto 400 km north of us) was a few weeks later than ours. There are only about 15 boutique and 2 large scale wineries in our appellation, compared to almost 10 times as many in Niagara appellation.

You can browse the VQA websites to get an idea of production compared to Europe, California or Australia at:

Dennis Windsor, Ontario, Canada (next door to Detroit, Michigan, USA)

Canada has agreed with Germany and Austria to only use the term Icewine if the wine is produced according to the same rules as Eiswein.

Er, don't you all scream at me simultaneously, but it seems to me that freezing them artificially would probably result in exactly the same thing...

I e-mailed Tony Aspler, Canada's premier wine writer with Ian's original query and received the following reply:

Graham, an agreement in 2000 between Germany, Austria and Canada mandated that Icewine had to be made from vine-frozen grapes. This is part of the VQA regulations - grapes must be frozen on the vine. The only instance of cryo-extraction (grapes harvested then frozen in commercial freezers) was Hillebrand's 1984 Vidal Icewine. Home winemakers use the technique of freezing pressed juice and removing the ice that forms on top of the container. I imagine that most of the counterfeit Icewine that ends up in China and Taiwan is made by freezing grapes that have been harvested. Cheers, Tony

Ps. There is no such restriction for Quebec's Ice Cider. It can be made from apples frozen on the tree or harvested apples left outside to freeze.

Tony Aspler.com.

Not necessarily. Cryo-extracted grapes can be harvested along with the normally-processed grapes. Ice wine grapes, howevewr, must be left on the vine until they freeze at -10C or so, usually in November, December or January in the northern hemisphere. They are likely to have a bit more sugar and less acid than grapes harvested in September or October. I'd think that might have some influence on the final product.

BTW, if I'm not mistaken, only vine-frozen grapes can be lebeled as ice wine in the US, as well as in Canada, Germany and Austria. Cryo- extracted wines are not illegal, but they cannot be labeled as ice wine.

And the freezing elevates both sugar and acid levels, I understand. I recall an Erdener Busslay (Mosel) Ice Wine 1983 (I think) as one of the most fabulous wines I've tasted. It had 13g/l acid... and with the RS to match, it was a most mouthtitillating experience :-) Anders

AFAIK all of the BC wineries do it the old fashioned way, waiting for the grapes to freeze naturally. We never quite know what those in Ontario get up to - I suspect that if they don't have enough frost they could just trot out a politician to do stand up comedy (like reading the new budget). That woud frost anything!

One must remember that the VQA is optional. In fact many of the very best (and often smallest) producers do not belong to it - for two reasons. They don't want to pay the fees to belong, and they sell every bottle they make without the cachet of being VQA.

I recall in the 80s seeing wineries in Napa and Sonoma doing things like spraying the grapes with botrytis to infect them and harvesting and then using commercial freezers to concentrate the grapes. That could possibly go on in BC, but I don't personally know of any instances.

I regard BC ice wine as a confection to be put in little fancy expensive bottles and sold at several times what they are worth to Japanese tourists anxious to impress their coworkers and friends back home.

I have never tasted (and I have tried many) of these wines that matched or even approached the distinction or balance or flavour interest of a decent german BA or Eiswein. If the stuff weren't so damned expensive, it might be useful for filling our humminbird feeder....