There are not many things that can’t grow in our own California backyards. Almost anytime of the year, the valley is blessed with bounty that others envy, from fruits and vegetables to olives and wine grapes.
But, despite the breadth of vineyards and wineries that have sprouted up in the Santa Ynez Valley over the past 30 years, there is one type of wine we just can’t lay claim to: the bracingly rich and silky smooth style of ice wine.
The creation of ice wine requires a cold that most of us living in the warmth of the valley seek to avoid — bone-chilling, frost-biting, below-zero cold.
And that’s when the harvest for ice wine is just getting started.
So, even when on vacation and still seeking out the best in home-grown products, a recent visit to Niagara-on-the-Lake in Ontario, Canada, provided the perfect opportunity to learn all about what Canadians call “extreme winemaking” and taste this amazing elixir they call ice wine.
“Ice wine is a concentrated wine made from grapes frozen naturally on the vine at minus 10 degrees Celsius,” explained Debi Pratt of Inniskillin Winery.
Pratt speaks in metric measurements because Inniskillin is one of the premiere wineries in the Niagara wine region of Canada. Using the Imperial system of measurement employed in the U.S., minus 10 degrees Celsius translates to a balmy 14 degrees Fahrenheit, but by any sane person’s reasoning, that is still pretty chilly for hand-harvesting grapes.
During the summer months, a drive through the wine region of Niagara looks very much like familiar territory.
At 43 degrees north latitude, the geography is roughly the same as the Napa Valley and slightly more southerly than vineyards of Burgundy and Bordeaux.
With soil rich in clay and loam, lakefront weather systems from Lake Ontario create perfect growing conditions in the Niagara escarpment.
So it should not be too surprising that more than 60 vineyards dot this tiny landscape.
For the most part, Niagara’s harvest season matches our own, except for vineyards that wait until sometime between mid-November and late March to harvest frozen grapes and press them before they can be allowed to thaw.
“Keep in mind the visual: the CSI moment,” said Pratt. “If you take a frozen grape and examine it under a microscope, there will be an amazing amount of ice crystals.
In a barrel press, shards of ice will puncture the inside of the skin and allow only the juices to flow that have not yet frozen,” she went on to say.
That small amount of juice — only one drop per grape — becomes ice wine. The fruit is gathered by hand in the middle of the night because any sunlight can warm the grapes too much and destroy the harvest.
If it doesn’t get cold enough, the harvest never happens.
If it gets too cold, the press yields nothing.
It is probably the riskiest type of winemaking. But Bruce Nicholson, senior winemaker at Inniskillin Niagara thinks it is worth it.
“It’s extreme wine making,” Nicholson conceded. “What does ‘extreme’ mean? With ice wine, we have no idea when or if we’ll get a harvest. Legally, it has to be after mid-November and no warmer than minus 8 degrees Celsius. My preference is for the temperature to get to minus 10 degrees or minus 11 degrees, despite a lower yield. When you get to minus 14 degrees, you’ve gone too far; it’s too cold and you’ll get no yield at all.”
When asked why he’s willing to brave the cold and uncertain conditions to create ice wine, his answer was simple.
“Taste it and you’ll see why,” he said.
He explains that his focus as a winemaker is to put a smile on the faces of everyone who tastes his wine, and he wants them to feel the experience is valuable
“Value becomes an important part of the equation because ice wine is a pretty expensive bottle of wine,” said Nicholson.
At upwards of $80 for a half-bottle, that’s no small understatement.
Price is one of the reasons why ice wine is considered a fairly exclusive dessert wine and reserved for after-dinner sipping.
“The magic of this type of wine comes from the balance between a high degree of sugar and a high degree of acidity,” he said. “It can truly go with many things.”
Sitting down to a six-course lunch with Executive Chef Jason Parsons of Peller Estates proved this philosophy to be true in a most impressive way.
Peller Estates, another winery powerhouse in the Niagara area, houses one of the most highly regarded restaurants in Canada that offers ice wine in abundance.
Another trend-setting feature of the restaurant is that well before it was fashionable to buy locally and eat seasonally, Parsons operated the kitchen solely on those principles.
The restaurant has two rules: bring into play as much estate wine in the cooking as possible and draw on only local ingredients.
“It is a real challenge, but it works. We will not cross borders,” Parsons stated. “We use products of the Niagara region and Ontario during the season, but never go beyond Canadian boundaries to find our ingredients, ever.”
“When people think of ice wine, they traditionally think of German Eiswein, which is really sweet,” Parsons said.
“But ice wines have a great balance to them. They have acidity, as well. For me, that’s what makes it a great wine to work with. It can start a meal. It can cool down spice. You can do so many things.”
Visiting Niagara was a surprising experience.
At a time when seeking the most authentic ingredients to create locally grown meals is so popular, it was inspiring to have the chance to visit another backyard and discover how they approach the goal.
So seek out a bottle of ice wine some night when our temperature get down to the low 40s and take a sip to remind yourself that somewhere out there, someone is harvesting grapes in the dead of night and sub-zero temperatures.
news source :- COOL CLIMATE WINE TAKEN TO THE EXTREME
